While this recipe might not seem very Chinesey, it is certainly common amongst the rotation of daily soups in a Chinese family. It's so simple, yet satisfying and cleansing.
Normally, there's a piece of lean pork a bit smaller than the size of a fist added for umami, but I'm going to use kombu instead. If you do use lean pork, you have to first parboil the pork and wash the scum off from it and from the pot. While cooking, you also need to skim the scum off the surface. If you use kombu, you can skip all these steps.
Ingredients
- 4 small potatoes
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- 1 stalk of celery
- 1 tomato
- 3 pieces of kombu
- 3 slices of ginger
- 1 tsp salt
- pepper
Method
- Remove the stem from the tomato and cut out the belly button.
- Cut the tomato into 8 pieces the way you would cut a cake into 8 pieces with only 3 cuts. (Answer: 2 vertical cuts at 90 degrees from each other, then 1 horizontal cut through the middle.)
- Cut the rest of the vegetables into large-ish bite size pieces using fewer puzzles.
- Put everything except the tomatoes into a pot.
- Fill the pot with water enough to just cover the vegetables. We want the flavour dense, and the vegetables will shrink, plus the tomatoes will add a lot of water later.
- Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 30 minutes.
- Add the tomatoes, give everything a stir, and simmer covered for another 20 minutes.
- Finally, salt to taste.
Sometimes, I find that there is so much flavour no salt is needed at all. And when it does, even a tiny amount like 1 tsp will do. Also, this soup goes especially well with some cracked black pepper when serving.
I love these "set and forget" recipes. Just don't forget it for too long...
