Hot and Sour Soup

I learned to love hot and sour soup in a little restaurant in southeast Missouri. Probably not the mecca of Asian cooking, but this place was where I was introduced to somewhat authentic Chinese cuisine.  And it's been the gold standard for me ever since.  I can't say this soup was good as what I remember from all those years ago, but it definitely cured my craving, using ingredients I could find in any grocery store.

This took me back to getting that first whiff of Mr. Kim's soup and knowing pretty soon my eyes would be watering and my nose would be running.  That's a sign of a good soup right there.  I found this recipe at a blog called Cookin' With Cyndi and changed it up quite a bit to suit what I had on hand.  If you need your sinuses cleaned out, whip some up and start sniffing!

8 oz. fresh mushrooms, chopped (I used baby bellas)

3/4 cup cabbage, thinly sliced

32 oz. chicken or vegetable broth

2 1/4 cup water, divided

1 tbsp fresh grated ginger

1 tsp minced garlic

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp ground white pepper

1/4 cup rice vinegar

sriracha sauce or chili oil to taste 

1 tbsp soy sauce

fresh ground black pepper

2 1/2 tbsp cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup chopped green onion

1 tsp sesame oil

Combine broth and 2 cups of water, ginger, garlic and red pepper flakes and bring to a boil.  Add mushrooms and cabbage and simmer for about 5 minutes.  Add vinegar, soy sauce, white and black pepper, and sriracha.  Simmer about 5 more minutes.

Combine remaining 1/4 cup water with cornstarch and stir into broth mixture.  Bring to a boil.  Simmer 3 more minutes.  Slowly pour in eggs in a steady stream while stirring constantly.  Remove from heat.  Stir in onions and sesame oil.  

*this is my version, you can click the link above to get the original at Cyndi's website

Served with an unphotogenic brown fried rice, it was a pretty nice meal.  To me anyway, not sure the family was as into it as I was.

So, is anyone out there doing the Google+ thing?  I'm there but it's kinda lonely.  

Asian-Palooza

I know, dumb post title. Just humor me.

Once again I have to put forth the disclaimer that I don't claim to know jack about authenticity of any type of Asian cooking. But I had seen a few recipes around I'd been wanting to try, so here goes! And I have to say that all three of these dishes ranked pretty high on the "easy to prepare" scale.

First up is this Hot and Sour Noodle Salad I saw at Living in the Kitchen with Puppies.

The boy and I really enjoyed it. I was surprised at how much of this he ate considering it's got a bit of spiciness going on. I made mine with regular thin spaghetti and thought it turned out just great. We had ours warm, but I'm sure it will be great cold tomorrow.

I think the fact that the black sesame seeds look like little bugs sitting up there just adds to its charm.

I've always been a fan of the crab rangoon. Just would like it so much more without the crab!

Here they are made to order for people like me.

The filling is nothing more than cream cheese mixed with some crushed garlic.

The recipe is at RecipeZaar.

I'm not sure why this next picture turned out so orange-y. This is even after it was auto-fixed. Oh well.

I saw this Crunchy Romaine Toss at All Recipes.

It's got crunched up ramen noodles in it that you brown in butter with some walnuts...how fun is that!

I personally liked this salad. It actually made me want to eat my broccoli. No one else in the family was too thrilled about it though.

I used one of those bags of chopped romaine and that was just the right size with a small head of broccoli.