kung pao mushroom soup

I have been having this urge to eat chinese food for sometime now, and on thursday evening I was like I want to have something chinese. Wanted to try my hand at making my favourite "Manchow Soup" something I have never made before, and i always have without fail when I go to any restaurant in India. Maybe the reason I have not made it is, I am afraid I will not be able to re-create the restaurant style flavor. Anyways this time I didnt have all the ingredients for manchow too, (manchow has many veggies) but I knew the taste I desired and after a  quick look in my kitchen I decided I had enough ingredients to get to that taste. I have named this soup "Kung Pao Mushroom Soup", purely Rhythm's recipe :) I call it Kung Pao as I used Kung Pao sauce I had at home. If you have a different stir fry sauce that you like or use, you may use that, as long as you like the sauce flavor you ll like the soup, as that is the flavor of the soup.

Ingredients: (serves 2)

1. 6 button mushrooms (chopped)
2. 1 medium sized onion (finely chopped)
3. 1 medium sized tomato (finely chopped)
4. 1/2 green chilly (slit in two pieces)
5. 3-4 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
6. 1/2 tbsp ginger paste
7. 3 tbsp Kung pao sauce
8. 1 tbsp sweet and sour sauce
9. 1 tsp soya sauce
10. 1/2 tbsp vinegar
11. 3 cups water (or vegetable broth)
12. pinch of aji na moto (chinese salt)
13. salt to taste
14. pepper to taste
15. 1/2 tsp sugar
16. 2 tbsp vegetable oil

Method

• Saute chilly, ginger paste, garlic and onion in oil. sprinkle some salt
• Once onion looks tender, add chopped mushrooms. sprinkle chinese salt
• add the Kung pao sauce, and sweet and sour sauce. 
• after 2-3 min add tomatoes.
• Once everything starts simmering together, blending together in a couple min add water/ broth.
• add soya sauce, vinegar, sugar and pepper
• as the soup boils it will gain flavor so be patient, let it boil for 10- 15 min, 
• if you feel some flavor is missing feel free to add more sauces or vinegar to suit your taste buds.

Tip:

Add pepper towards end or just before taking soup off the stove as if you add pepper as soup is still boiling it becomes very spicy (you guessed right, I did it and the soup did make me sweat a little)

if you like it thick (restaurant style) you may dissolve some corn starch in water and add the paste to the soup.

This is a super yummy soup very simple to make and with ingredients that you ll in your kitchen almost any day. Totally qualifies as indo-chinese soup :) I had it with spinach pesto sandwich, another easy to make dinner combination :) :)

Enjoy!