Crabmeat, Tomato+Potato/Rice-broth with Radishes+Dried Shrimp🌞

These are Sichuan soups...


Crabmeat, Tomato and Potato Soup
xie fen fan qie tu dou nong tang 蟹粉番茄 土豆浓汤

The tomato was known as a “barbarian eggplant” (fan qie) by the Chinese
coastal people who first encountered it after its long voyage from the
Americas (in other parts of China, they call it “Western red persimmon,” xi
hong shi).

This substantial soup is made with both tomatoes and potatoes,
another New World vegetable, along with the white flesh of saltwater crabs,
and is a perfect expression of Shanghai’s polyglot history and deep
“barbarian” influences. It’s a gorgeous sunset of a soup, savory with a hint
of sweetness, and finished with a sprinkling of “barbarian pepper,” as the
Chinese call black pepper. Serve it as part of a Chinese meal, as a
European-style first course, or as a meal in itself, perhaps with just bread
and a salad on the side.

I often order this soup in two of my favorite Shanghai restaurants, Old
Jesse and Fu 1088, and I’m grateful to Fu 1088 executive chef Tony Lu for
explaining his recipe to me. At home I make it with freshly picked Cornish
crabmeat from my local fishmonger. If you are cooking several dishes and
want to make life easier, I suggest you make the soup mostly in advance,
and just bring it to the boil and add the starch mixture to thicken when you
wish to serve it.

1 lb (475g) potatoes
4 ripe tomatoes (about 1 lb/500g)
1½ quarts (1.5 liters) stock
4 tbsp (60g) butter
1 tbsp cooking oil
9 oz (250g) white crabmeat
3 tbsp tomato paste
2½ tbsp superfine sugar
4 tbsp potato starch mixed with 5 tbsp cold water
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a pan of water to the boil. Peel the potatoes, steam or boil them until
tender, then mash them coarsely. Cut a cross through the skin of each
tomato and put them all in a bowl. Cover them with boiling water and leave
to cool. When cool enough to handle, peel off the skins, then core them,
discarding the seeds, and chop the flesh into fine dice. Bring the stock to the
boil.

Heat half the butter with ½ teaspoon cooking oil in a seasoned wok or
frying pan. Add the crabmeat and fry until hot and fragrant, then remove
and set aside. Heat the remaining butter and oil in the same pan. Add the
tomatoes and stir-fry over a high flame until fragrant and partially
disintegrated. Add the tomato purée and stir-fry until it smells delicious.

Add the hot stock and mashed potatoes and bring to the boil, pressing the
potatoes so they spread throughout the soup. Season with the sugar and salt.
Add the crabmeat and return to the boil, then give the starch mixture a stir
and add it a little at a time, mixing well, to thicken the soup. Serve with a
generous scattering of black pepper.


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Milky Rice-broth Soup with Radish and Dried Shrimp
mi tang zhu luo bo 米汤煮萝卜

Chefs Zheng and Ling and I drove out from Tunxi, near the Yellow
Mountain, to the Clove Garden, a restaurant owned by some friends of
theirs by the edge of a shimmering lake. I was immediately invited into the
kitchen for a lesson in the arts of southern Anhui cooking. Some of the
dishes I learned to make that day would be hard to reproduce outside the
region—in particular the Yellow Mountain “two stone” soup made with
locally gathered stone-ear fungus and so-called “stone chicken” (actually a
kind of frog)—but this gentle soup is not. It traditionally relies on that old
farmhouse staple known as “rice broth,” the silky liquid left after parboiling
rice before steaming, but which can also be made by cooking a little rice in
plenty of water. Here, slices of radish are simmered in the broth until they
are slippery-tender and finally garnished with dried shrimp and spring
onions. I would like to thank chefs Gao Yongfei and Feng Jianjin at the
Clove Garden for explaining the recipe.

It’s a simple, rustic soup and a refreshing balance to, for example, a rich
red-braised dish. Think of this recipe as a basic template for all kinds of
rice-broth soups, made with any vegetables and odds and ends you might
have to hand.

One lovely tonic soup I’ve enjoyed in Zhejiang is rice broth sweetened
with honey and enriched with wisps of beaten egg (mi tang chong ji dan):
just boil the broth, sweeten it to taste, then stir in a beaten egg over a gentle
heat.

½ cup (125g) plain white rice
4 tbsp papery dried shrimp
1½ lbs (650g) white Asian radish
2 tbsp lard or cooking oil
2 tbsp thinly sliced spring onions, green parts only
Salt and ground white pepper

Put the rice in a saucepan with 2 quarts (2 liters) cold water. Bring to the
boil, skim and give the pan a good stir to stop the rice sticking. Turn the
heat down and simmer for 30 minutes, until the liquid is soft and milky.
Strain off and retain the liquid—this is your rice broth. Discard the rice, or
use it for something else.

Put the shrimp in a small bowl and add just enough cold water to cover;
leave for a few minutes to soften. Peel the radish, halve it lengthways, then
cut it into semicircular slices about 2mm thick.

Heat the lard or oil in a seasoned wok over a high flame. Add the radish and
stir-fry for 1–2 minutes. Add the rice broth, bring to the boil and simmer for
30 minutes, until the radish slices are completely tender. Stir in the dried
shrimp and season with salt and pepper. Serve with a scattering of spring
onion greens.

both recipes from "The Land of Fish and Rice"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28789709-land-of-fish-and-rice

I Love Fuschia Dunlop! Deee-licious.