Chinese New Year, Day 6: Have Some Sour
Have you had too much fish and meat over Chinese New Year? If you are already unsure what to eat next, why not try Yiyi Farm’s versatile red sour soup. It can poach fish, blanch beef, cook noodles, stir-fry vegetables, or even toss a cold salad, lifting the flavour and whetting the appetite. If you want a livelier meal, it can also become the centrepiece of the table — make a pot of sour soup hotpot. If the New Year flavours are beginning to cloy, let this burst of sour aroma awaken your appetite once more!
Ingredients:
red sour soup, tomato, soya bean sprouts, Chinese chives, celery, lard, spring onion, ginger, garlic, mùjiāngzi, sweet fermented rice, salt
Method:
1. Use lard to stir-fry the ginger and garlic until fragrant.
2. Add the red sour soup base, spring onion sections, mùjiāngzi, sweet fermented rice, and fresh tomato.
3. Add water and bring to the boil, then add soya bean sprouts, Chinese chives, and celery to form the base.
4. Season with salt. After that, you can cook various meat or vegetable ingredients, or staple foods.
Note:
It is a misconception that sour soup can simply be mixed with water; it still needs a brief stir-fry. The vegetables in the ingredient list are all necessary to lift the flavour, while the sweet fermented rice is optional.
How else can sour soup be eaten? Click 👉🏻In midsummer, eat more vegetarian sour soup to find out more. For purchases, follow @Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market
It’s time to eat! For the New Year, enjoy some good flavours with a known origin.
Foodthink, in collaboration with the farm friends of Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, has served up a “Chinese New Year recipe collection” using their own ingredients.
In this recipe collection, no recipes are measured to the gram or timed to the minute, and there are no showy, complicated methods.
What there is instead is certainty and confidence in the ingredients, and plain, family-like reminders.
Carefully chosen ingredients do not require much head-scratching; a neat, easy method, and just the right temperature, are enough.
In this recipe collection, behind every dish stands a real person —
the farm friends know exactly what is good about their ingredients, and they know how to prepare them in a way that does justice to that goodness.
When a block of tofu can give its name, a chicken can recount its history, and a radish dares to tell you not to peel it — good flavour comes naturally.
From the second to the seventh day of the Chinese New Year, six farm friends’ New Year dishes, one a day.
Chinese New Year, Day 2: fragrant steamed free-range pig
Chinese New Year, Day 3: super stir-fried chicken
Chinese New Year, Day 4: sauce-braised tofu
Chinese New Year, Day 5: radish sashimi
Grow with care, prepare with ease, and eat with confidence.
