Simple Chinese style soups

The great thing about Chinese Soup is that they're fast. Rather than cooking for hours, things often cook for just 15-20 minutes. They're easy to put together with whatever you have on hand that you feel like eating together.

There was an episode of MasterChef where Gordon Ramsay talks to one of the contestants about this wonderful broth she's created. He says you did in 45 minutes what would take a normal cook hours. Well, she did it faster than that and Gordon just showed he didn't know what goes on in a Chinese stock or soup, specifically a red cooking broth. And he got worse with it later on when he was critiquing the final dish. 

Soups come down to stock. Yes it's best to make your own. Absolutely. In the real world, most of us don't. A good low sodium base is my recommendation and I've been using Better Than Boullioun Organic Low Sodium Chicken Base for a while now.  But Chinese stock has a somewhat different flavor profile so I tweak it with some extra things, usually garlic, ginger and a little star anise. By using the tea infuser, I can easily remove these things when I need to while simultaneously working on the soup itself. In this case, simmering the dried chinese mushrooms.

I've got a quart and a half of water, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the chicken base, the loaded infuser and the mushrooms I'll be using in the soup. 

Bring that to a simmer and let it go for about 15 minutes. 

Meanwhile, prepare some of the other ingredients.

Bamboo shoots are delicious and fun. I prefer to buy a vacuum pack over the canned. They taste better.  Slicing them yourself lets you stock one type of bamboo and slice or shred yourself as you need for the dish at hand.

Section to length. I'm cutting them about 1 1/4 inches long.

Slice thinly into planks, then across the stacked planks into a julienne or shred as wide as it is thick. 

Green onions chopped on the diagonal give flavor and color to the dish. Se aside and add at the end for best flavor, color and texture.

Remove the mushrooms and the infuser if the stock has the scent and flavor you want. Or leave it in if you want more intensity. Watch it though so the anise flavor doesn't become too dominant.  Squeeze out excess liquid over a bowl. Let the liquid settle. Return the top part of the liquid to the soup, but stop pouring before any of the grit that settled out can enter the soup.

Meanwhile, cut off the stems and julienne the mushrooms.

Return the mushrooms to the pot along with the bamboo.

Pork is often used for meat, flavor and texture. Here I'm using a few slices cut from a "sirloin tip roast". It's an inexpensive lean muscle and quite versatile.

Slice it like you did the bamboo and mushrooms, into thin strips. 

Add it to the pot.

Season the soup with about 3 tablespoons of light soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of Shao Hsing wine, 2 tablespoons black vinegar and some ground black pepper to taste. You might recognize this as weak version of Hot and Sour Soup and you'd be right. But my kids don't like all that heat, nor the sour bite. At least not yet. So this lets me gradually work them up to it. And it's still pretty tasty. 

Let this simmer for about 5 minutes until the meat is done, then bring to a boil. You can thicken it with a cornstarch slurry if you like at this point.. Mix an equal amount of cornstarch and water, 2 - 3 tablespoons of each is about right. Stir into the hot soup. It will thicken just as it returns to the boil.  

Quickly beat an egg. There are many ways to add the egg to form the egg drop ribbons or flowers. The method I've had work best is to stir the soup and pour in a thin stream. While stirring, pour the beaten egg in a slow thin stream from about 18 inches above the pot. Add a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, the chopped green onion, stir and serve.