landing in a soup
Soup redeems the most miserable vegetable. - Mathew Engel
From a childhood variation of soup made from the extracts of meat or vegetables, and pressure-cooked with sliced onions, tomatoes, coriander, pepper, ginger, garlic, salt and clarified butter (desi ghee), or the more hallowed 'rasam' to the red and white trademark colors of a Campbell's soup can in adulthood, my relationship with soups have been sporadic but strong. Convalescing from an illness and missing the joys of being pampered by Mom with a hot bowl of soup in bed, I discovered Campbell's as an alternative source of food in Singapore. Whenever I was lazy to cook or just wished to try something different, the creamy, thick concentrate with real pieces of meat, made for a delicious and slightly exotic meal. However, after five continuous days of soup bingeing, I soon tired of it, and soups went back to their status of attending to the needs of an invalid alone.
The winter cold in Bangalore last year had me reaching for a packet of Knorr, but soup powder can never live up to the gooey, shivering mass that a Campbell tin throws up when opened. The red-colored, tomato-based soups belong to the nomadic masses, while the Tom Yam, apart from its eclectic nature, breathes a pungent gush into the sinuses, waking them up to the glory of tamarind, lemon grass and galangal. Sometimes, the effect went further down the gut and hit the belly with alcoholic-like knocks, leaving you wide awake.
Now for the soup that has a halo around it - the traditional Indian rasam from Tamil Nadu. The 'melagu rasam' or the 'parippu rasam', as my grandmother used to cook it, reminds me more of her and our maid-servant grinding pepper and garlic to a coarse, wet paste on a traditional 'ammikallu'. The sing-song grinding of the stones and the strong aroma of freshly ground pepper in the late mornings resonated with the ever-present wake-up calls of hunger. Made everyday and eaten at the end of every meal with disciplined attention and amidst much slurping, rasam helped clear not just the throat but also aided in easy digestion after a heavy meal. The freshly cut coriander leaves, floating at the top of the steaming brew, made for the perfect garnish, taking the dish to a rarefied level. I find my mouth watering even as I try to complete writing this paragraph.
Then, we have the Kerala 'ishtew' that somehow is more like soup with an overdose of roasted flour, but tasty all the same. Eaten with bread, its inventor definitely had Mediterranean taste buds.
Well, in a canshell, soups make being unwell a worthy exercise. Quite like what a hot cup of tea does to everyday life.
From a childhood variation of soup made from the extracts of meat or vegetables, and pressure-cooked with sliced onions, tomatoes, coriander, pepper, ginger, garlic, salt and clarified butter (desi ghee), or the more hallowed 'rasam' to the red and white trademark colors of a Campbell's soup can in adulthood, my relationship with soups have been sporadic but strong. Convalescing from an illness and missing the joys of being pampered by Mom with a hot bowl of soup in bed, I discovered Campbell's as an alternative source of food in Singapore. Whenever I was lazy to cook or just wished to try something different, the creamy, thick concentrate with real pieces of meat, made for a delicious and slightly exotic meal. However, after five continuous days of soup bingeing, I soon tired of it, and soups went back to their status of attending to the needs of an invalid alone.
The winter cold in Bangalore last year had me reaching for a packet of Knorr, but soup powder can never live up to the gooey, shivering mass that a Campbell tin throws up when opened. The red-colored, tomato-based soups belong to the nomadic masses, while the Tom Yam, apart from its eclectic nature, breathes a pungent gush into the sinuses, waking them up to the glory of tamarind, lemon grass and galangal. Sometimes, the effect went further down the gut and hit the belly with alcoholic-like knocks, leaving you wide awake.
Now for the soup that has a halo around it - the traditional Indian rasam from Tamil Nadu. The 'melagu rasam' or the 'parippu rasam', as my grandmother used to cook it, reminds me more of her and our maid-servant grinding pepper and garlic to a coarse, wet paste on a traditional 'ammikallu'. The sing-song grinding of the stones and the strong aroma of freshly ground pepper in the late mornings resonated with the ever-present wake-up calls of hunger. Made everyday and eaten at the end of every meal with disciplined attention and amidst much slurping, rasam helped clear not just the throat but also aided in easy digestion after a heavy meal. The freshly cut coriander leaves, floating at the top of the steaming brew, made for the perfect garnish, taking the dish to a rarefied level. I find my mouth watering even as I try to complete writing this paragraph.
Then, we have the Kerala 'ishtew' that somehow is more like soup with an overdose of roasted flour, but tasty all the same. Eaten with bread, its inventor definitely had Mediterranean taste buds.
Well, in a canshell, soups make being unwell a worthy exercise. Quite like what a hot cup of tea does to everyday life.