Hot and Sour soup recipe 1

I like soups, or have I already mention that. When I was working in Guernsey in 2010 I made my first video of me cooking, I was bored! I stuck it on YouTube and never looked back. Since then I've done a lot more blogging, tweeting, Facebook messaging and writing about my food experiences. For a short time I had a blog where I wrote about all the places I ate, but I realised I liked cooking a lot more than I enjoyed eating at a lot of places.

I digress, Hot and sour soup was a dish I ate many years ago, and decided to investigate more, and just a quick search on you tube showed a lot of results and different recipes. After a bit of experimenting I made a short film on how to make a quick Hot and Sour soup, and it takes less than ten minutes. I used a little bit of Ken Hom's and Ching He Huang recipes. both on their own taste good, but I prefer mine - well I would say that wouldn't I.

 

ingredients

1. 500 ml of good chicken stock, use a decent chickens stock cube if you have no save chiken stock.
   
2. Tom Yam Paste, you can get this in many Asian supermarkets, but now much easier to find in most local markets too.
3. small red chilli, depending on how hot you like it
4. bamboo shoots, ads a bit of bite
5. Bean sprouts
6. Lemon grass, essential,in most Asin cooking
7. some cooked chiken and pork pieces
8. Kaffir Lime leaves, frozen or dried if you have them
9. juice of two limes
10. 2 tbs of fish sauce
11. 2 tbs rice vinegar ( clear)
12. mushrooms
13. carrots for crunch
14. egg, whisked
15. corn four, or rice flour

This is just a simple process of brining the stock to boil then adding most of the ingredients. near the end of the cooking process, about 10 minutes, add the cornflour (or rice flour mixed with a little cold water), this will thicken the soup a little. About a heaped teaspoon of cornflour or rice flour should do, it's not meant to be a thick soup.

 

One trick is mixing the egg with a pinch of salt and a little seame seed. oil, just a dash, mix it with a fork. Take the soup off the heat and slowly dribble in the egg, moving the egg through the soup with a fork to make small strands..

 

The great thing about this soup is that get the basic of the stock, Tom yam paste, fish sauce and rice vinegar right, then play with the rest.