Cold weather casserole: Shanghai sandpot

We used to order this at our favorite Shanghainese restaurants without fail during Taipei’s dreary season, which stretches unbroken from November through March. With a couple of bowls of this inspired soup—which manages to be hearty without being terribly filling—we’d happily brave the weather and splash in the puddles afterwards.

The only really unusual ingredient is băiyè jiĕ 百葉結, or fresh bean curd knots. At the time of this writing, they can be most usually found fresh or frozen in vacuum-packed 8-ounce packages. If your Chinese market doesn’t hold them, you can roll up sheets of fresh “hundred leaf” bean curd (băiyè) and tie them in knots. 

And if even that isn’t available, just cut very firm fresh bean curd into squares and call it a day; they won’t need soaking, so just toss them in the soup.

This is what you're looking for

Two ingredients are absolutely essential here: good ham and good Shaoxing rice wine. Chinese ham is sometimes labeled Smithfield in Chinese markets, and it’s a much saltier and drier ham that what Americans usually eat; Spanish jamón or Italian prosciutto are great substitutes, and if you can find the ends, they’ll be both cheap and flavorful. 

There are not a whole lot of substitutes for the toasty, mushroomy aroma of Shaoxing rice wine, but in case of an emergency, use dry sherry instead. 

The first four steps should be done more or less at the same time, as this is all prep work. As with just about every good soup, though, this tastes much better if it is made at least a day ahead of time. So, if you can, assemble it up through Step 5 the first day, so that the flavors have the time to marry, and then proceed with Step 6 just before serving.

Shanghai sandpot

Yāndŭxiān 醃篤鮮

Shanghai cuisine

Serves 6

Stock:

1 quart | 1 liter unsalted chicken or pork stock

1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns

6 fat, dried Chinese black mushrooms, soaked until plump (use the soaking water in the stock)

Plumped-up knots

3 scallions, trimmed but left whole

2 finger-sized pieces of ginger, sliced

¼ cup | 60 ml Shaoxing rice wine

Soup ingredients:

1 piece of Chinese ham or prosciutto with skin and bone, about 4 ounces | 125 g

Around 8 ounces | 250 g fresh pork belly, preferably with skin

Water, as needed

Around 4 ounces | 125 g frozen or fresh bean curd knots, or very firm bean curd (see headnotes)

1 quart | 1 liter boiling water

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 large bamboo shoot, fresh or frozen, sliced about ¼-inch | 6 mm thick

½ cup | 125 ml Shaoxing rice wine, plus more as needed

A large handful of ice cubes

A pinch or two of sea salt, if needed

8 small green bok choy, sliced lengthwise in half, or 3 large bok choy, cut into thin wedges

Half a leek, white and light green parts only, cleaned carefully and sliced thinly

Wash the bok choy carefully

1. Again, start this recipe at least a day before you wish to serve it. Place the stock in a large (2 quart | 2 liter) sandpot or casserole. Wrap the peppercorns in a piece of cheesecloth or a tea ball. Toss in the mushroom soaking liquid, Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, green onions, and rice wine, but don’t add any salt at this time. Reserve the mushrooms for Step 4. Bring the pot to a boil before lowering it to a simmer, and then cover lightly. While the stock simmers, prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Rinse the ham and pork and blanch them in boiling water for about 10 minutes. Rinse them off again, scrape off any black areas on the ham skin, and return them to a clean saucepan and cover with water. Boil the meats for around 30 minutes and remove the pork. When it is cool, slice it against the grain into thin pieces.

3. Continue to cook the ham for another 30 minutes, or until it is tender enough to be easily pierced through with a chopstick. Remove it from the ham stock. When the ham is cool enough to handle easily, slice off and discard any skin, gelatinous bits, and bones, and then cut the ham into thin slices. Ever ham has a different level of salt, so pour the ham stock a bit at a time into the pork stock until it is as salty as you like; reserve the rest of the ham stock for later.

4. While the pork is cooking, place the bean curd knots in a heatproof bowl and cover them with the boiling water. Add the baking soda and stir. After about an hour, the knots will have plumped up. Rinse the knots in several changes of water. Slice the mushroom caps into pieces about ¼ inch | 6 mm wide.

Time to skim off the solid fat

5. Remove the Sichuan peppercorns, scallions, and ginger from the stock and discard. Arrange the sliced ham, pork, bamboo shoots, mushroom caps, and rice wine in the stock. Bring the soup to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook the soup for around 30 minutes. Taste the soup and add more pork or ham stock as needed to cover all the ingredients. Add the bean curd knots and simmer the soup for another 20 to 30 minutes. If you can, make it up to this point and let it sit covered overnight in a cool place.

