Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

Servings: 2-3 bowls

I don’t know for sure how hot and sour soup, the staple appetizer in chinese restaurants all over the world, comes about. Some said it was one of the Sichuan cuisine. I also have tried the soup, served with flour noodle shaved like young coconut slivers, in Beijing and a similar concoction in a Shantung Guo Tie seller near my home in Jakarta.

Anyway, I notice that this soup is normally part of the menu of Guo Tie (pot stickler to those of you from North America) or Jiao Zi seller as I suspect, the noodle is made of Guo Tie wrappings.

I made Guo Tie before but I’m still not happy with the skin. I tried using the same formula for the noodle. While it was OK, it disintegrated at an alarming rate in the boiling water and didn’t firm up. I wonder where I did wrong.

The soup, however, was great. I tweaked my trusty old recipe from the London Free Press (Ontario, that is). It was what Hot and Sour soup should be: spicy and sour with tinge of chicken-stock sweetness and neutral flavours from the bland tofu and bamboo shoots.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tbsp finely minced bird-eye chilies
1 litre chicken stock
6-8 dried shiitake mushroom, reconstituted in cold water and cut finely. Reserve the soaking liquid.
1 finely shredded small carrot
150 g firm tofu, cut into 5mm dice
50 ml shredded bamboo shoots
4 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
Pinch of sugar
Salt to taste
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp sesame oil
Oil for frying
1 egg lightly beaten

Optional:
1 green onion thinly sliced


Directions:

Gently fry the chilies and ginger. When fragrant, pour the chicken and mushroom stock and bring to boil.

Dump in the mushroom, carrot, tofu and bamboo shoots. Season with the vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and salt. Bring to another boil.

When the ingredients are sufficiently cooked, while the soup is boiling, pour the beaten egg in thin stream to make egg drops. Let the egg set.

Thicken the soup with cornstarch diluted in water to desired consistency.

Serve hot with the noodle.