Pork & Spinach Soup with Lemongrass

I actually made this last night, but I didn't get to put up the post until tonight.  It'll serve for yesterday and today because I'm just having frozen pizza tonight.  In my latest desperate attempts to get caught up, I ended up staying up until 6 AM and got up at 9.  So, running on only 3 hours of sleep, I'm not in the cooking mood.  I just want to sleep.  I am happy to announce, though, that my sleepless night was not in vain--I may be able to call myself relatively caught up by the end of the day Thursday!  ^_^

This soup is super quick!!  I had absolutely no time to cook anything and by the time I got around to dinner all the restaurants were closed, so I whipped this out in probably about 20 minutes.  Surprisingly, it was absolutely delicious and very satisfying.  The crisp texture and flavor of the lemongrass really added a wonderful element to this soup.  I used some char sui (Chinese barbecued pork) that I had made a while ago and thawed from the freezer, but you can either purchase some from an Asian market, get the recipe from my Char Sui posting from last month, or use another protein of your choice.

Pork & Spinach Soup with Lemongrass

Ingredients:

1 oz. char sui pork
1 small sweet pepper (or use 1/4 bell pepper), seeded
4 snowpeas, trimmed
1 spring onion
2 dried shiitake mushrooms, reconstituted
1/2 stalk lemongrass
small handful of baby spinach
1 c. turkey broth (or chicken broth)
2 tsp. shaoxing rice wine
1 tsp. soy sauce
sesame seeds (optional, to serve)

In a pot, mix the turkey broth, rice wine, and soy sauce.  Bring to a boil.  Chop the lemongrass stalk into thin shreds and add to the soup.  Simmer 1-2 minutes.

Slice the char sui into 1/8 in. slices, then slice into bite-sized pieces.  Cut the sweet pepper into 1/4 in. strips and the mushrooms into 1/2 in. strips.  Add the peppers, mushrooms, and pork to the pot.  Simmer 1-2 minutes, or until the peppers are softened slightly.

Cut the spring onion into 1/2 in. pieces on the diagonal and the snowpeas in half on the diagonal.  Add the spring onion, baby spinach, and snowpeas to the pot and cook until the spinach has wilted and cooked down.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.