Gail's Hot & Sour Soup

This quote on Facebook from my high school friend Melinda prompted me to share my wife's recipe for hot and sour soup.

"Was excited to read some homemade hot and sour soup recipes until I got to one whose ingredients completely turned me off: "This silky version includes traditional ingredients like earthy tree ear fungus, tender bamboo shoots and lily buds." TREE EAR FUNGUS???? Turkey vegetable it is."

I strongly encourage you to not let "fungus" turn you off. It's just a funny translation of "mushroom." Here is a picture of the three odd ingredients in the recipe:

On the left is the dried lily flower, which is also called golden needles and in Melinda's recipe, lily buds. They are the strange ingredient. They are a rolled up lily flower petal. The middle ingredient is simply labeled "dried mushrooms," and are also called black mushrooms, but they are simply Shiitake mushrooms. You want the dried ones because they are much more flavorful. The third package is Melinda's tree ear fungus. The package is labeled "dried black fungus," and they are also called tree ear or wood ear mushrooms. They are just a mushroom. We see small ones growing on oak trees in our own yard.

We found these bags at H Mart, but they are available in any Asian grocery.

Gail's recipe is the result of many increasingly better attempts until this excellent soup emerged. The key bit of advice from a friend of hers was, "No hot oil; white pepper." We like it thick, but the nice thing here is you can tune the hot by varying the white pepper, the sour with the vinegar, and the thickness with the cornstarch.

Gail's Hot & Sour Soup
Quadruple the recipe to use a whole can of bamboo shoots and a whole lb. of tofu.
Makes: 4 c
Hands-on prep time: 30 min
Start-to-finish time: 2 hr

1 oz uncooked chicken

8 dried black mushrooms
6 pieces dried wood ears (1 T)
6 pieces dried golden needles (1 T)
4 c vegetable stock

¼ c bamboo shoots
4 oz tofu

½ t white pepper
4 oz can mushrooms in liquid

2 T brown sugar
2 T soy sauce
2 T rice vinegar

1 T chopped scallion
1 egg
¼ t sesame oil

3 T plus 2 t firmly packed cornstarch
¼ c water

Heavy soup pot with cover

1. Defrost chicken if necessary; soak black mushrooms, wood ears and golden needles in stock 30 min.
2. While dried vegetables soak, drain and rinse bamboo shoots; cut into matchsticks; cut tofu into ½” cubes; cook chicken and cut into matchsticks. 
3. When dried vegetables are softened, remove from stock; cut into matchsticks, discard any hard stems. If bouillon is used for stock, make sure it is completely dissolved. 
4. Combine stock, soaked vegetables, bamboo shoots, tofu, chicken, white pepper and canned mushrooms, including liquid, in pot; bring to boil. 
5. When soup boils, reduce heat; cover; simmer 30 min. 
6. Stir brown sugar, soy sauce and vinegar into simmered soup. Taste and correct seasonings. Recipe can be paused at this point. Reheat to boiling before continuing. 
7. Remove soup from heat; chop scallion; beat egg; mix in sesame oil; set aside. Dissolve cornstarch in water; stir into soup; return to med-high heat, stirring constantly, until liquid thickens slightly and becomes translucent, 1-2 min. Do not stop stirring for even a moment or else cornstarch mixture will sink to bottom and form an unappetizing glob! 
8. Slowly add egg mixture, stirring for a count of 5 (to keep egg from cooking in one big piece), then letting sit undisturbed for a count of 5 (so egg isn’t completely incorporated into broth). 
9. Serve immediately, topped with chopped scallion. 

Substitute pork or shrimp for chicken, or eliminate meat and egg entirely for a vegan version.

Warning: Reheat on the stove since this soup explodes in a microwave when hot enough to eat, even with short heatings separated by frequent stirrings.

Another Great Bread Bowl ... & Cheese

You'll know from past posts how bread bowls hold a special place for Gail and me. Tonight, Gail made homemade wheat bread bowls, and we filled them with soup made with garden potatoes and leeks. Yum.

We also like a little goat cheese in our soup. Since we still have some cheese left from our cheese share, we did a taste test of how various cheeses compared. We typically use grocery store chèvre logs, so this was the cheese to compare against. The other two were the boucheron-like Ada's Pride from Ruggles Hill Creamery and the brie-like Kunik from Nettle Meadow Farm.

Eaten plain, both the Ada's Pride and the Kunik far outshine the chèvre log. I really expected the Ada's Pride to be my favorite in the soup. Surprisingly, the chèvre worked best in this soup. Well, that's why we do these taste tests.

Gail's bread bowls worked particularly well with the soup. She made a half recipe of this whole wheat sourdough bread from about.com. It had a particularly good mouth feel as I scraped the gooey inner walls of the bowl. Gail wishes she had made four loaves with this half recipe, and I agree. Each loaf was too big for one person, but also too big to hold their bowl shapes.

