The tastes of home, anywhere we go, if we got soup, then, we’re, all, all right, aren’t we??? Translated…
Because of the outbreaks, we all started, cooking at home more, and, there are more of those who are, showing off their cooking skills on the YouTube Channels now too; there was a fans group that started up because of this in Hong Kong, not gloating about the tasty, the yummy foods, but of ones’ own, or one’s families’ cooking failures, other than making fun, these also, reflected on the problems that the separate families are experiencing, the economic troubles, the matters of long-term care, with the laughter, also the tears too.
There were a few posts of those displaced from home feeling homesick, they’re not used to the soups in Taiwan, and missed the soups prepared in Hong Kong with the slow fire. After all, the Cantonese are really into getting their nutritious value intakes from the liquids, a lot of people after school or work, they’d listened to their moms, drink a bowl of soup, then, do what they would in their, regular, routines. The usual soups included: chicken with peas and peanuts, the pork shank soups; and there’s the dried vegetables, the octopuses, the mushrooms, the fish, pear, and apples added in, a ton of, possible, variations, focusing on what the body needs differently through the four seasons.
Because mom is from Taiwan, we’d not had that much soup like normal families in Hong Kong, and, she’d made the soups in-between the styles of Taiwan and Hong Kong; and so, when the “soup of the day” gets served at the restaurants, I’d silently called out “yay!”
When I was young, going to my maternal grandmother’s, I’d known of the traditional types of soups in Taiwan, sliced ginger with clams, loofa soup, bamboo shoot soup, meatball soup, and daikon soups, etc., etc., etc., they’d tasted quite different from the soups cooked on slow fire in Hong Kong. The key difference lies in the fire power, a lot of the Taiwanese style soups are cooked to broil, as the water broiled, it’s, ready to consume, which I’d gotten used to already, every place has a different style of cooking the soups; but, as I saw how in the fans group, people described the soups served in Taiwan as “clam water, meatball water”, I can’t help, but chuckle. (do forgive them, for these, “insults”, it’s difference in taste, and style, and what “soup” mean!), and of course, there are those soups that helps the body recoup, like the ginger with the old duck, sesame oil chicken, the Chinese herbs with pork ribs, a whole other, category of, soups.
take your pick!
There are all kinds of soups across the diets of the world, there’s no need to define them one by one. There are the butter based soup in the west, that are, thick to the taste. I’d preferred the Marseille fish soup, it’s just, that a lot of the places made it, a bit, saltier than I liked. The soups don’t need to be cold, as I’d stayed in Span, I’d loved the Salmorejo frozen soup, with the tomatoes, added in the aged bread, olive oils, blended in, with the hard-broiled eggs, and the specialty ham pieces, cooked in no more than ten minutes. In the summers that heated up to forty-degrees, it’d felt, especially, appetizing. And, as I’d tried making it from the locally grown tomatoes in Hong Kong, it’d, never, tasted, quite right, the European grown tomatoes would do the trick.
While I’d gone to Poland, the servings of foods are quite huge. All the restaurants had the soup of the day, Zurek, the base, made from a mixture of fermented black wheat flour with water and regular flour, with the vegetables like carrots, celeries, Polish sausages, garlic, hard-broiled eggs, potatoes, etc., etc., etc., hearing the ingredients, it’d, made you, feel, full already; a lot of the restaurants used the breads as the bowls, and we could drink the soups, and eat its, containers on the way to finishing up the soups. The first time I’d tasted, it was, a bit, sourer than I’d liked, I’d drunk half of the bowl, and, only a couple of bites of the bread, and I was, full, but the locals can still order up the entrées, as well as the desserts too.
The effects of soups are, a wonder, not necessarily with a ton of ingredients, best served hot in the hand, warming us from the inside, and it can, rouse up the memories of long ago. A hot bowl of soup, that’s, the BEST salvation on a winter’s, night.
So, this is on the “purpose” of soup, I suppose, soups are to warm us up, and each place has a different specialty, and we all have our, preferences in these soups that’s tied to our memories, our preferences, etc., etc., etc.