Hot & Sour Asian Noodle Soup

This is by no means a traditional Hot & Sour soup, its more what I call white person Asian food but its tasty and healthy and clears out the sinuses. I've adapted this recipe from Anne's Lindsay's Lighthearted Cooking, I found her version to be too bland and not sour enough so I pepped it up a bit. I also switched to dried shiitake mushrooms instead of just plain old white mushrooms as they have more flavour and a nice chewy texture that works well in the soup.

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup dried shiitake mushroom (put mushrooms in a bowl with hot water for 20 minutes to hydrate, drain and rinse before adding to soup to remove grit)

2 cloves minced garlic

1 carrot finely julienned

4 cups vegetable or chicken stock

2 cups water

2 serving packets of either dry or fresh Chinese chow mien noodles (look for simple ones where the ingredients are just flour & water, no preservatives)

3 tbsp sherry

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp lime juice

1tbsp sweet chili sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

2 tsp light soy

1 tsp sambal oelek or chili oil (less if you can't take the heat, this will be quite spicy)

1/2 cup chopped green onion

Saute mushrooms & garlic in oil from 2 minutes, just to soften the garlic and fuse the flavours, do not brown. Add in stock & water and bring to a boil. Once boiling add in all the condiments and then the noodles. Reduce heat and simmer for 3 or 4 minutes until noodles are done. Add in green onions and serve.

I would have liked to add a knob in ginger, some lemongrass and some enoki mushrooms but I didn't have any, but I bet they would be a nice addition.

lindz