Hot and sour soup
It occurred to me the other afternoon when I was planning my evening meal that I hadn’t had a bowl of my hot and sour soup for some time.
Determined to right this terrible wrong, I quickly hopped on to my trusty cycle, and pedaled off into town.
My destination was Möllevångstorg, a square in the city centre that has next to or somewhere near it a store catering to (**badoom tish**) just about every type of national or regional cuisine you could shake a wooden spoon at.
After visiting the 3 Asian/Chinese/Thai/Far-East stores I had in mind, I had the Tianjin preserved vegetable, Sichaun pepper, and 5 spice powder I was after.
None of them, however, had the “facing heaven” dried chilli peppers I needed, but playing a hunch I cycled on a bit further to “Indo-Pak”, another of my favourite stores, who, as the name suggests, specialise in Indian / Pakistani produce, but also cater to a lesser extent to the wider Asian and even African markets.
As luck would have it, they did indeed have some dried chillies in stock that even if they were not true “facing heaven” chillies, were a very close relative to them.
While I was there, I also took the opportunity to stock up on some Indian bits and pieces that I needed, such as dried fenugreek leaves, as I planned to cook up a batch of curry sauce later on in the week.
The soup I ultimately made had closed cap mushrooms, sliced white cabbage, and broccoli as it’s principle ingredients, and very nice it was, too.
I enjoyed my soup by candlelight* with a pot of green tea, Chinese folk music playing in the background, and the smell of lavender incense filling the room. Perfect.
Notes
Just in case you missed it earlier, my recipe for hot and sour soup can be found here.
*Hence the less than brilliant photograph above. My camera is not exactly brilliant, and I do not count anything even vaguely approaching competence as a photographer amongst my skill-set.
PALEOVIRTUS 