le blog de tranny

As I get older, my eyes get worse. I squint at menus painted above the cashiers at Mexican restaurants. I actually feel *hung over* the morning after a big night of drinking. I’m not as sharp as I used to be. And you know what else? I’ve somehow managed to dull my palate. Me, the girl who used to have no tolerance for spicy foods as a child, now piles Tapatio on top of her eggs and burritos. At sushi restaurants, I add so much wasabi to my soy sauce that it turns into a paste and my nose explodes. I crave savory, spicy soups like tom yum and bun rieu (and kimchi ramyun hehe) that burn as they go down, all the way to my esophagus, but with a pleasurable kind of pain that immediately fuels the impulse to slurp down another spoonful. Nowadays, when I’m sitting in bed watching Skins with Paul, I rarely order anything other than Thai food for delivery. It’s the tom yum goong for sure. That spicy, savory, sour broth is irresistible to my asian palate. It’s addicting.

Well one day I was like, “What the hell? Why don’t I ever attempt to satiate my craving for hot, salty, sour liquids with something homemade?” Surely it’s not difficult to craft a soup with these very qualities. Well actually, it kind of is if you are living in Lower Haight. I found myself wanting to bus over to Duc Loi, the closest bonafide asian supermarket I know, where I could find the ingredients that are key to such a soup. Ingredients like shrimp paste, or really anything to make a shrimp or crab-based broth. Luckily the Korean mini mart on Divis and Page had shrimp bouillon; if it didn’t I simply would not have been able to make a soup bearing the flavors I so desperately craved. I mean, Falletti doesn’t offer any means of making a pork or shrimp stock, short of making it from scratch of course. They also had a disappointing selection of spicy flavorings for me to put in my soup. I ended up opting for the chili garlic sauce that I had leftover in my fridge. It looks like this.

I feel like it’s pretty standard though in most grocery stores, in spite of the fact that it’s a Viet condiment.

I had bun rieu on my mind so I opted for the skinny rice stick noodles, fried up some tofu, added some fresh tomatoes and tomato paste to the shrimp stock, and threw in some canned crab. I also added some kale and pea shoots for something green. I didn’t have kefir lime leaves or lemon grass, so regular old limes had to do. I threw in some basil at the end for an aromatic effect.

So anyway, I’d call this a mix between tom yum and bun rieu, using (mostly) whitey ingredients.

Hot, Sour, Savory Soup with Fried Tofu, Crab & Kale
- Fry up some tofu. Pat extra firm tofu dry with paper towels and then fry, in cubes, in canola oil until brown and crispy on both sides. Season with salt.
- Make shrimp stock. (For me, this entailed dissolving 2 shrimp bouillon cubes in 6 cups of boiling water.)
- As the soup is simmering, add the zest of 1 lime and the juice of 2 limes.
- Add 3 heaping tbsp of chili garlic sauce.
- Cut 2-3 tomatoes into wedges and throw them in the soup.
- De-stem and chop some dino kale and throw it in the soup.
- Add 1 tbsp of tomato paste.
- As the soup is simmering and after you’ve added these things, taste it for seasoning. Adjust as necessary.
- Then add two cans of crab and the rice sticks and allow to simmer for a few minutes until the noodles are soft. Turn off the heat.
- Stir in chiffonade basil, pea shoots, the fried tofu and some chopped scallions. Serve immediately topped with more basil.

We had leftovers for days, it was delicious and sinus-cleansing, and it really didn’t take long to make at all. Next time I’ll make an asian soup for real, but this one suited me just fine.