Cream of mushroom soup

When I was growing up in Hong Kong, my exposure to western food was limited. Sure, compared to China and other less developed countries in the world, our food scene was already much more cosmopolitan in its outlook. That said, as a little kid, my conception of western food consisted of KFC, McDonald's and Pizza Hut. I knew that there were steak houses but obviously I couldn't afford it! It was when I moved to England at 16 that I gradually got to know the diverse traditions and culture behinds the cuisines of Western Europe.

I also remember going to Pizza Hut was something of a family treat at weekends. Unfortunately, I didn't really like pizzas nor the salad bar there, so I would smuggle spicy chicken wings from KFC (which was in the same shopping centre CityPlaza) and indulge in them while the grown-ups were eating pizzas and salad. I could eat 18 wings at a time, btw! One item that I did enjoy at Pizza Hut, however, was their cream of mushroom soup. It was unlike any Chinese soup mum would make at home, and its creaminess and bold flavour were addictive for a kid. It also had bits of chicken in it I believe?

I stopped going to Pizza Hut a long time ago when I discovered how pizzas should be like, so the taste of their cream of mushroom soup is buried in a distant corner of my memory. I actually think that I probably wouldn't like it any more, but I do have my own version that I can resort to in moments of desperation. It's based on Simon Hopkinson's recipe, but I've streamlined the preparation somewhat. The large amount of mushrooms thickens the soup naturally after blending, so there is no need to make a roux or add any potato to the soup.

Christmas yule log

Noël, Noël!

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us”. Matthew 1:22-23

As an ex-Christian-turned-agnostic, my feeling towards Christmas is somewhat ambivalent. While I think that the claims of Christianity are probably untrue, I continue to be moved by the image of a God who is 'Emmanuel' - not the terrifying God of the Old Testament whose name is so holy that one cannot even utter his name - but a God who loves us so much that he became incarnate and lived amongst us. As Umberto Eco puts it so eloquently:

If I am a believer, I find it sublime that God asked his only son to sacrifice himself for the salvation of all mankind. That's what is specific to Christianity: it isn't the fact that Christianity spent 700 or 800 years debating whether Christ is endowed only with a divine nature, or only a human one, or both, or how many persons and wills he incarnated. Such questions seem to me to belong to a futile theological game, whereas what was really at stake was understanding of the following mystery: How could God have done that for us? But if I think that God does not exist, the the question becomes even more sublime: I have to ask myself how a section of humanity possessed enough imagination to invent a God who was made man and who allowed himself to die for the love of humanity. The fact that humanity could conceive of so sublime and paradoxical an idea, on which mankind's intimacy with the divine is founded, inspires me with great admiration for it. There's no doubt but that this same humanity has done some terrible things, but it was able none the less to invent this really extraordinary story, even if God himself does not exist.

Eco's words resonate with how I feel about Christianity in general: the idea of God becoming man is so paradoxical that, on the one hand I feel that it's the most sublime conception of God imaginable, and a pathetically anthropomorphic conception of the ultimate reality on the other.

The Nativity by Federio Barocci

In spite of any misgivings I might have about Christianity (and fundamentalist Protestantism in particular), every year during this season I cannot help but think of what a wondrous idea the Nativity is. It is in this season that (Christians believe) God is born among us and experiences what it is like to be human. No wonder Christianity still exerts such a magnetic hold on so many peoples even after two thousand years.

Please forgive me for ranting about religion in a food blog - but it is Christmas after all and we should all remember why we have this season in the first place, even for non-believers. Since I will not partake in the Church's celebration of the birth of its Saviour, the best offering I could put on the table is a Christmas yule log, which I'm told is the dessert served around Christmas-time in France. It is essentially a chocolate Swiss roll slathered with frosting and decorated like a tree trunk. There's no end to the possibilities of decorations for a bûche de Noël, and I'm sticking to meringue mushrooms as the only additional decoration, although I may try some crushed pistachios next year as well.

Merry Christmas to you all! May this season be filled with joy, peace and traquillity and may we be thankful for the miracle that we are living in.

A more artistic rendition I made last Christmas...

Meringue mushrooms

It's Christmas season! It's advent in the liturgical year of the Church, and even though I'm a retired Christian, it is by far still my favourite season of the year. I feel a heightened awareness of the blessings in our lives and it's not difficult to see an abundance of joy everywhere in this season of festivities.

I like to make Christmas yule logs in this season even though it's a lot of work (and therefore has to remain a once-a-year undertaking), and one of the funniest elements involved is making meringue mushrooms. I was transfixed by their look the first time I saw them: I had no clue how it could be done. Even though I do a lot of baking, I'm more into the actual mixing of batters and doughs and I'm not really into decorations and piping. Since last year I have been inflicting my friend Hitomi to pipe these meringue mushrooms for me - I mix the batter and she pipes, and I assembled the stems and caps to form mushrooms.

This recipe is from the chocolate guru Alice Medrich. Her instructions on how to make them are fantastic and I'm quoting them almost ad verbatim here. I love her addition of coffee to the meringue to give them some actual flavour other than pure sweetness too. I did however reduce the sugar to make them less tooth-achingly sweet...

Steamed chicken with shiitake mushrooms 北菇蒸雞

The fifth element

If you ask people how many flavours there are in food, they would usually come up with four: sweet, sour, bitter and salty (spiciness is actually a pain, believe it or not!). In the early 20th century, a Japanese scientist by the name of Kikunae Ikeda (池田菊苗) claimed that there's actually a fifth element in food: the umami flavour (うま味/鮮味). It's the deeply savoury, mouth-watering flavour that we associate with great savoury dishes. In a sense, is the flavour of flavour. It's distinct from plain saltiness, but a long-lasting 'flavourfulness' that literally make us salivate. By the way, research has shown that breast milk is the first taste of umami that humans encounter and is extremely rich in glutamates.

Interestingly, umami doesn't taste of anything on its own, but magnifies other savoury flavours and give a synergistic effect. Humans implicitly recognised this long ago and different cultures across the globe must have have been exploiting food rich in umami flavours since time immemorial. Foods rich in umami include fish, shellfish, cured meat (think bacon!) and certain vegetables (tomatoes and leek?). Fermented food, in particular, has long been used to give 'body' to savoury dishes. In East-Asian cooking soya sauce and fish sauce (nuoc nam) are absolutely indispensable, and they contribute depth of flavour to a dish in a way that salt cannot. Not to mention other Asian specialities like Korean kimchi, Japanese miso, etc!

Compared to Asian cooking, it seems that western cooking employs less fermented stuff for seasoning. Sure, there's cheese, wine, bacon and all that, but they're not used as basic seasonings. Interestingly, people in ancient Greece and Rome did use a kind of fermented fish sauce (garum) in their cooking. For reasons unknown to me, its use gradually died out in western cooking. I think it's for this reason - the lack of a basic seasoning that's rich in umami - that classical French cuisine relies heavily on reduction for distilling flavours. Despite its great sophistication, it is extremely time-consuming too.