6. Place the ice cubes on top of the cool soup, and after a few minutes remove any coagulated fat and unmelted ice cubes. Heat the soup up until it is at a full boil. Just before serving, taste the soup again and add more rice wine and ham stock to taste; there should be a nice, winey punch to the soup, and you can adjust the seasoning as you like with a pinch or two of salt, if necessary. Add the bok choy and leeks to the soup and bring it only to a boil, as you want them just barely cooked through. Set the sandpot on the table and serve in small soup bowls. 

Chinese brisket & a couple of Beard nominations

Happy news!

All Under Heaven has been nominated as one of three titles in the International Cookbook division of this year's James Beard Awards! 

And if that wasn't exciting enough, a short story I wrote for Life & Thyme also got nominated. It's the one where I tell about cooking a northern Chinese meal for my terrifying mother-in-law, the daughter of a warlord and a woman of many secrets.

I don't know what I did in a past life to deserve this, but I'm not going to ask too many questions...

*  *  *

China has a complex relationship with cattle. This probably is due to the late arrival of the animal on the culinary scene. Unlike Central Asia and points west, where dairy and beef cattle are absolutely vital to so many food traditions, China depended upon either the water buffalo or the yak until (probably) Muslims introduced domestic cattle to the country via the Silk Roads. 

The domesticated yak provides milk, meat, and hides to people in cold climates like Tibet, while the water buffalo has been – and still is, in many areas – more valuable as a beast of burden than as a source for beef. 

In fact, the water buffalo was responsible for the survival of so many families that it was as beloved as the family dog. No one would even consider serving it up.

Unmistakable pattern of brisket

This was so ingrained a belief even a couple of decades ago that most of the ethnic Taiwanese I knew refused to eat beef. (My Muslim friends couldn’t eat pork, of course, and the Buddhists were often vegans, so dinner sometimes was at times quite the goat rodeo.) 

With the influx of McDonald’s and other hamburger places, as well as the status that steak and red wine have conferred upon wealthier diners, you don’t see this as much in the big cities. But it at least gives you an idea why milk and beef have never been quite as popular in China as, say, pork or chicken.

However, there certainly are divine exceptions to the rule. Last week we tried a lovely milk dish from Guangdong, and today we are tasting a really remarkable brisket from the Huai Yang area of Jiangsu – my idea of culinary heaven on earth, for what it’s worth. The Huai Yang centers around the city of Yangzhou in central Jiangsu Province, and this gastronomic motherlode is bounded on one side by the Huai River and the other by the Yangtze, which is why it's called Huai Yang.

This cuisine is downright sophisticated, and I will most likely be offering up some of the area's haute cuisine over the coming months, since I'm becoming more and more entranced with the absolute stellar dishes it produces. But more on that later. Back to the food at hand.

The supporting cast

You will see some familiar players in this very refined dish. Just as any French chef worth her salt would do, a Huai Yang chef will toss onions, carrots, salt, bay leaves, and wine into the pot. But what makes this both Chinese and utterly divine is that instead of stewing or braising the brisket, it is slowly steamed, the vegetables are removed, the beef is chilled, and then it is served in thin slices in the hot broth with a shower of finely shredded baby ginger. 

In fact, there are two layers of ginger in here – the older brown rhizomes insert a nice sense of warmth to the broth and meat, and a shower of thin white baby ginger sparkles as the sole garnish. This soup is very simple, very unadorned. 

Since Chinese folks - especially in haute cuisine - often find beef and lamb to be rather overpoweringly strong in flavor, you'll find that the Chinese radish and Shaoxing rice wine in this recipe work with the bay leaves to tamp down any gamy smells and flavors.

This is a culinary secret the Chinese use again and again. The radish serves as sort of a purifying agent for anything with strong aromas, including pork and oilier fish, lightening the odors and adding an almost undetectable vegetal sweetness. You might be surprised at seeing bay leaves in a Chinese dish, but the herbal aromas of the Mediterranean tree known locally here as “moon cassia” (yuèguì 月桂) might have been introduced to the country thanks to the same folks who imported the beef: the Muslims.

