Here is another soup that I discovered I love drinking during a trip to China for a holiday.  It is Hot and Sour Soup.  This is how Chef Lau, who used to run a successful Chinese restaurant in New York made it.

Chef Lau used 21 ingredients to cook his Hot and Sour Soup.  If you are new to Chinese cooking, preparing so many ingredients for a soup can be intimidating.  However, if you break down the steps to parepare and cook it, you will realise that it is not such an arduous task after all.

I am happy to discover that Lotus, where I often buy my groceries from, do supply mix mushrooms.  This pack weighs 400g.

You do not have to use all the types of mushroom mentioned in Chef Lau's recipe.   Here is another version from Dana with no mushrooms.  Her recipe included two secret ingredients that her uncle used in his Chinese restaurant.  They are dried mandarin peel and lily flower.

Check out this article if you do not have Sriracha Hot Sauce in your pantry:

Best Sriracha Substitute: 10 Alternatives Ranked

Pickled Vegetables

Have you tried the acar served with Nasi Lemak at Madam Kwan's.  I like it so much that I have an urge to make my own.

I found this video instruction from The Meatmen Channel.

These are the ingredients required to make it:

2 cucumbers
2 carrots
1/2 chinese cabbage
1/2 cauliflower
5 Long Beans
4 chillies
1L water
650ml white vinegar
10 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp salt
120g shallots
4 cloves garlic
15g tumeric
4 candlenuts
1 stalk lemongrass
100g fresh chillies
50g soaked dried chillies
20g belacan
4 tbsp oil
250g ground peaunts
50g fried shallots
40g toasted white sesame seeds

After checking out the amount of ingredients I will have to prepare to make it, I have decided to go for the simpler Japanese version.  I found the recipes at Japanese Cooking Channel. 

These are recipes I picked out from the video that do not require mirin to make since I do not stock it in my pantry:

The good news is that I can replace mirin with rice vinegar on a 1:1 ratio as substitute.  According to All Recipes, since mirin is much sweeter than rice vinegar, I will have to add about a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon of rice vinegar. 

Here is another recipe I found on Daily Cooking Quest that I would like to try making:

I am glad to read from a comment posted by Anita, the cook, that though kombu will give the pickle a bit of umami, it will still be delicious without it.