An Exaltation of Soups (9 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
4 cups Japanese Soup Stock
(
dashi
)
4 Napa cabbage leaves, or
hakusai,
stems removed, leaves cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons red
(aka)
miso
8 small hard-shell clams (ideally
, asari
clams), removed from their shells and washed in salty water (leave them in the water until you’re ready to cook them)
O
P
REPARE
1. Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list. Make the
dashi
broth as explained or dilute
hon-dashi
stock granules in 4 cups broth.
2. Heat the serving bowls, in the oven if they are porcelain, or by filling them with hot water if they’re lacquer.
O
C
OOK
1. In a large saucepan, heat the
dashi
over medium heat to a slow boil. Stir in the cabbage and cook, covered, for 5 minutes.
2. Pour about ½ cup of the hot liquid into a small bowl and whisk the miso into it to soften.
3. Add the clams to the hot soup and let cook a minute, uncovered. Strain the miso mixture into the pan and take the pan off the heat immediately.
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into the heated bowls, placing two clams in each, and serve immediately. It’s nice to have lids for the bowls so your new mother can be delighted by both the beauty of the presentation and the fragrance of the soup when she uncovers the bowl.
G
AZING INTO THE
H
EART OF
M
ISO
S
OUP
I was once invited to a tea ceremony where miso was served. And when I saw the muddy, claylike color, quiet in a black lacquer bowl beneath the faint light of a candle, this soup that I usually take without a second thought seemed somehow to acquire a real depth, and to become infinitely more appetizing as well.
—J
UNICHIRO
T
ANIZAKI
,
twentieth-century Japanese novelist
W
HAT ON
E
ARTH
I
S
M
ISO
?
Miso is a fermented soybean paste that actually comes in different varieties, each with its own aroma and flavor, color, and texture. But all types of miso are made the same way: by smashing boiled soybeans and letting them ferment in cedar vats with either wheat, barley, or rice that has been cultured with yeast mold. The miso “matures” for months—even up to three years. Red miso is made with barley and is savory and good for winter soups. Rice-mold misos
(shiromiso)
are yellow and white, relatively light and sweet. The third type of miso is made with bean
koji
and is dark and thick. Miso can last up to a year, refrigerated.
Miso soups evolved in the twelfth century when, with the rise of the powerful Shogun in Kamakura, epicurean Buddhist monks lost their powerful Imperial protectors in Kyoto and forsook their fancy ways. New “common man” Buddhist sects, led by Honen and Nichiren, preached the virtues of a simple diet and discouraged harming any living thing, including fish. These monks encouraged people to eat simple vegetable meals: rice (or barley/millet), salt-pickled vegetables, and miso soup, the last made with a seaweed-only broth.
OREA
CLEAR SEAWEED SOUP
MALGUN MIYOK KUK
Serves 4, or 1 mom in the course of a day
THIS NUTRITIOUS SOUP
is prescribed for a new mother three or four times a day for twenty-one straight days! It can be simple—a beef and kelp soup seasoned lightly with garlic, soy sauce, and green onion—or it can be rich and complex, made with chicken stock, chicken, tofu, and sesame oil, as more of a celebration dish that can also traditionally commemorate a child’s birthday.
Malgun miyok kuk
is a pretty soup—thick with beef and meaty seaweed, fragrant with sesame and oil, all in a light but rich-tasting broth.
1 ounce dried brown
miyok (wakame)
seaweed
½ pound boneless beef shoulder or flank steak, thinly sliced, then cut into thick strips 2 inches long
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon peanut oil
1 green onions, cut lengthwise, then into 2-inch lengths, including white and some green
4 cups (1 quart) water
Cooked white rice (optional)
1 green onion, minced, for garnish
T
IP:
partially frozen meat is very easy to slice.
O
P
REPARE
1. Soak the seaweed in warm water for 30 minutes.
2. Prep the remaining ingredients as directed in the recipe list, to include making the rice if you plan to serve it.
3. Mix the beef strips with the garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil and let marinate until the seaweed is ready to be cooked.
4. When the seaweed has rehydrated, scrub it under running water, rinse, drain, lay it flat, and use scissors to cut it into 2-inch squares, discarding the hard center stalks.
