One Fleeting Moment

This week's soup (a curried carrot one) comes to us from the book Modern Spice by Monica Bhide by way of Singapore. Our good friends, Ishani and Niranjan moved there a couple of years back and have been enjoying the lovely island in all its squeaky clean glory ever since. And in between all the tropical fun and adventure, Ishani tried out the carrot soup recipe from Monica Bhide's book. She liked what she cooked and being a great friend she mailed us the recipe along with a picture.

So I took four bone-in chicken thighs, a couple of carrots, some onion, some aromatics (spices, ginger, garlic, bay leaf, pepper corns...whatever) and covered it all with water and let it simmer. Once the chicken was cooked, I strained the liquid - that would be chicken stock, for you. Then I let the chicken cool down and then shredded it for adding to stir fries later. I gave the carrots to the baby who was happy to eat them and the rest of the stuff- well you just throw it.

Now, with a box (or can) of good chicken broth, the possibilities are endless. In our case we made egg drop soup following the instructions mentioned here. This is not your standard Chinese take out egg drop soup. For starters it is not bright yellow in color. The soy sauce and ginger in the broth turn it a mild shade of brown. Also, in our case this was more scrambled egg than egg drop. Maybe our eggs were larger or are technique was not quite right. But it was mighty fine for a first attempt. We do intend to try it again but with half the quantity of eggs. And the next time around we might fry up a batch of the yellow crisps that come with the egg drop soup at Chinese restaurants.

You grow up, you move away and those little rituals of family life - well, you miss them sometimes (when the food in the canteen is really bad) but slowly and steadily you adjust. You adjust to a new life, new people and a new way of living. You form your own little rituals - the Sunday morning pancake breakfast with room mates or a Friday evening Happy Hour. Somewhere along the way, you get married and start afresh. You discuss your family rituals like that weekly cake with the better half and describe an elo-jhelo with great relish. And when that pang of nostalgia hits, you promise to bake yourself a cake every week and you do. At least for the first few weeks, till life takes over. A few more years down the line when you have a baby and and a lot of sleepless nights to mull things over, you come to see these traditions for what they are - little rituals that remind you of home. Through the mindless repetition of these mundane activities over years, you form associations. Associations strong enough to survive through the years and across geographical boundaries. Jasmine blossoms remind you of hot, muggy evenings which in turn brings up memories of cool glasses of orange squash. To this day, the smell of incense and the sound of the shaank never fails to remind you to start working on that homework for school.

And that is why, you procure a shaank and set up a little shrine. That is why you light that incense and blow the shaank in the evenings. That is why you try to cook up a big breakfast on weekends and a cake every now and then. That is why you try to make her eat rice and dal when she would rather have pasta. Not because you are afraid that she may grow up loving mac n'cheese*, but because when you are long gone and she is in a place far, far away, you hope the smell of ghee melting into a bowl of hot rice reminds her of you, of home, of childhood.

Nah, never mind. I decided to try out the lentil soup after all. Something about the flavor combinations was screaming delicious and I just could not wait for winter to come by.

It is hard to mess up a tomato soup when you have decent tomatoes at hand. I did not, so I did the next best thing. I roasted some grape tomatoes under the broiler along with some garlic and made soup out of the resulting mess.

Nah!

I have had better tomato soups and I will wait for good summer tomatoes before trying again.