The thing I probably miss the most about the Inn Bin being out of business: their hot and sour soup. And yesterday, after listening to everyone in my immediate vicinity at the office coughing and sniffling, I decided to take an aggressive stand against catching whatever it is they have. So I tried to recreate the Inn Bin's hot and sour soup at home (adapting a recipe from Gourmet January 2005). Here is what I came up with:
2 boneless extra lean pork ribs (sliced into matchstick size pieces)
some low sodium soy sauce
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
half a small head green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 15-ounce can straw mushrooms, drained and rinsed
3+ tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 32-ounce box low sodium chicken stock
1/2 block Mori-Nu lite firm tofu, cut into slivers
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons sesame oil
fresh ground white pepper
scallions
1. Slice pork and toss with a little soy sauce to marinate while you're chopping up everything else.
2. Heat vegetable oil in pan until hot, throw in pork to brown. Grind some white pepper into the pan too.
3. Add onion and cook until it softens. Add more white pepper.
4. Add cabbage and cook until it begins to show signs of wilting. Add more white pepper.
5. Add straw mushrooms and more white pepper.
6. Add stock, bring to a boil.
7. Combine vinegars, sugar and salt together and stir the mixture into the pot. Bring to a boil.
8. Add a little water to the cornstarch and whisk the mixture into the pot. Bring to a boil to thicken, then reduce to a simmer.
9. Add slivered tofu to soup.
10. Combine eggs and sesame oil, whisk into hot soup.
11. Check soup for salt, vinegar and white pepper balance. Adjust to taste.
12. Garnish each bowl with a splash of sesame oil and sliced scallions.
The biggest adaptations here were the addition of onion and cabbage. The Inn Bin hot and sour soup had slivers of bamboo shoots, which I always thought of as not having much flavor, but being capable of retaining a ton of heat, so I'd often burn my tongue on those while the rest of the soup was some pleasantly sane temperature for eating. So I swapped bamboo shoots for cabbage and onion (which both go so well with pork in any cuisine). It's not a dead ringer for the Inn Bin's, but it's closer than I've had at any other restaurant since then, so I think it's a keeper.
