For the longest time I obsessed over hot and sour soup--in fact it's my one measuring stick that I always use to decide whether i think a Chinese restaurant is worth going back to or not. Every recipe I tried was either so exotic and weird or so americanized and generic that it was worthless. I hate recipes that call for an ingredient like vinegar, for instance without bothering to say what kind. We all know that Balsamic tastes considerably different than rice wine so it would only make sense to me that the author might want to indicate WHAT KIND of vinegar to use!
The recipe I now use is from a back issue of "Cook's Illustrated" where they went to great effort to test different kinds of pepper, and vinegar, stock, etc. to come up with the perfect home version of the soup and I have to say it's some of the best I've had--very close to the Restaurant's version, although I like it a little better because I like the soup a little more on the sour side and so I adjust the amount of vinegar used (turns out it's a mix of balsamic and red wine vinegars).
I'm not sure if I can post it here but if you google it it shouldn't be hard to find--they probably have it on their website.
good ruck!  |