Interesting new journal

I use a piece of kombu in my beans, and make dashi and miso fairly often, so this article about flavor in seaweed was really interesting to me.

Flavour

Which for some reason reminds me of my very first serious cooking moment, my friend Tammy and I often went out to eat at Chinese restaurants with my parents, ethnic back then meant either Vescios or a Chinese restaurant.  One day over at her house we decided to recreate egg drop soup.  We boiled some water, "dropped" the beaten eggs in, and added salt.  We showed her mom Pauline, one of the great cooking influences of my life, who suggested we start with broth and gave us some stock cubes.  I am pretty sure Tammy and I trashed their kitchen that day making batch after batch of egg drop soup.  The idea that I could eat something made by a "real" cook, think about it, and then recreate it was born at that moment.  I can't remember when Tammy and her family moved from that house across the street, but we were pretty young, and that memory is definitely in the old house kitchen.

One of my other favorite memories of food and that kitchen is the wild grape vines that grew up the power pole in the back yard.  When the grapes were ripe Pauline would call the power company to come cut down the vines, and then she would make grape jelly I can't eat grape jelly without smelling the grapes boiling in that kitchen in the angling late summer light and the feel of the open windows and the giant grape vine mess in the back yard.

Egg Drop Soup


A very small step up from the original kitchen egg drop soup:

Heat some flavorful chicken broth, taste for salt and pepper, and add a few drops of rice vinegar, gluten free Tamari, and sesame oil.  You could add some red pepper flakes if you wanted to be fancy.

Beat a few eggs in a measuring cup.  With the soup at a simmer gently stir the soup while pouring the egg in in a thin stream.

Put the soup in bowls and garnish with finely sliced green onions and perhaps a drop more of sesame oil.

I think I am going to teach my children how to make egg drop soup later today.