Vegetarian Pekinese Soup

Pekinese soup, delicious and easy soup which goes for tofu chunks,bamboo shoots and with some pieces of lotus stems..I prepared this soup as vegetarian version by avoiding completely thinly sliced chicken chunks which is used usually in this soup by replacing with some pieces of lotus steams..I had this soup twice in chinese restaurant and i got completely hooked with this delicious hot and slightly sour soup which tastes fantastic when served hot for a chilled evening dinner, a prefect soup for winter season..This soup is really nourishing, filling and tastes fantastic with crunchy bamboo shoots..Its really very simple to prepare and this soup needs hardly few ingredients to prepare, the most important ingredients to make out this soup is dark soya sauce and red chilli sauce without this two ingredients, its kinda hard to prepare this soup, personnally i felt corn starch turn out this soup much thicker than the corn flour, so i recommand to use corn starch which is quite availabale in chinese stores, in case if its hard to find out corn starch u can definitely used corn flour...We had this delicious soup sterday for our dinner, enjoyed having this pekinese soup..This delicious soup goes to Usha's Healthy Inspiration Event - Soups..

1cup Firm tofu (cubed)
1/2cup Canned bamboo shoots( i used the thin lengthwise slices)
10nos Lotus stem (frozen)
5nos Garlic(minced)
1inch Ginger (minced)
3cups Vegetable broth
2tbsp Dark Soya sauce
1tbsp Rice vinegar
2tbsp Red chilly sauce (adjust as per ur taste)
2tbsp Sesame oil
2tbsp Corn starch or corn flour(i used corn starch)
1/4tsp White pepper powder
Green Onions for garnishing
Salt

Marinate the tofu pieces with half a teaspoon of dark soya sauce and a teaspoon of sesame oil and keep aside atleast for few minutes...Heat the remaining oil, fry the minced ginger and minced garlic until they turns brown, add immediately the bamboo shoots and lotus stems and cook for few minutes, now add the already marinated tofu chunks and cook everything again for 5 minutes...meanwhile add the remaining dark soya sauce,salt as per need, rice vinegar, red chilly sauce to the vegetable broth, give a stir and add this vegetable broth to the veggies, cook everything for 10-15minutes in simmer...make a thin white sauce by adding water to the corn starch..add this white sauce to the cooking soup and stir until they turns thick..finally add the white pepper powder and garnish the soup with green onions...

Serve this pekinese soup immediately !!!