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Hot and sour soup by request
Many years ago, our gold standard for all things Chinese and exquisitely edible was the offerings at Little Shanghai on Broadway in Denver. (And the last time I ate there, after our boy Ken and his Melissa's wedding, the bar was still set high.)

That was one of the things I tragically missed when I moved to Lamar in 1980. We were very very happy the day we acquired the Little Shanghai recipe for Hot and Sour Soup, I think via the Denver Junior League cookbook. BUT down here in Lamar it was pretty much impossible to acquire some of the traditional ingredients, like wood ears. So I experimented around and found a way to make a darned good version out of more easily obtained ingredients. Feel free to adapt it to YOUR area, corner of the space-time continuum and/or culture.



You will need cooked pork slivers, and this takes the longest, so slice up your pork into long but bite-sized strips and start them to frying.

Pour 1 1/2 quarts of chicken broth into a nice big soup pot and start it heating. Slice up tofu in rectangles similar to the size of the pork bits and drop them in. Have the bamboo shoots join them for company, and when the pork is cooked through, add that as well.

The seasoning to make the soup hot and sour and delicious includes sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce and hot chili oil. Rice vinegar is the best. You should add at least a cup of this, and up to 1/2 cup of soy sauce. For the oils, about a tablespoon of sesame and maybe half a teaspoon of the hot oil. (Have you guessed yet that I am not a measuring type of cook?) Just keep tasting the broth until it seems right to you. I actually like MORE of the vinegar and soy sauce than I suggest above, but I usually just make a moderate dish and add extra stuff as needed to my own bowl later. Keep heating the broth.

Slice up the mushrooms, green onions and cucumbers and set aside. It is always pleasant to have help on this step if there is room in the kitchen.

Get two separate cereal size bowls. In one, mix about 3 tablespoons of cornstarch into enough cold water to make a slurry. In the other, whip up your 3 eggs until they are well mixed.

When the broth boils, stir in your cornstarch. Stir as you pour and keep stirring until it is thoroughly mixed so you don't get lumps. Turn down the heat to medium. It will take about 2 minutes for the cornstarch to do its thing and give the soup its characteristic creamy consistency. While you are waiting for this to happen, you can whip in the eggs. Pour in a thin stream and stir briskly as you do it. This gives you those little wispy clouds of egg throughout.

After the two minutes are up, turn off the heat. Now you stir in your green onions, mushrooms, cucumbers and shrimp. These will cook just enough from the heat of the boiling soup as the whole yummy mass sits for five minutes.

This is an excellent meal anytime you feel a cold coming on, especially with a strong extra dose of the hot chili oil.

Shopping list for serving four to satiety and a LOT of leftovers:

1 pound lean pork
1 1/2 qt chicken broth
1 package tofu (10-12 oz)
1 small can bamboo shoots
1 pound (approx) mushrooms
6-8 green onions
1 cucumber
Sesame oil
Hot chili oil
Rice vinegar
Soy sauce
Cornstarch
3 eggs
8-12 oz shrimp