There is no two ways about it, though: clear brisket soup is an austere dish. There is nothing fancy going on here. Rather, almost like the best Japanese kaiseki, it's about celebrating honest ingredients in a way that puts them in their best light. So, if you love the taste of excellent brisket and the mild heat of baby ginger, you are going to love this soup as much as I do.

Beautiful brisket

To be honest, the only thing difficult about this dish is getting a great quality brisket, some tender white ginger for the garnish, and hunting down the steamer to hold all that soup. Let’s take these one at a time:

Get a really good grass-fed beef, something that’s been raised with care and butchered humanely, since it makes all the difference in the world. I compared a couple of briskets the other day at a rather upscale butcher shop, and the difference was remarkable: the regular beef had a thick layer of hard fat and looked stringy and rather forlorn, while the better quality one looked bright and bouncy. Yes, it cost twice as much, but don’t skimp when it comes to food. "Eat less, but eat better" is a really great mantra.

Rimmed bowl & grabber

Baby ginger is becoming more available, especially this time of year and, of course, your best bet is often a Chinese market. But keep an eye out for other sources. If all else fails, you can use regular fresh ginger, but make sure the rhizomes are plump and heavy. Peel them, slice them as thinly as humanly possible, and then crosscut them into the finest of julienne. Since the older ginger will be much hotter than the young, add this to taste.

As for the steamer, I use my largest pot – the one I haul out for the New Year dumpling parties – and stick a trivet at the bottom. This way I can get the bowl in and out of the steamer without scalding myself. Use a rimmed steel work bowl, if you can, plus a Chinese bowl grabber (see the picture above) to maneuver the bowl out of the steamer. If you don’t have either, wait until the soup has cooled down to merely warm before you lift it out.

Add noodles for a complete meal

For what it’s worth, I’ve tried cooking this soup different ways – browning the beef, using a pressure cooker, etc. – but this traditional method gives you the best of all worlds: a flavorful broth filled with super tender meat. Serve the meat with nothing more than the ginger and save the vegetables for your lunch or something. I love their flavor and melting texture, but they’re not for company. Being the cook definitely has its own rewards…

Clear brisket soup

Qīngzhēng níunán 清蒸牛腩

Huai Yang (Jiangsu)

Serves 6 to 8 as a soup, 4 to 6 as a main dish with noodles (see Tips)

1½ to 2 pounds (600 to 800 g) excellent quality boneless beef brisket

Water, as needed

1 Chinese radish (about 1 pound / 450 g), peeled and trimmed

1 carrot, peeled and trimmed

Young white ginger

2 large stalks Western celery, or 4 stalks Chinese celery with the leaves on

5 or 6 green onions, trimmed

3 inches (8 cm) fresh ginger

½ cup (120 ml) Shaoxing rice wine

1 tablespoon sea salt, plus more to taste

1 teaspoon sugar

Freshly ground pepper

At least ½ cup (65 g) young white ginger, peeled and finely julienned (see headnote)

1. Start this at least in the morning if you want to serve it that evening; you can also make this a couple of days ahead of time and heat it up just before serving. Place the brisket in a pan, cover with water, bring it to a boil, and then simmer the beef for around 10 minutes. Discard the water and rinse off the scum. Place the brisket in a rimmed steel work bowl that fits easily in your steamer (see headnotes).

In the steamer

2. Cut the radish, carrots, and celery in to large chunks and add them to the brisket along with the whole green onions. Smack the ginger with the side of your knife before tossing it into the bowl with the rice wine, salt, sugar, and pepper. Don’t cover the bowl, but simply place it in your steamer. Cover everything with water (around 6 to 8 cups / 1.5 to 2 liters) up to about an inch (2.5 cm) from the rim and steam the brisket for around 3 hours. Let the soup cool off completely. Remove all the vegetables (see headnotes) and discard the ginger and onions. Place the beef in a clean bowl and strain the stock over the top. Cover and chill the beef and stock for at least a couple of hours.

3. About half an hour before serving, remove any hard fat on top of the stock. Slice the beef crosswise into thin slices and arrange them in a wide serving bowl or individual soup bowls. Scatter the julienned young ginger on top. Heat the stock to boiling, adjust the seasoning as needed, and just before serving, pour the boiling stock over the beef and ginger. Serve immediately.

Tips

Julienned ginger

This soup is incredible when served over thin noodles, like capellini. All you need to complete the meal is that julienned ginger, as it will weave around the pasta and season every bite with a touch of heat. 

My husband prefers more powerful flavors in his beef soup, so he tends to plead for a dish of chile sauce or something on the side to zing things up. I eat this lovely soup plain, though, and absolutely revel in the beefiness of it all.

