My Hot and Sour Soup

It seems that Caelyn has the same taste buds as me, right down to liking sour food like hot and sour soup except that for her one I omit the chilli sauce. She really liked this soup, I think wat she liked the most was the crunchiness of the black fungus.

Traditionally I think hot and sour soup uses shredded chicken meat, but since I didn't have any that day I used minced pork and it was pretty good. I also used pre-boiled bamboo shoots cut into match sticks which come vacuum packed in the supermarket. I find this one tastes better than the canned one that my Mum used to use in Australia - it doesn't have that 'smell'. In fact the pre-boiled ones is pretty much tasteless. I also used some concentrated chicken stock (makes life easier) and dried wood ear fungus cut into strips. If I had some tofu I'd used that too. Season the soup with sugar, soy sauce, chinese black vinegar, pepper and thicken with corn starch. Yum!

I hope this picture doesn't like gross....