I decided that tonight was a night for romance so I lit a candle and decided to blog by candlelight. Oh yeah! As you all know I don't have a romantic bone in my body so I thought this was quite a big step for me. And nothing screams romance like Chinese soup, right? Ok reaching a little there...guess I will stick to the candle part. I should probably mention that it took me 3 matches to get the candle lit. Match #1 I broke in half before it lit. Match #2 kind of sparked and I thought an ember floated on the table. Ek! Match #3 equaled success!

So tonight I decided to try and make Chinese Chicken and Rice Soup (this is the link). The recipe came from Food Network Magazine and since I have been on a quest for Chinese recipes it stood out to me. I also thought this recipe was doable as the ingredients were not so out of the ordinary that I would have to take a field trip to Chinatown...however a trip is in the works, right Mel? And it had some shortcuts that did not make it extremely time consuming...yes I learned my lesson from the beef stew debacle. Also thought the mix of flavors sounded fresh, refreshing and I LOVE sesame oil!

The recipe starts by whisking 4 eggs and then throwing them in a hot pot with peanut oil and cooking for about 1 minute. I was a little concerned about the technique because after they cook for a minute you add the tomatoes and stir them with the egg to break it up. But it actually was super easy and it worked really well giving the soup a light hint of egg kind of like the egg drop soup you order at Chinese restaurants. I was worried I was going to end up with big gobs of scrambled eggs in my soup but that wasn't the case at all as the egg mixture is very thin and doesn't have that clumpy consistency.

The rest of the recipe is really easy as you pretty much just throw the rest of the ingredients in the pot. And even the chicken-EASY-as you shred a rotisserie chicken and wha-la! I did use low sodium soy sauce and chicken broth and if I make this again I would have used regular sodium on both just because I love that salty broth flavor...but I compensated by adding some extra salt at the end. It is a really light and refreshing soup and it does have those Chinese flavors which make it a little different and exotic. This would be a perfect first course for a Chinese dinner party or if you want to be like me it will be the perfect lunch at work tomorrow. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.