O
C
OOK
In a large saucepan, heat the peanut oil over high heat, then fry the beef mixture and green onions for a minute, letting the beef brown on all sides. Stir in the drained seaweed pieces, followed by the water, and bring to a boil over high heat (it will foam a bit). Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into the new mother’s bowl and sprinkle with minced green onion. The soup can be reheated for subsequent servings during the day or, if you are serving it to others, ladled evenly among four bowls, sprinkled with minced green onion, and served with white rice on the side.
T
HE
S
AMSHINSANG
In ancient times, after first bathing a newborn, a new Korean mother would make a
samshinsang
—an altar for the three divine Shaman beings—in a corner of her room, close to her head, and make offerings of white rice and
malgun miyok kuk
on it. This showed respect and gratitude to the three gods who so strongly influenced fertility in the family, not to mention the health of the fetus from conception to birth.
P
ROVERBIALLY NOT IN THE
S
CHEME OF
T
HINGS
When Koreans talk about doing something impossible, they say, “Ask a woman to give birth to a child she has not conceived.”
M
ARVELOUS
M
IYOK
Miyok
is considered to act as a powerful blood cleanser and bone strengthener. This seaweed is abundant off all sides of Korea’s peninsula, and so has always been available even to the poorest families. When my Korean grocer helped me sort through his aisle-long display of seaweeds to find it, he couldn’t disguise his curiosity. “You know how to make it?” he asked me with an amused look. “Tell me,” I said. “Wash it,” he said. “Cut it and put it to soak. Get good beef. Not pork, only beef! Cook with sesame and garlic. I don’t know if you’ll like!” “Do
you
like it?” I asked. He blew his lips impatiently: “Of course,” he said. “All Koreans like it.”
UERTO
R
ICO
SPICED CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
SOPA DE FIDEOS Y POLLO
Serves 4
T
HIS
SOPA
is comforting to look at—a study of creams and whites, nothing jarring—thick and rich, intensely chicken, and so nicely tasty that you just want to follow one spoonful with the next one until the whole bowl is gone. Not only is the dish used to strengthen new mothers and heal the sick, it is also one of the first solid foods given to Puerto Rican babies.
1 pound boneless raw chicken, cut into bite-size pieces
Adobo
seasoning to taste
4 cups (1 quart) Chicken Stock
¼ cup
recaíto
2 tablespoons short-grain white rice
1¼ cups peeled and diced potatoes
1 cup angel hair pasta broken into short lengths
2 sprigs fresh cilantro
Salt and white pepper to taste
O
P
REPARE
1. Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list, and make the
adobo
and
recaíto
, if necessary.
2. Sprinkle the
adobo
on the chicken and let marinate for a few minutes.
O
C
OOK
1. Bring the stock,
recaíto
, and seasoned chicken bits slowly to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the rice, potatoes, pasta, and cilantro sprigs, and bring back to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and let simmer until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes.
2. Remove the cilantro sprigs, and season with the salt and white pepper.
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into bowls and serve immediately.
P
UERTO
R
ICAN
S
OUP
T
RADITIONS
Puerto Rico was discovered by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World. It’s no surprise, then, that its cuisine is a combination of
cocina criolla
—native cookery—plus all the influences brought from the Old World by African slaves, Europeans, and even Chinese (who were shipped in as plantation labor after slavery was abolished). Soup was often the main meal in slave or indentured-servant days, as workers would pool all their available food bits in the morning in one
caldero
and cook them over a coal fire until lunch break, at which point they’d sit down and serve it out. Soup is commonly served as the first course of dinner in Puerto Rico, followed by rice, beans, and a meat dish.
C
AN’T
F
IND
P
UERTO
R
ICAN
S
EASONINGS AT
Y
OUR
L
OCAL
G
ROCERY
? T
HEY’RE
E
ASY TO
M
AKE
.
A
DOBO:
mix 1 tablespoon garlic powder, 1 tablespoon onion powder, 1 tablespoon oregano powder, and ½ tablespoon each salt and white pepper. Makes ¼ cup.
R
ECAÍTO:
puree in a blender ¼ diced onion, 1 garlic clove, ½ small sweet green pepper, 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro, and 2 recao leaves (or substitute 1 more tablespoon fresh cilantro as this herb is like cilantro but stronger in flavor). Makes ½ cup.
