SW: Hot & Sour Soup (Guest Post)

People, I am exhausted. As much fun as this soup week has been, eleven posts in five days is a lot for one girl to handle. However! I think we've had an excellent turn-out, I love that I had SIX guest contributors, and every time I get an email or message saying someone is trying one of the soups, my heart jumps with glee.

But all good things must come to an end, and Soup Week 2011 is due. Next week, I'll return to regularly scheduled Hot Pink Mama, including thoughts on nanowrimo, the Bean's eating utensil progress (complete with photos), and a really good book I read last week. I'm leaving you with my friend Andrea's Hot and Sour Soup recipe. She was a super big meanie and didn't bother sharing, which is so uncool. :) I hope you had a super fun week! Thanks for stopping by!

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I love most Asian food. More specifically, I love spicy Asian food. Thai food is some of my favorite food in the world. In fact, I just had green curry from my favorite Thai restaurant today, and I am drooling in memory. As for Chinese food, unfortunately, most Chinese restaurants, at least in my city, seem to be of the Americanized garden variety, using a lot of oil and MSG and enough sodium to bloat up a blimp. So while I love it dearly, I rarely allow myself the indulgence of ordering it. My main weakness at a Chinese restaurant and one thing I must order at a Chinese restaurant is the hot and sour soup. The main problem with that is that I’m a mostly vegetarian and the strands of pork in most varieties of hot and sour soup are difficult to pick out. Not only that, but it’s always a crapshoot. Some hot and sour soups are divine. Others are bland and disappointing. Even at the same restaurant, there can be a variety in quality depending on what day I go.

So I recently went on a quest to find a recipe for a good quality hot and sour soup that is easy to make and without too many oddball ingredients and as tasty as the best restaurant quality hot and sour soup.

I found a great recipe here: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1748,135181-254194,00.html

I played around with it to make it vegetarian and suit my own tastebuds, and this is what I came up with:

Easy Hot and Sour Soup
by Andrea!

 

Ingredients

4 cups of broth (I used vegetarian but chicken can be used as well)

1 Tablespoon hot chili sauce (this is hot stuff, so use sparingly (maybe ¼ Tablespoon) if you don’t like as much spice as I do)

1 cup dried Shitake mushrooms (you can use any mushroom you like, but I got these at an Asian grocery store. You must soak the dry mushrooms in water for about 25 minutes before use)

3 Tablespoons soy sauce (I used lite sodium)

¼ Teaspoon white pepper

½ cup bamboo shoots

¼ cup rice vinegar

3 oz block firm tofu, cut up

1 egg (beaten)

2 strands green onion diced

1 Teaspoon sesame oil

1. Simmer vegetable broth for 5 minutes.
2. Add mushrooms, soy sauce, and chili sauce.
3. Simmer 5 minutes more.
4. Add white pepper, bamboo shoots, tofu and vinegar.
5. Simmer 5 minutes more.
6. Add beaten egg in a thin stream. Allow to cook for 30 seconds.
7. Add onions and sesame oil.
8. Let simmer a few minutes more, then eat until you lick the bowl!

Notes: This will probably taste even more like the restaurant quality hot and sour soups if you make with chicken broth instead of vegetable broth and add ¼ cup to ½ cup shredded pork to it. Also, the original recipe calls for cornstarch to thicken it. I did not do that. I enjoyed the thinner broth, but if you prefer a thicker broth, you could add cornstarch mixed with water before adding the egg.

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Andrea is my partner in crime that begins with the letter “A.” (Mainly, awesomeness.) Together, we rocked pixie cuts and works of fiction that require years of work, pausing only to occasionally sneer at those who haven't been slaving on their projects for half a decade or more. (We are kind of snobby like that.) Andrea has lived all over the world, and both her writing and food reflect that. Besides being the wife of a super cool dude, she's also a teacher, which automatically means she deserves your undying respect. She's also brilliant, making her seem too awesome to be true! However, I promise I didn't make her up as an excuse to post more soup week recipes, and as proof, you can check out Andrea's blog and see for yourself.