Soup of the Day

I love soups. Be it in what style of cooking or flavour i just love it's aroma, it's taste, it's....fluidity. Haha and yes i was inspired to write this shit while enjoying a bowl of rassam earlier today. Throughout the centuries man all around the world have been known to cook their food by boiling them. The end result of the stock is heavenly taste of soup. One of the easiest foods to prepare and yet one of the tastiest, soup making is all in the stock. The type of ingredients and proportion of it is very important in order to create the ideal soup. Too much of something might overpower the smell of the soup while a deficiency might render the soup tasteless. And there's nothing better than a bowl of piping hot soup to warm your innards on a cold night. So here are the top 5 soups that i will have anytime, anywhere, at any weather.

5. Onion soup. This one here goes well with a little cheese and bread baked together at the top of the bowl. It's simple yet a very satisfying appetiser to whet your appetite. The perfect onion soup is best done when the onions are fried or grilled first until soft and brown and then added into the stock. This will not only give the soup a nice clear brown colour, but will enrich the stock further with the oil from the onion itself. Recommended places, TGI and the Eden. They serve the BEST kickarse onion soup at exorbitant prices. Way to go in fine dining.

4. Cream of mushroom. Now i'm not talking about any plain shitass Campbell cream of mushroom. I'm talking about the real homecooked, self-made, fresh cream CREAM OF MUSHROOM soup. Not some Camp-Lei-Lou-Mou-Bell that comes in a gooey paste and you have to heat it over a pan while mixing with a bit of water to bring out an obvious but distasteful tang to the tongue. The mushrooms used must also be fresh and most preferably button mushrooms. A combination of both white and brown mushrooms will do good for both are the antiflavour of one another; white giving out the sweet flavour while the brown a little bit on the bitter side. The bits of mushroom too cannot be too small so that the taster will be able to chew on a bit of the mushrooms to verify it's freshness.

3. And of course how could i forget ABC soup. This is a famous chinese soup prepared by lazy housewives that do not wish to spend a great deal in the kitchen to whip up something extravagant. And believe me it's easy when i say it's easy. Step one: throw in everything into a pot and boil. Step 2: Enjoy. There's no method here, only common sense. The basic ingredients are usually potatoes, carrots, onions, a little bit of cabbage, tomatoes, and a basic chicken stock. Of course the stock will have to be prepared earlier in advance but even the most novince of cooks will know how to prepare simple chicken stock. And it is best taken piping hot with a LOT of pepper added to it.

2. One of the most common soups in southern cuisine; rassam. This soup still remains a mystery to me as i'm still not able to find out the recipe for this heavenly brew. The smell might be a bit pungent and the taste a little sour, but this soup is an acquired taste. Get the hang of it and you'll be begging for more. Sometimes i feel that this soup is a gift from the queen of spice herself as the soup is so enriched and heavily spiced. Cinnamon, corriander leaves, star anise, poppy seeds, garlic, onion, ginger and "buah pala" are just some of the spices to name a few. But the end result is a tasty yet addictive broth that is not only enjoyed over a meal but also commonly used to treat colds and flus.

And of course...the top soup recipe in the menu. This one i would say would be a joint tie between 2 soups. But bear in mind, the main ingredient is the same thing. And it's non halal. Hahaha, joint leaders in my soup list are the pork stomach soup and none other than Malaysia's own Bak Kut Teh soup. Both made out from pork as the main stock and boiled over a series of chinese herbs, both these soups have become a delicacy in the Malaysian society as well as to international tourists. The pork stomach soup is pork stomach steamed over some stock and mixed with a lot of pepper granules to mask the smell of the belly. The soup is then added with other ingredients to enchance the flavour such as chicken meat, squid, dried mussels and some herbs to bring out the best in chinese cuisine. Bak Kut Teh soup was originally derived by the early chinese miners as a quick breakfast. The miners would mix their rice and pork meat with their chinese tea and down it in a great gusto. It was only much later that some smart genius decided to properly boil the meat with a series of herbs over a claypot and thus giving birth to the Bak Kut Teh that we all know today. Simple, but yet irresistable to many around. So...what's YOUR soup of the day?