I admit, I'm a sucker for this dish. I love it hot, I love it cold. If you've properly degreased the stock, the fact that the soup and noodles are cold will actually charm you. So, keep this recipe in your back pocket for whenever summer finally rolls around.

  

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Roast duck soup for the New Year

Happy Year of the Rooster!

One of China’s signature feast dishes is roast duck. Just about any deli in a Chinese supermarket or your friendly neighborhood Chinatown will have the Cantonese version hanging in the window. They’re usually pretty cheap (about $20) and delicious, too, and so I rarely make my own.

What this means when it comes to a New Year’s feast is that roast duck should definitely be on the menu. Serve the meaty parts of the duck as is (heat it at 275°F／135°C for around 15 minutes to crisp up the skin and render most of the fat), with a bit of plum sauce that the deli might throw in for free. Be sure and save that duck fat to stir-fry some shredded napa cabbage until it’s soft and tender, and season it with a touch of soy sauce — this is very much in keeping with the Chinese food maxim of waste absolutely nothing, and such sensible frugality in the kitchen is believed to ensure plenty during the coming year.

I like to cut off and reserve the back, neck, and as many scrawny bits and bones as possible and then turn them into a truly delicious and easy soup to serve at the end of dinner. This is a downright luscious dish you can pull together in a matter of minutes if you do a little bit of prep work a day or two ahead of time: Prepare the stock, cut up the radishes and garnishes, and soak the cellophane noodles. That’s it.

We used to have a big bowl of hot duck soup in Taipei whenever we went out for a Peking duck dinner. It didn’t matter if it was in a dining palace or a little mom ‘n pop hole in the wall on Chung Hwa Road, because in China, when you order a roast duck, you expect a full feast out of the bird. We’d of course first have the crisp skin followed by the breast and leg meat sliced for us at the table by the waiter, and these would be wrapped in thin crêpes with a dab of sweet wheat paste and shredded green onions.

 

Your basic roast duck

A buttery custard of duck egg yolks would usually appear, too, and maybe some braised odd bits, like tongues or hearts, as well as vegetables braised in duck fat to round out the meal. The last course was always a steaming vat of duck soup, and my favorites would have cubes of sweet Chinese radishes and pickled mustard greens swimming inside among the cellophane noodles.

Over the years, I’ve gone one better on the original, as I’ve found that cutting the radishes into thin strips makes this soup exceptionally silky. They mingle sensuously with the cellophane noodles, and the radishes somehow turn out super sweet this way. Store-bought chicken stock and rice wine add oomph to the broth, and I like to toss in a bit of garlicky “winter vegetable” — a type of chopped pickled napa cabbage from my mother-in-law’s hometown of Tianjin — to add serious depth. Cilantro and a handful of reserved shredded duck are all that is needed to punctuate the top. Toe warming and delectable, this is Chinese culinary prudence at its most inspired. (First published in Food52)

The lovely seasonings

Roast duck soup with radishes

Kăoyā luóbo tang  烤鴨蘿蔔湯

Beijing

Serves 6 to 8 as a main dish, or twice that much as a side

¼ cup (60 ml) toasted sesame oil

¼ cup (15 g) finely sliced fresh ginger

4 green onions, trimmed and coarsely chopped

Bones, scraps, and scrawny bits from 1 roasted duck

½ cup (120 ml) Taiwan Mijiu rice wine or sake

1 quart (1L) unsalted chicken stock (preferably free range and organic)

4 quarts (4L) boiling water, divided

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons chopped “winter vegetable” (dongcai) or Chinese mustard pickles (suancai)

1 medium (1 pound or 450 g) Asian radish of some kind (Chinese luobo, Korean mooli, or Japanese daikon)

2 small skeins cellophane noodles (fensi), about 1.3 ounces (37 g) each

Freshly ground black pepper

1 large handful shredded roast duck, optional but delicious

1 large handful coarsely chopped cilantro

 

Finely shredded radish

1. Start this a day or two before you plan to serve it. Place a large (2 gallon/8L) stockpot over medium heat and add the sesame oil, ginger, and green onions. Gently fry the ginger and green onions until they turn into thin brown tangles. Raise the heat to medium high, add the duck, and slowly fry it, too, to render the fat and release the flavors. Turn the heat under the pot to high and pour in the rice wine. When it comes to a boil, add the chicken stock, boiling water, and sugar. Bring the uncovered pot back to a full boil and then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. After an hour or so, remove the pot from the heat and let it come to room temperature. Strain the stock into a clean pan and skim off the fat before refrigerating.  