Olympics Day 5: Egg Drop Soup

First, coffee. Gail made Peet's New Guinea Highlands this morning. Again, not better than what we could get in the grocery store, but perfectly good. This coffee had very slight aroma, but a rich mouth feel. It lacked any metallic notes, and had a full, almost woody flavor.

Gail made egg drop soup for dinner, which we rounded of with some take-out Chinese appetizers. Her recipe tasted just the way I like it. When I have it out, I always have to add pepper and a little soy sauce for flavor. Gail's recipe needed neither. I thought I tasted white pepper, but Gail said there was none. I think the garlic and ginger combine for that flavor profile.

Egg Drop Soup

Serves 2

1/2” piece fresh ginger
1 clove garlic
2 ½ c vegetable stock
1 T med-dry sherry
1 egg
2 T cornstarch
2 T water
1 scallion
¾ t sesame oil
2 t soy sauce (optional)

1. Thinly slice ginger; crush garlic.
2. Bring stock, sherry, ginger, garlic and soy sauce to boil in heavy saucepan. Remove ginger, and garlic if piece is large enough, with slotted spoon; discard.
3. Lightly beat egg. Turn off but leave pot on burner; slowly add egg to soup while stirring in a circular motion; let stand undisturbed until egg strands cooked, 1 min.
4. Combine and stir in cornstarch and water; stir in scallions and sesame oil.

We looked all over for a Chinese beer, but all we could find was Tsingtao, which I don't like enough to buy a six-pack of. So, we looked for something different, and found only one type of rice wine as an alternative. This bottle of Pagoda Brand Shao Hsing Chia Fan Chiew is my first Chinese rice wine experience. The clerk at the liquor store said it was nothing special. He was right. The dark color out of the bottle concerned me at first. On tasting it, the color made more sense. This is just like sherry; average sherry. The bottle is very cool, and since we use sherry mostly for cooking, we will use it happily.

New Year's Eve Feast from Christmas Leftovers

We had so much food left over from Christmas that the refrigerator was making I'm-going-to-die noises. And yet, Gail and I enjoy making a New Year's Eve dinner. Gail suggested a challenge of nice dishes made from the leftovers. The result was spectacular.

First Course: Pumpkin Soup with Chevre and Goose Cracklins
We started by dressing up the pumpkin soup Gail made for when our daughters came home from school. Pumpkin soup is homey and works for Noele's vegetarian diet. This particular soup used winter squash rather than pumpkin and was mashed rather than pureed.  Gail also used more stock rather than milk, since our daughter Anna doesn't do so well with milk.

To dress it up, we took the skin from a goose we cooked for friends and made cracklins. Cracklins are simple with goose skin because it's so fatty. We cut little pieces and cooked them in a hot pan just like bacon, until crispy, about five minutes. The cracklins and a dollop of soft goat cheese blended perfectly with the soup for a perfect starter. Since Noele joined us for the soup, her portion had crisped up sweet potatoes made from Anna's leftover sweet potato fries.

Gail's Pumpkin Soup

Serves: 1 (1 ½ c)

1 t oil

¼ c sliced onion

2 T sliced celery

2/3 c vegetable stock

1 c peeled chopped pumpkin flesh (or other winter squash)

1/16 t salt

¼ c 1% milk (optional)

1 t dark brown sugar

Freshly ground black pepper

1/16 t nutmeg

1. Remove string and chop celery. Melt butter in heavy soup pot; chop onion while butter heats.

2. Sauté onion and celery until tender.

3. Add stock, pumpkin and salt, simmer until pumpkin is tender, about 15 min.

4. Cool enough to put in food processor; puree.

5. Return to soup pot. Add milk, sugar, pepper and nutmeg.

6. Reheat slowly, being careful that soup does not boil.

Second Course: Nova Scotia Hot Lobster in Portabello Mushroom Caps
I'm a bit surprised, but we had just a little bit of Nova Scotia Hot Lobster left over from Christmas dinner. We also had a package of baby porabello mushroom caps that didn't get used in Noele's risotto. We put the lobster in the mushroom caps and simply baked them. The result was a stuffed mushroom that would have made a star appetizer at any party.

In the background of the picture, you can see the split of Veuve Clicquot that we popped for New Year's Eve. That reminded us of our trip to Reims over the summer when we visited that Champagne cellar.



Third Course: Mashed Potato Pancakes
Leftover mashed potatoes became potato pancakes based on this recipe from cooks.com.  They were a bit too thin to be formed, but dropped into the pan just fine. We left out the green peppers.

This recipe would work well as the base for a seafood cake of any kind by adding drained crab, oysters, or even leftover fish.

Fourth Course: Mushroom Risotto Arancini
Noele's risotto is a big hit at every holiday meal. She made a lot more this year, since we usually run out. But we had leftovers this time. Gail found this recipe for arancini from allrecipes.com. Arancini are deep fried risotto balls. Yes, deep frying risotto is as delicious as it sounds.

