Ingredients assembled
It’s easy to feel uninspired in the kitchen. We put the same things on our grocery lists every week. We have that endless, “What do you want for dinner?” conversation over and over and then rely on the same take out places to take over when we can’t be bothered to cook. But is that unavoidable? Are we meant to approach our kitchen like a player in a mundane routine? I say no, and I say there’s Rule #3 to help us rekindle our kitchen romance; something I like to call Indulging in a Little Kitchen Travel. Make something you’ve never heard of or from a place far away. Use ingredients whose names you can’t pronounce. Get into those isles of the store you usually skip. Taste the world!
In one of these funks recently, I decided to experiment with a dish of Hot and Sour Mushroom Soup. Ok, I’ll admit this isn’t really that odd. I’ve just only ever had Thai eating out and this is the very first time making this kind of thing myself. Lemongrass, Kaffir limes, Woodear mushrooms. All new to me.
procedures followed
The recipe I followed (from The Daily Soup Cookbook) as pretty simple as far as it’s construction and procedure. Soups are great this way: with some variation, you mostly just chop everything up, sizzle the good stuff, add spice then let it simmer in delicious broth until ready. This wasn’t much different except that the only wild Chinese mushrooms I could find were dried so I had to re-hydrate them first. I also had to look up web videos of how to prepare lemongrass. The internet is, after all, an ingredient I feel totally OK adding when necessary. Seriously, you can watch someone peel a celery root, read about the origin of vinegar, get the common names for exotic spices all within a few clever searches.
Results achieved
I’ll admit right off that this one wasn’t an easy-prep soup, but the results were, well, hot and sour and full of mushrooms. My pallet is used to the more French provencal spice set, or a ginger and garlic base, but this was totally different. Literally the taste is spicy hot and bitter sour with chunks of veg and chicken. I won’t say it’s my favorite, but it introduced me to adding zucchini to soup as well as a few new cooking techniques. But, best of all, making this gave me a chance to break routine and do a little overseas kitchen travel.
Jazz Kitchen 