Beaten egg soup

4 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
5 cups Dashi; (or light chicken or beef stock)
1 teaspoon Salt
½ teaspoon Light soy sauce
Splash sake'
2 teaspoons Cornstarch mixed w/ 2 T. water
2 larges Eggs; beaten
½ teaspoon Fresh ginger juice *OR*
Finely chopped lemon rind or green onion
4 Stalks trefoil (mitsuba) *OR SUBSTITUTE following; cut into 1\" lengths
1 Sprig either watercress or parboiled fresh; spinach

Directions

To assemble and serve: Bring the dashi just to a boil over high heat, then simmer while seasoning to taste with the salt, soy sauce, and sak‚. Reduce heat to low.

With the heat on low, stir in the cornstarch-and-water mixture. Stir for 30 seconds or so till thick and smooth and raise heat to bring the soup to a high simmer. Never let it boil. Slowly pour a thin stream of beaten egg in a spiral over the entire surface of the soup. Do not stir immediately, but let the egg start to set, about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Stir soup gently and constantly with a wire whisk for another minute or so to allow the egg to separate into threadlike filaments.

Finally, add the ginger juice and trefoil and remove from heat immediately.

Pour into individual soup bowls, garnishing each with a bit of trefoil from the soup. Serve immediately.

Variation: Use ½ cake tofu (bean curd), cut into ½-inch cubes. Add after the egg and let simmer till heated (about 30 seconds) before adding the ginger juice and trefoil.

NOTES : Trefoil is a member of the parsley family. It is an annual herb that has thin greenish-white stalks approximately 6 to 7 inches long, topped with a comopund leaf of three flat, deeply cut leaflets. Depending on the variety, the leaves range in color and size from pale to bright green and from small to rather full. It has a flavor somewhere between sorrel and celery and an attractive light green color, mitsuba is used in many Japanese dishes as a flavor and color accent. Used only fresh, it is often lightly parboiled beforehand to rid it of any "parsleyish" overtones.

Also, professional cooks usually use only the stems because leaves and stems have different cooking times, but it is not necessary to be so fussy.

The leaves become bitter if overcooked, so only lightly parboil or very gently stirfry.(Request more info if desired. I ran out of room here. I didn't know MC had a size limit!) Recipe by: Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art pg. 346 Posted to recipelu-digest Volume 01 Number 536 by "Valerie Whittle" <catspaw@...> on Jan 15, 1998

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