Inspired by Asian Soup

I grew up in small town Ontario in the 50s and 60s. Fish and chips or Kentucky Fried Chicken were take-out treats, rare, and certainly not our usual home-cooked meals. Pizza was new on the scene. Chinese food was strange but tasty once you mastered the words on the menu. Yes, it was a sheltered life. Over the years, Jim and I have become conversant with foods from Italy, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea. We have dipped into Indian and Fijian cuisines. We’ve eaten German, Jewish, Polynesian, Mayan specialties. Delicious. Exotic. Flavourful.

I reflect on the origins of ethnic foods. People groups ate what they could find. Coastal people collected seafood including seaweed. Prairie people raised beef and grew wheat. The cuisine in northern countries could feature cabbage, green peas and mutton. Cuisine in a hot climate leans into spicy peppers, tomatoes, and avocados. All of these illustrate the ancestral way of eating what grows well locally. Our ethnic cuisine is a product of our terroir, we could say. What’s more, I’ve come to appreciate that our bodies are best served by foods that are a natural part of our heritage.

I’m no expert on Asian cooking so I’m not about to tell you how to make an authentic Asian recipe. What I want to talk about is the concept, the absolute rightness of Asian soups — maybe not as they exist in our present times, but as they were conceived and refined in the traditional cultures.

In a documentary about foraging, I listened to a young woman from South-east Asia who married and came to America. She told how she had to learn the strange behaviour of buying food from a grocery store. In her culture, the women daily went out to the edge of the jungle to gather ingredients for their meals. Fresh, natural, free, abundant, and local.

Back here, at home in coastal British Columbia, the season of harvesting begins to unfurl. I have small amounts of this and that. Side shoots from a broccoli plant that is left to grow after the head has been cut. A handful of sugar snap peas. A leaf or two of kale. Curly garlic scapes needing to be removed so they don’t take energy away from bulb production. Some bunching onions. The outer leaves of the first cabbage. In the fridge are a piece of carrot, a few mushrooms and a little leftover rice. This, I’m sure, is how the Asian soups evolved.

So instead of trimming off the small broccoli leaves or composting the pleasant tasting but tougher outside leaves of the cabbage, I will use them in my soup. A few edible volunteers – wild amaranth and lambsquarters are perfect to use now; later on they will be too big or too buggy. Small amounts of what is on hand all enhance the flavour, and more importantly, the nutrition.

• • Collect all the vegetables and cut them into pieces – chunky, not small.
  • In a pot, heat up some homemade broth, say four cups.
  • Add about a teaspoonful of Thai curry paste, a little fish oil, and some coconut aminos or soy sauce.
  • Bring the stock to a boil. Add the vegetables and cook for seven minutes.
  • In the last minute of cooking, you can add some bits of cooked meat – rotisserie chicken or roasted sausage for example.
  • Pour the soup into bowls then place a cilantro leaf on the surface because heating up fresh cilantro can destroy the flavour. (Did I just hear someone cheering?)

That's it. Delicious, nutritious, practically free soup to build your health and bring joy to your heart.

What would you add? Write a comment to share your inspirations.