This was a labour of love and a half.
I was browsing through All Under Heaven, the new cookbook from Carolyn Phillips who only occasionally posts here now, and I came across a recipe for Yunnan Ham and Wild Mushroom Soup (page 263). I read that and browsed on. A few days later, I remembered it and set out to make it, but without re-reading the recipe, my usual chaotic technique.
I am fortunate in that, unlike Carolyn, I do have access to real Xuanwei ham from Yunnan province, one of China's finest hams, rated up there with the best Spanish hams. I also have a selection of dried Yunnan mushrooms, specifically matsutake and cèpes.
Rather than use the chicken stock which Carolyn suggests ( I checked later), I took some bones from the foot end of the whole cured ham:
and simmered them for a couple of hours with onion, ginger, carrot and celery. Drained that through muslin. All the solids were discarded.
I had soaked and cooked some mushrooms a few days earlier and had the soaking liquid in the freezer. That went into the ham stock, making it up to just under a litre. I reduced that to 200ml. The stock smelled very intense and tasted like a umami bomb.
Then I soaked some new mushrooms - matsutake, cèpes and shiitake. Here they are rehydrated.
Finally I took some lean Xuanwei ham, cut it into strips and fried them in rendered fat from elsewhere on the cured leg,
added the mushrooms, the stock and the second batch of soaking liquid. Seasoned it and cooked for about half an hour. Sensibly, Carolyn suggests finishing it off with green onion or coriander leaf/cilantro, but I forgot to buy either, so went without. Damn!
She also suggests using bamboo pith fungus which I do have, but I think they are too delicately flavoured for this soup, so left them out.
Bamboo Pith Fungus
I prefer to use them in the very delicate, but lovely Jade Web soup with quail eggs and bamboo pith fungus which is in Fuchsia Dunlop's Sichuan cookbook and which I posted here back in January 2013.
Served with home made bread.
For the sake of the photograph, I deliberately plated this with less soup than when I actually ate it, to let you see the ingredients better.
The whole process from reading the recipe which I then ignored until eating the soup took about three days. In about three minutes it was all gone!
With apologies to Carolyn for ignoring the details of her no doubt excellent recipe.