2. A day or two before you plan to serve the soup, you can also prep the pickles and radish: Rinse the pickles in a coarse sieve under tap water to remove most of the saltiness; the winter vegetable especially needs attention to ensure that there is no sand hiding in there. The winter vegetable is already chopped, but the mustard pickles should be cut crosswise into thin (⅛-inch) slices. To prepare the radish, peel off the skin and any tough webbing under the surface and then cut it into ⅛-inch julienne. Refrigerate the pickles and radish in closed plastic bags.

3. About 20 minutes before serving, place the cellophane noodles in a large work bowl and cover with cool tap water to soften them. When they are silky, use kitchen shears to cut across the soft skeins in the water to form 3- to 4-inch lengths. Drain the noodles in a strainer.

4. Bring the strained stock to a full boil and add the radish, as well as the black pepper. Taste the soup and add as much of the winter vegetable or mustard pickles as you like, as saltiness will vary due to the duck’s preparation; you can also add more boiling water if your soup turns out to be on the salty side. Cook this uncovered over medium heat for about 5 minutes until the radishes are tender and sweet, but not mushy. Add the cellophane noodles and simmer for no more than another 5 minutes, as you want them only barely cooked through. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve immediately with the optional duck meat and cilantro sprinkled on top.

Wontons from coastal Zhejiang

When we both were working more than full time in Taipei, Sunday was pretty much our only day off, as long as the museum didn’t have any special guests rolling in on the weekend. That was the time my husband and I would take a long, leisurely hike over the mountains behind our home in Peitou toward the ocean. 

We’d start out in the cool morning and amble past rice paddies and the most stunning nursery I’ve ever seen: a sea of cobalt irises swaying above the water, ready for the capital’s beautiful flower markets. We would then wend our way carefully past a couple of farms guarded with the nastiest geese in the world, as well as a couple of pitbulls who could always be counted on to threaten us with grievous bodily harm until their long chains went taut and we could make our escape up a little path and into the forest.

It was definitely a long and hot hike by the time we hit the summit and the ocean breeze could finally make its way among the trees to cool us off. We would find a road somewhere along the way and start to head downhill, our stomachs rumbling and me usually dying of thirst, for I knew exactly what I wanted and where to find it once we hit our destination.

Taipei’s sweet little harbor village called Tamsui had a row of old Japanese brick buildings lining the main drag, and the shops opened up all the way to the back, so Tamsui River could be seen lolling around. This was where I found the best antiques, like an old pottery bowl I still treasure for its almost Picasso-like birds and a wooden ladle that has served me well for decades. It was also where I saw a hefty Siamese cat and an equally chubby Pekingese dog wrestle with their limbs wrapped around each other as they rolled across a shop floor.

Down by the little traffic circle was a small shop that offered chilled homemade soymilk, and we would demolish a couple of glasses to cool off as our way of getting ready for lunch. This was where we always went for the most exquisite wontons. The owner/chef was from Wenzhou, a coastal city in Zhejiang smack between Shanghai to the north and Fuzhou to the south, so you already know this is place has amazing food. He specialized in the silky, intensely juicy packets of Wenzhou that would be served swimming in a flavorful broth with a spangling of shredded omelet, laver seaweed, spinach, and green onions.

Fresh shrimp are the secret ingredient

Knowing me as well as he did after all those years, an ancient Taiwan Beer bottle would also be set by my bowl, the cap cleverly peaked up on one side to make a teeny spout. Inside would be liquid gold: a portion of his own stash of homemade black vinegar made by a friend of his in Keelung, the big shipping harbor on Taiwan’s north shore. Thick and rich, I’d drizzle this over the wontons and then be transformed by all the flavors popping in my mouth with that first sip/bite. He would usually slide my usual order of a perfectly crisp chicken leg across to me about that time, and I’d lather it up with a good glug of that vinegar, too.

This recipe will give you around 60 wontons, and these are easy to freeze. Just lay them in single layers on baking sheets covered with dry teacloths and sprinkled with flour. Once the wontons are frozen solid, pack them in freezer bags. They should be boiled directly from the freezer without defrosting first. Consider this as a good way to make many delicious meals an easy reality.

