My take on a hot and sour/tom yum soup

So I've been a long time fan of soups in general. And while I love the very classic, msg ridden, American-Chinese dish - Hot and Sour. I've spent years revamping it. The soup itself is very resilient and makes for a great tapestry to paint flavor with.
When I lived in Korea, some of the ingredients were limited, for instance I only found celery once the entire time over there. So I ended up using chopped cabbage instead.
Any long story short, feel free to experiment. I posted this just to give you some basic guidelines to start. Enjoy!

Cook time: 1 hour
Serves: 2

INGREDIENTS
14.5 ounces of chicken broth (1 can - feel free to use vegetable broth if so desired)
14.5 ounces of water
1 tsp of pepper
1 tsp of ginger powder
1 tsp of white pepper
.5 tsp of cayenne pepper (to taste - beware it is spicy)
2 tbsp of rice vinegar
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1/3 cup of diced mushrooms (I prefer shittake or oyster but button mushrooms work fine)
1 clove of garlic crushed
.5 yellow onion chopped
1 stalk of celery
1 carrot (shredded - I usually use a vegetable peeler to make this happen)
1 egg
1 cup of chicken or tofu diced

Combine chicken broth, pepper, white pepper, ginger, and cayenne pepper into a medium sized sauce pan. Turn heat to medium and let the mixture start to simmer. Meanwhile chop, crush and dice your vegetables. Once the water is simmering you want to add the celery first, wait five minutes, then add your onions and garlic, wait three minutes and add your shredded carrots, and finally after another few minutes add your mushrooms.

If using chicken, be sure to cook thoroughly in a frying pan while simmering your vegetables. Once the chicken is white all the way through and its juices are running clear, you can dice it and add it to the soup almost whenever.

Likewise if you are using tofu, you can fry it up first to give it texture, or you can crumble it and combine it with your soup from the get-go. It really all comes down to preference when you using tofu.

After you've added the chicken to the mixture, add the water, soy sauce, and rice vinegar. Bring the water back to a boil and let sit for 3 minutes while you scramble the egg.

Remove the soup from heat and wait one minute. Slowly drizzle the egg into the soup while stirring.