Pan Xi Mushroom Soup

Soups and Congees

Pan Xi Mushroom Soup
Ingredients:
1½ teaspoons dried broken dong gu mushroom pieces, soaked until soft in one cup warm water, drain and save it
½ teaspoon fresh ginger
1 scallion, coarsely chopped
1 Tablespoon rendered chicken fat
½ pound bok cai hearts
½ teaspoon salt
6 cups superior chicken stock
2 Tablespoons Shao Xing rice wine
dash ground white pepper
1 teaspoon sesame oil
½ Tablespoon cornstarch mixed with a little stock
1 teaspoon rendered chicken fat
½ teaspoon crab roe

This recipe was told to a small group at the Pan Xi
restaurant; what follows are notes taken then, the
ingredient list handed out.

Preparation:
1. Drain mushrooms of course, mix them with chopped fresh ginger and scallions, salt, and granulated sugar, and some hot superior soup, reserved mushroom water, the Shao Xing rice wine, pepper, sesame oil, a cornstarch mixture, and the chicken fat, and a little crab roe.
2. Add the ground fermented pastes, soy beans and curd, and other items (written in Chinese), and soft black soybeans.

Then the leader did play a tape about a Mr. Gobtz, from a ‘State of the Industry’ talk at a 2000 Soyfoods Conference; but I do not know why. It began that soy beans grow in a wide range of soils and climates, are versatile, and can be made into human, animal, or industrial materials. It went on saying China uses fifty-eight percent of those grown for food, South Korea twenty-three percent, Japan seventeen percent, and the US only one percent; but they export the rest and mostly to China. Regular soy sauce and most soy pastes have about fourteen percent less sodium than most thin soy sauces. Most doufu has different amounts of calcium when made with calcium sulfate or calcium chloride or other coagulants; and soy foods do slow absorption of blood glucose. Attendees need to know that pressed doufu cakes can be called tofu, can be smoked, and if you buy or freeze yours, they are known is tung tofu, and when fermented called fuyu. Then after the tape, he said: Thank you for coming, and enjoy the dinner that follows.

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