After a bout of reminiscing about the homeland tonight, I decided to make a soup I recently learned from my mom. Here’s the recipe, along with a recipe for an accoutrement, garlic cucumber salad, and an important condiment, chili oil.

This recipe, which makes roughly 2 servings, is a variation on the classic Chinese egg drop soup. Adding tomatoes, black rice vinegar, and chili oil augments the savory, light taste with a tangy spicy kick, a flavor profile typical in Northern Chinese cooking.

The key to this recipe is the combination of traditional Chinese ingredients, so it’s to your benefit to get ahold of as many of these as you can. In a pinch, though, it’s possible to do this soup with a few Western substitutions. Some ingredients are more crucial than others, and I’ll point out the essential ones below.

Chili Oil

This is an essential ingredient in a lot of Northern Chinese dishes, and is easy enough to approximate that you should never go without it. To make a batch that will last many servings, heat a 3-4 tablespoons of vegetable oil (canola, corn, or peanut) in a pan on high heat until it starts rippling and smoking a bit*. Then, pour the oil over a tablespoon of ground cayenne pepper in a heat-proof container–a ceramic bowl suffices, but a jar with a lid will store indefinitely. Let the oil cool, and you’re good to go.

The chili powder will settle to the bottom of the container, and you can serve the oil on top as a spicy condiment in stir-fries, soups, and other Asian dishes. You can also stir up the mixture before serving for an added kick and paste-like texture.

It might take more than one try to get the oil to the right temperature. You can tell when you’ve made a perfect chili oil when you smell a meaty, toasty-but-not-burned chili aroma the instant the oil hits the cayenne powder–it’s actually pretty amazing, and not at all what you expect a spicy sauce to smell like.

The flavor of the oil depends on the type and quantity of chili used–this can be made with chili flakes, which gives a slightly different texture and a little less kick than cayenne powder due to the decreased surface area. The authentic version, which boasts the most flavor, is made with coarsely ground chilies from China (see rambling account in previous post), but in most cases store-bought chilies are good enough.

Egg Drop Soup With Tomatoes

To make the actual soup, start by boiling half a medium-sized pot of lightly salted water. Drop in 2 large tomatoes when the water reaches boiling, and turn off the heat (on an electric stove, take the pot off the heat). Leave for 5 minutes, take out the tomatoes, and peel off the skin (this should be easy after the blanching). Cut into small wedges.

Over medium-high heat, add 2 tbsp of vegetable oil and 1 tsp of sesame oil to the same pot (after dumping out all the water), and drop in the tomato wedges when oil is hot. Stir and cook until tomatoes start to wither into a soupy mess, and pour in 2-3 cups water and reduce to low heat. Throw in a handful or two of 1/2-inch cubed tofu (firm or extra firm) and cook for 15-20 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste, and drizzle in some black rice vinegar to taste.

When the tofu is tender and the soup has taken on a uniform light-red color from the tomatoes, do the egg drop. This is a fun procedure where you crack an egg, slowly let the contents ooze out of the shell into the pot of hot soup with one hand, while stirring the soup with the other hand. The result should be wispy tendrils of egg in your soup and an added savory boost to the flavor. Practice a little to see what consistency of egg you can achieve–traditionally, you should drop the egg in very gradually while stirring quickly in a circular motion, but even if you just drop an entire egg in with minimal stirring, you’ll end up with a poached egg, which is delicious in its own right.

At the end, take the soup off the heat and drop in a handful of chopped scallions. Mix them in, and ladle into bowls. Drizzle on some chili oil before eating (but go easy–if you made it right, the stuff is strong!)

Note on ingredients: The variations on this recipe, as with any traditional dish, are practically endless. You can throw in some dried shrimp bits, obtainable from an Asian grocer, for added zest. Add a pinch of MSG for even more zest (Asian circulatory systems seem to handle this better than Western ones–keep this in mind if you’re entertaining). Substitute a can of tomatoes for a more robust soup, but stick with fresh tomatoes for a lighter, more summery taste. Sesame oil is an important flavoring, but you can omit it if you don’t have any. The only ingredients I don’t recommend messing with are the black rice vinegar and chili oil, but since the vinegar might be hard to come by, you can substitute with balsamic vinegar. Be prepared for a much wimpier soup, though.

Cucumber Garlic Salad

Another classic Shaanxi dish is a simple salad made of cucumber and garlic. The key here, as in all Northern Chinese food, is in the vinegar (black rice, see discussion in previous post), chili oil, and garlic. The salad is also surprisingly sensitive to how you chop the cucumber–ideally you want very thin strips, almost a julienne, to soak up the flavors in the dressing.

Start by pseudo-julienning some cucumber (as seen in the picture). Put into a bowl, and top with finely chopped garlic (2 medium cloves for each cucumber), salt, sesame seeds, black rice vinegar (or balsamic–again, only if you have to), and chili oil. Toss well, and let sit in fridge for 10-15 minutes to chill and incorporate flavors.

Serve straight, or mix in some cold, cooked Soba noodles or mung bean sprouts.