Recipe: Vegan Hot and Sour Soup
Every Asian cuisine has their version of hot and sour soup. But depending on the country of origin, the hot and sour will be a combination of different ingredients. With the Chinese version, ‘hot’ comes from white pepper and ‘sour’ comes from black vinegar. Sour-hot or 酸辣 is one of my favourite Chinese flavour pairings. In a recent Taste Of The Past podcast interview with Brian R. Dott, author of ‘The Chile Pepper In China’, he pointed out that until chillies arrived in China the word 辣 (hot/spicy) tended to be used to describe pungency e.g. from pepper and ginger.
I combined recipes from my friends Omnivore’s Cookbook and Red House Spice, then veganised them by omitting egg and smashing up soft tofu in the soup instead to get that ‘egg drop’ effect. Don’t skip the cornflour slurry either; that’s how you get that glossy semi-gloopy texture.
Let me know if you try this recipe and share your results on Instagram with #CelestialPeach.
Ingredients (serves 4)
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 tsp mince ginger
2 medium carrots, julienned
~6 dried shiitake mushroom, soaked and finely sliced
A few wood ear mushrooms (5g dried weight), soaked and julienned
800 ml hot water
3 tbsp corn starch, plus 3 tbsp water
100 g soft tofu,
2 tsp light soy sauce
1 pinch salt
1 pinch sugar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp black rice vinegar
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
Instructions
Heat up the oil in a large wok or saucepan with deep sides. Stir in the ginger.
Add carrot, shiitake mushroom and wood ear and fry for a few minutes.
Pour in hot water. Bring to a simmer and boil for 2 minutes, covered with a lid. Make a slurry from the corn starch and water mixture, and add to the pot in a few batches while stirring.
Add the tofu, and smash it so it disintegrates in the soup.
Turn off the heat. Add soy sauce, salt, sugar and sesame oil. Right before serving, add black rice vinegar and white pepper (see note 1). Garnish with coriander or the green parts of a spring onion.
