Hot and Sour Soup

My mom would make this soup for special occasions, although it's a good soup for cold, damp weather. The heat in the soup comes from black pepper and its sourness from vinegar; though not any vinegar will do. Apple cider vinegar and rice vinegar are cetain sweeter in taste than say, red wine vinegar. And, don't put balsamic vinegar into this soup.

A note from my dad about the wood ear fungus. It may look small, and the original recipe called for 1/4 of it but that is a mistake. He says that the fungus will soak up enough water to turn into 10x its dehydrated size.

Makes: 2 quarts + 1 pint

Ingredients

3 oz pork loin, pork shoulder, or country pork rib
1/2 tsp olive oil
1 scallion, thinly sliced

1/4 c dried lily buds, soaked in warm water, trimmed
1/4 c dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in warm water, thinly sliced
4 pc dried wood ear (mu-erh) fungus, soaked in warm water, thinly sliced
1/2 c winter bamboo shoots, thinly sliced
1/2 pkg organic firm tofu, small diced
2 quarts organic chicken broth, low sodium
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
3 tbsp white vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 tsp tamari soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste

1 organic carrot, sliced into matchsticks

Directions

Slice pork into thin 1/2" strips then fry with scallion and olive oil. When pork has lost its pink color, remove from heat and set aside.

After soaking the lily buds, trim off the hard parts of the stem.

In a large stockpot (or a pot large enough to hold 3 quarts of liquid), combine chicken broth, lily buds, wood ear fungus, mushrooms, tofu, white pepper, soy sauce, and vinegar. Add the soaking liquid of the dried ingredients to the soup.

Bring the soup to a simmer and let all the ingredients come up to temperature. At this point, you can add the cornstarck/water slurry and bring the soup to a boil to thicken the soup.

Next, and add the eggs for an egg-drop-soup look. 

Serve hot.

You may need to add more black pepper (for heat) or vinegar (for sourness).

To thicken the soup:

Combine equal portions cornstarch and cold water. Stir until cornstarch is dissolved in the water. Use 1 tbsp cornstarch plus 1 tbsp water per quart of liquid.

To turn this into an egg drop soup:

Whisk 2 eggs in a small bowl

Before serving the soup and while the soup is boiling, stir soup in a clockwise (or counterclockwise) direction so the liquid is rotating in one direction. Usually, it's 1 egg per person for a regular egg drop soup.

As the soup is rotating, slowly pour in the beaten eggs.

Asian BBQ Pork Spare Ribs

This recipe tasted OK. How the pork gets cooked probably needs some work and/or tweaking as they came out a little tough to eat. Overall, from an aesthetic perspective, they looked great and social media post-worthy. I was looking to do something different than how pork spare ribs are traditionally served up, e.g., as dim sum small plate (steamed with black beans) or as grilled ribs with an Asian-flavored sauce slathered onto it.

The Foodening Blog: Asian BBQ Short Ribs

While I had a jar of hoisin sauce in the pantry, for once, I made hoisin sauce from scratch for this dish. You can get these short ribs at any Asian grocery store butcher counter. These were already cut to 1" - 1.5" size, and if you were going to make the dim sum short ribs recipe, you'd need these cut to the 1" size. Onward.

Ingredients

2-3 lbs pork short ribs

1/4 c white vinegar

2 tsp sea salt

Marinade Ingredients
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1/2 c light soy sauce
1/2 c unbleached cane sugar
1/2 c ketchup
1/4 c lemon juice, or fresh juice from 1 lemon plus its zest
3 tbsp raw honey
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 tbsp fresh garlic, finely chopped

Garnish

2 tbsp white sesame seeds, toasted
green onion, white part (optional)

Directions

Start by bringing a large pot of water to boil with salt and vinegar. Add pork ribs, bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sugar, ketchup, lemon juice, honey, ginger, and garlic. Whisk to combine.

Place cooked ribs in a large ziplock bag (or food storage container with a lid). Pour on the marinade and marinate for up to 6 hours or overnight.

Grill ribs until the ribs are slightly charred. -or- if using an oven broiler, broil meat until slightly charred

Hoisin Sauce (gluten free)

The secret to a good hoisin sauce is to use fermented black beans as one of the main flavor ingredients. Simply using peanut butter and other savory ingredients isn't going to cut it. While you can use a starch (potato starch, cornstarch, or wheat flour) to thicken it up, substituting the starch with peanut butter and using a tamari-based soy sauce makes this sauce gluten free. Also, you should probably use a smooth peanut butter, but alas, all I had on hand was chunky. I've read that if you have a peanut butter allergy, you can also substitute dried prunes (2 prunes per 1 tbsp peanut butter). If you do end up using peanut butter as a thickener, your sauce won't be pasty black at all. It'll be a brown-ish color, like peanut butter.

Hoisin sauce is a sweet and savory sauce, with neither element overpowering the other. And, it certainly does not use Chinese five spice powder. But, you could add it if you like that flavor in your sauce and the accompaniment is a meat-based dish.

At some point I reverse engineered Trader Joe's light soy sauce by experimenting with tamari soy sauce, rice vinegar and water until I got a sodium content that was close to Trader Joe's. You can also find that recipe here.

Makes: ~1/2 cup

Ingredients

1/4 c light soy sauce
2 tbsp organic peanut butter
1 tbsp raw honey
2 tsp rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1 garlic clove, minced
fresh ground black pepper, a few grinds
1 tbsp black fermented soybeans, rinsed and prepared
1 tsp chili sauce, or more to taste (e.g., Trader Joe's Sriracha or a sweet chili paste)

Directions

In a small bowl, soak fermented soybeans with hot water for about 5 minutes. Drain and then crush the beans with the tines of a fork. Voila. Now you have prepared fermented soy beans.

Whirl all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Put it into a lidded jar and refrigerate until ready to use.