My reason for including this recipe in the book is that apart from the fact that it’s the first dish I ever ate at a Chinese restaurant – in Peterborough, in 1964 as it happens – it’s also a world classic but is so often ruined by tasteless crab and gloopy cornflour.
I thought it would be interesting to restore the dish to its simplicity and reliance on good fresh ingredients. Paradoxically, when you first taste it you’ll probably find it a bit under-flavoured, but I hope its subtlety will appeal to you. The one ingredient missing is MSG. It’s now understood that MSG is not an instigator of headaches, trembling, sweating and whatever else has been ascribed to it. It’s about as dangerous as salt and is mostly produced by bacterial fermentation like vinegar. I’ve never owned up to having a tub of Aromat in my store cupboard, but I’ve always had one and can now admit to sprinkling it on my crab and sweetcorn soup. The choice is yours.
SERVES: 4
INGREDIENTS
Stock:
- 1.2 litres good chicken stock
- 6 thin slices of root ginger
- 3 bunches of spring onions, roughly chopped
- ½ tsp whole white peppercorns
Soup:
- 2 fresh sweetcorn cobs
- 225g fresh white crab meat
- 5 tsp cornflour
- 1 tsp very finely chopped root ginger
- 2 spring onions, cut into 2.5cm pieces and finely shredded lengthways
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- 1 egg white, lightly beaten
- Salt and black pepper
METHOD
-
Put the chicken stock in a pan with the ginger, spring onions and peppercorns. Bring to the boil and cook for 20 minutes for the flavours to infuse, then strain.
-
Meanwhile, stand the sweetcorn cobs up on a board and slice off the kernels with a large sharp knife. Add the sweetcorn to the stock and simmer for 5 minutes.
-
Check over the crab meat for any little pieces of shell, keeping the meat in the largest pieces possible.
-
Mix the cornflour to a smooth paste with a little cold water, stir it into the soup and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the crab meat, ginger, spring onions, soy sauce and the rice wine or sherry, then season with salt and some pepper to taste. Simmer for 1 minute.
-
Now give the soup a good stir, remove the spoon and slowly trickle in the beaten egg white so that it forms long, thin strands in the soup. Simmer for about 30 seconds and then serve at once.
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