Recipe: Chef Sarab's Hot And Sour Soup

Ending your day with soups and salads is always the dietary way to go. And probably you are looking for more and more recipes of soup to expand your menus.

Chef Sarab Kapoor has created a soup from multiple delicious vegetables, including mushrooms, carrots and bamboo shoots.

Her Hot And Sour Soup has tofu chunks too, and is seasoned with soy sauce, vinegar, chilly bean sauce and sesame oil to balance the flavours.

It is garnished with chopped spring onions.

The author of Cook Love Eat with Sarab, Chef Kapoor, who is self-trained, applies her culinary skills flamboyantly to everything from Kashmiri lamb curry to white chocolate cheesecake.

Hot And Sour Soup

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 6 mushrooms, preferably dried shitake mushrooms, which are soaked overnight, boiled, drained
• ¼ cup julienned carrots
• ¼-½ cup strips of bamboo shoots, 
• ½ inch-piece ginger, julienned
• 150 gm tofu, cubed
• 1 tsp oil
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp chilly bean sauce
• 1 tsp black vinegar, available online
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• ½ tsp black pepper powder
• 3 cups vegetable/chicken stock (please see the note below)
• 1 tbsp corn flour, dissolved in a little water
• 2-3 stalks spring onions, chopped
• Salt to taste, around 1 tsp

Method

• In a kadhai or wok, heat the oil over medium heat.
  Fry the ginger till fragrant.
  Add the carrots, bamboo shoots, mushrooms.
  Fry for a few minutes.
  Add the stock.
  Add the sauces, black/white vinegar, sesame oil, black pepper powder.
  Cook for a few minutes and add the tofu.
  Add the corn flour paste and simmer till the soup thickens.
  Add the salt.
  Take off heat and serve hot garnished with the chopped spring onion stalks.

Editor's Note: Liquid broth is available in some gourmet food stores. Or substitute the vegetable broth by combining 1½ vegetable soup cube or 1½ vegetable broth/bouillon cube or 1½ tsp vegetable broth/bouillon powder with 3 cups boiling water.

Or make chicken broth by combining 1½ chicken soup cube or 1½ chicken broth/bouillon cube or 1½ tsp chicken broth/bouillon powder with 3 cups boiling water.

Or make vegetable broth from scratch by boiling 4-5 cups water with 1-2 large roughly chopped carrots, 3 stalks roughly chopped celery with leaves, 2 medium onions chopped in chunks, 5-6 whole black peppercorns, 2 tsp salt, 4 tbsp chopped parsley with stems, 2 laung or cloves, 5 pods garlic, 2 tej patta or bay leaves till vegetables are tender and the water is steeped with the flavour of the vegetables and spices.
Strain and use 3 cups for the recipe.

Meat lovers might like to add 1 whole chicken along with the vegetables and spices while making this broth from scratch.

Chef Sarab Kapoor lives in Singapore and is a television personality, cookbook author and culinary consultant.

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