soup

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What's the soup of your childhood? The one that your mother made for you when you had a cold, needed cheering up, or just as a treat? For me, there's no question: it's corn cream soup.

Corn cream soup (and yes, it's called like that, not 'cream of corn soup' or 'creamed corn soup') belongs to the _yohshoku_ category of Japanese home cooking. It's an old fashioned, milk based potage, with creamed corn in it. It smells milky, and tastes sweet and savory. It's loved by Japanese kids.

Now, while my mother was a pretty good cook generally, she did have trouble getting some things right. Her curry for instance was always rather watery. And her corn cream soup, instead of being silky smooth, always had little lumps of undissolved roux. I loved those little lumps though - they tasted like tiny dumplings. Later on when I started to make my own corn cream soup I followed recipes, so my corn cream came out smooth and lumpless. That was fine, but I missed the lumps from my childhood memories. So, I incorporated them back.

Everyone uses canned corn to make a corn cream soup. You can be fancy and use fresh, but that lifts this humble soup into the realm of gourmet special-occasion big deal cooking, which is not what my memories are about at all. I have adjusted the usual way of making this soup by using whole corn rather than creamed, since whole corn cans have more actual corn in them and I suspect less added sugar, and I like the mixture of crushed/creamed and whole corn kernels. Besides, creamed corn cans are unheard of here in Switzerland.

Filed under:  japanese soup yohshoku

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The theme of the elimination challenge in the most recent Top Chef was to create an adult version of childhood comfort food. The winning combo, created by Betty, was a variation of the classic pairing of cream of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich. Instead of just tomatoes, she added roasted red peppers to the soup, and instead of just cheese, she put grilled portobello mushrooms in the sandwich.

Filed under:  lighter soup top chef vegetables sandwich retro

misosoupbowls.jpg The top black bowl is resin; the bottom two are real lacquered bowls.

Filed under:  equipment japanese soup miso

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Filed under:  japanese soup fish miso

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Today's miso soup may not look like miso soup, but it does have miso in it. It shows how to use miso as a background flavoring, instead of the predominant one. Since it has milk and a little butter in it, I've called it Hokkaido style after the northenmost main island in the archipelago that makes up Japan.

Filed under:  japanese soup chicken miso

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Filed under:  japanese soup vegetables miso

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Filed under:  japanese soup potatoes seaweed

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Continuing my series on Japanese home cooking, this week I would like to introduce different kinds of miso soup. Miso soup (misoshiru) is one of the key parts of a Japanese meal. Another kind of soup that is served often is a clear soup called osumashi, but the miso soup base is more adaptable to all kinds of variations.

Filed under:  japanese soup miso

Posted by Max

Breadsoup

In the small household I grew up, there was always an issue with bread. Either it was gone because it was fresh and very good, or it was not that fresh anymore, and stayed until stale. To clear up this stale bread, my mother made a simple soup out of it. This simple recipe fits very well in Is My Blog Burning, edition 25, hosted by Derrick Schneider's An Obsession with Food.

Filed under:  bread soup imbb leftovers

Despite being discouraged by the previous day's ingredients, day 23 revived my interest. The ingredients are:

Filed under:  masterchef soup mushrooms savory pie chicken

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