We modified the recipe to use the leftover risotto and goat cheese we had on hand. We guessed at two cups of risotto for each dry cup of rice, but the result was slightly too thin to work with. We would have done better with three cups of cooked risotto to one egg.




Fifth Course: Pressed Goose with Potatoes and Black Lava Salt
For our last savory course, we made a casserole from leftover goose and potatoes. The potatoes were originally baked with the goose. We made a layer of potato on the bottom of a generously greased ramekin, and topped that by pressing in about a half cup of leftover chopped goose meat. We topped that with a decoration of potato slices. We were pleasantly surprised by the star decoration the potato made on top of the dish. Before baking, we added a pat of butter and some black lava salt. The salt was a Christmas gift from Noele, and added a little something special to the dish.

We ate the whole meal over about three hours, and this final meat dish added the right savory weight to sate us.

Sixth Course: Chocolate Mousse
For dessert, we made a simple dish of chocolate mouse. The mousse was leftover from a chocolate mousse crepes we had with a Hanukkah dinner earlier in the week. For this dessert, we piped the mouse into a wine goblet and topped it with whipped cream. I had a cherry on mine, mostly to decorate it for the picture. I doesn't seem to have helped much.

This particular mousse came from a recipe on cooks.com. The recipe simply adds instant chocolate pudding to fresh whipped cream. When we first made it, we only had half the required heavy cream. That worked fine for the first day. But after sitting in the fridge for a few days, the instant pudding firmed up a bit too much. It wasn't bad, but it would have been better with either more cream, or a lighter cream in the mix.

Epilogue: Rib Roast Open Faced Sandwich with Peppers
Tonight we made one more leftover meal. We took the last bits of the beautifully dry aged Christmas rib roast and sauteed it to render the remaining fat. We served the meat over toast topped with a milk gravy we made from the drippings, and added a sprinkle of the black lava salt. Gail sauteed some leftover peppers and added them to the side for a light but hearty supper. Cooking the meat this way refreshed it much better than a quick trip through the microwave would have.

Gail's Minestrone Soup

Minestrone Soup
A meal in a bowl!
Serves: 1 (about 3 c)

2 T dried split peas
2 c vegetable stock
¼ c dry elbow macaroni
½ T olive oil
¼ c chopped onion
¼ c chopped carrot
¼ c chopped celery
¼ c chopped zucchini
¼ c chopped tomato
4 oz fresh spinach
1/8 t minced garlic
1/16 t salt
1/16 t oregano
1/32 t basil
1/32 t thyme
1 bay leaf (per pot, not per serving)
1 whole clove (per pot, not per serving)
¼ c canned kidney beans
Freshly ground black peppe
Fresh Parmesan cheese, or a leftover rind

1. Rinse peas; bring to boil in stock; reduce heat to simmer; cover; cook 30 min.
2. Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. When done, remove pasta with slotted spoon, reserving cooking water.
3. While peas and pasta cook, heat oil in heavy skillet over low heat.
4. Chop onion roughly same size as macaroni and beans; add to skillet. Repeat with carrot, celery, zucchini, tomato, spinach and garlic, stirring often, until vegetables soften.
5. Meanwhile, add spices to stock pot.
6. Stir sautéed vegetables into stock pot; cook, covered, until peas start to disintegrate, another 15 min. Meanwhile, rinse beans twice.
7. Add beans and macaroni; heat through, adding pasta liquid to desired consistency. If using a cheese rind, toss it in.
8. Season with freshly ground black pepper before serving; serve with freshly grated Parmesan.

Variations:

• Substitute lentils or any dried beans for peas. Dried beans may need to soak overnight before rinsing twice, then boiling.
• Substitute ½ c cooked macaroni for dry.
• Substitute ¼ c cooked spinach for raw.
• Substitute cabbage, escarole or other greens for spinach. Really any vegetable substitutions are fine.
• Substitute white (cannellini) beans for kidney beans.
• Substitute winter vegetables (root vegetables, squash) for summer ones (celery, tomato, zucchini).

Bread Bowls

Tonight Gail made garden soup in home-made bread bowls. I love soup in a bread bowl. Tonight's soup was a creamy puree of potatoes, leeks and broccoli, all from her garden. Bread bowls are wonderful four times over. First, you get yummy chunks of the bread bowl top dipped into the soup. Next, you get the soup itself. Then you get to scrape the soup-soaked walls of the bowl. And finally, appealing to my inner twelve-year-old, you get to rip apart the bowl and eat it.

We realized tonight though that bread bowls hold a special place for us. Before we were married, Gail and I spent a New Year's Eve in Disneyland. We looked all over for a place to sit and eat, and finally settled for clam chowder in bread bowls at a stand just outside of Pirates of the Caribbean. That was over twenty five years ago and the memory sticks with us both.

How many meals can you remember from twenty five years ago?