Seasoned water makes each bite juicy

Wenzhou style wontons

Wēnzhōu húntūn 溫州餛飩

Zhejiang

Makes 60 wontons, serves 4, with wontons to spare

¾ cup / 175ml cool water

2 green onions, trimmed and finely shredded

5 thin slices ginger, finely chopped

6 shrimp (size 16/20), or about 5 ounces / 150g any size fresh shrimp, cleaned and shelled

1½ teaspoons sea salt, divided into 1 and ½ teaspoons

8 ounces / 225g ground pork

3 tablespoons / 45g Shaoxing rice wine

1 (1 pound / 454g) package large wonton skins (see Tips)

All-purpose flour, as needed

Stock:

4 cups chicken stock

Boiling water, as needed

¼ cup Shaoxing rice wine

1 teaspoon sugar

4 thin slices ginger

2 green onions

Garnish:

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon cool water

Peanut or vegetable oil, as needed

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

Around 6.5 ounces / 12g toasted laver seaweed (nori or zicai)

Large handful of fresh spinach, trimmed and washed

1 green onion, trimmed and sliced thinly

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

 

The runny filling

1. This recipe can be started weeks ahead of time and the wontons frozen, as you will have approximate 60 wontons when you’re finished. The wontons are almost always made in a quantity much more than they are needed because it just makes life so much easier if you bang out five dozen of these and freeze them, although you can of course toss some of these in the pot as soon as they are done and freeze the rest. To make the wontons, first put together a seasoned water by mixing the water with the finely chopped green onions and ginger. Mix these around in a measuring cup by rubbing the solids in the water, which will release their flavor. Let the aromatics soak for at least an hour, and then strain out and discard the solids. At the same time, toss the chopped shrimp with the salt and let these marinate in the refrigerator. Just before using, drain off any liquid, pat the shrimp dry with a paper towel, and chop them coarsely.

2. Make the filling by placing the ground pork in a medium work bowl. Use one hand to hold the bowl and the other to first mix in the rice wine and then slowly add all of the seasoned water to give the meat time to absorb it, sort of like making mayonnaise. If you hold your dominant hand like a paddle and prop the bowl on a wet towel or bowl holder, this will be quite easy and strangely satisfying. When the meat has turned pale and fluffy, mix in the shrimp. Cover the mixture and chill for at least a couple of hours, which will firm up the filling and make it much easier to wrap. You can even freeze it a bit, if it happens to feel too gloppy to handle easily.

3. To fill the wontons, have a small bowl ready with cool water, a small spatula or dull knife, and a couple of baking sheets lined with plastic wrap, plus extra to cover them. Fan out the wrappers so that they are not stuck together, and then cover them with more plastic wrap to prevent them from drying out and cracking. Follow the directions at the bottom of this post to fill and store the wontons. You will have more than the 24 you actually need for this meal, so freeze any extras.

 

Fold into a sloppy triangle

4. Prepare the soup by simmering the stock uncovered with about 2 cups of boiling water, rice wine, sugar, ginger, and green onions. After about 20 minutes, strain out the solids.

5. To prepare the garnishes, lightly beat the eggs. Mix the cornstarch with the water and beat this into the eggs. Set a wok over medium-high heat and use a paper towel to smear some oil around the bottom half. When the wok is hot, pour the eggs into the wok and then angle it around so that it forms a thin sheet. Almost immediately, as soon as the eggs are completely set, overturn the wok onto a cutting board so that the omelet plops out. Once the eggs are cool, roll up the omelet and slice it crosswise into a thin julienne. Simmer the balsamic vinegar down to about 2 tablespoons. Use kitchen shears to cut the laver seaweed into thin julienne. Cut the spinach into manageable sizes.

6. Just before serving, bring the stock to a full boil and gently stir in about 2 dozen wontons (6 per person). As soon as they rise to the surface, use a Chinese spider or slotted spoon to divide them among 4 large soup bowls. Blanch the spinach in the stock and then divide that, too, among the bowls. Then, divide the omelet and laver seaweed among the bowls, sprinkle on the green onion garnish, and pour the hot stock over everything. Drizzle a bit of sesame oil on top and offer the vinegar on the side. Serve extremely hot with chopsticks and soupspoons.

How to fold wontons:

1. Make a circle with your thumb and forefinger and place a wrapper on top of that.

2. Wet a finger of the other hand and draw a big circle on the wrapper.

3. Place about teaspoon or so of the filling in the middle of the wrapper.

4. Fold the edges together so that they do not match up, but remain loose and fluttery.