Hot And Sour Soup Elixir

Unable to recover any shred of cooking skill because I didn't quite get all the Halloween candy out of the house and my neurons are still numbed from sugar intake, I put Bartleby in the car and headed for my family home in yet another medium-sized Midwestern city, about two hours west of the one I live in.

As I scarfed the remaining Butterfinger left in my purse, my former Tai Chi teacher, Rocky, was up in my head griping about America's toxic addictions to red meat, dairy and sugar. I think Butterfinger has all of those, at least in some form. Which is why the toffee is such a mysterious color of yellow.

Rocky believes sugar is a a false yang (positive) energy. "It picks you up and lets you down, like getting back with an ex," Rocky mutters in my brain. Rocky had a few relationship problems, but they weren't related to sugar intake. I did agree with him: I needed to balance my yin (negative energy) and yang (positive energy). There was one food that could do it and one place, out here in the land of cornfields and subdivisions, to get it. Hot and sour soup at Shanghai Lil's.

First, a little family history. My family moved from New Jersey, a town an hour's drive from Manhattan, to the flyover, in 1980. Among the many things we left behind was a weekend habit of hard core eating in Chinatown. I knew those knotty twisting alleys riddled with dim sum and noodle shops almost as well as the streets of my suburb. But here in the Midwet, there was nothing even remotely resembling Chinese food. The sole Chinese restaurant in town served moo shu pork with taco shells, the hard ones. A bread basket was always on the table. If there were real Chinese people working in the kitchen, there was no evidence of them in the "front of the house." The very idea that I could "come home" to the town that time mostly forgot about, but lately seems to be dimly recollecting, on a Sunday, craving hot and sour soup, and be able to fulfill that craving at an excellent Chinese restaurant (even if it is in a strip mall), is a testament to the dynamism of the global economy and a really loose immigration policy.

Lil's is one of the few restaurants that makes authentic hot and sour soup, not the bile-tasting brew that usually passes for this wonderful soup. Lately, it's been more sour than hot, but that could be local tastes acting on the kitchen. Lil's serves their soup, not in bowls, but in small, lidded blue and white china vessels. When the lid is lifted, the fragrance of the soup rises like a gift is being offered. The texture is thick and silky. There are plenty of thin slices of assorted Chinese mushrooms and soft, creamy tofu. The first taste is of vinegar and the heat comes after, like a hot towel for the insides. It is restorative, balancing two of the four tastes (hot, sour, sweet, bitter) in one dish. It gently brings the palate back to life, reminding the senses of the other tastes an indulgence (like a sugar binge) has temporarily obliterated.

Yes, dear readers, even in this part of the country noted for its blandness, a gal can re-balance her chi (energy), a gal can realize she has chi that's in need of re-balancing, a gal can eat.