Hot and Sour Soup

This one's a slow cooker recipe. I think our crockpot is five or six quarts, but the recipe would probably fit in a 4-quart cooker.

1/3 cup dried shiitake or cloud ear mushrooms
One 6-oz can bamboo shoots, drained, rinsed, cut into thin strips
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 Tbsp. peeled and minced fresh ginger (dried will work in a pinch, though)
4 cups vegetable stock
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. Thai chile paste (the red stuff)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 oz. firm tofu
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
3 Tbsp. minced scallions
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil

1. Soak mushrooms in hot water about twenty minutes, then cut into strips and add to slow cooker. Add bamboo shoots, garlic, ginger, stock, vinegar, soy sauce, and chile paste. Season with salt and pepper, cover, cook on low 6 to 8 hours.
2. Just before serving, stir in the peas, scallions, and sesame oil and tofu and let cook about 10 minutes more. Serve hot.

If you make it according to the recipe this is more of a side dish, but if you add a generous scoop of brown rice into your bowl it works as a main dish.

Also, fresh shiitakes work great when you can get them. And if you're using dried you don't really have to soak them first--you can just crumble them right into the pot and they soften up just fine.

You can also use water chestnuts instead of bamboo, or if I double the recipe I like to add one can of water chestnuts (sliced) and one can of bamboo.