But the single-most important
food-related reason for me to love the winter season is because this
is the time when I can enjoy my favourite food. Soup. Any kind of
soup. From simple consommés, filled with rich flavours of
meats--dark red and steaming hot–to the thick broths with potatoes
and leeks, I love them all!
But the soup that holds a special place
in my heart, one that I've loved since I was a little—both in age
and size—is the kind of soup you get in an Asian (as in Far
Eastern) restaurant. It's the kind of soup where you put in
everything. As a cook, it's soup which makes my creativity shine. How
do you play with the flavours and not allow one to overwhelm the
other, and still have a dish where you can identify the flavours and
enjoy the combinations.
But enough about my romance of soup in
general, let's get on with the story of last weekend, when Delhi was
freezing and my soul was craving soup. Not just any soup, but a
large, meal-encompassing creation. So a friend of mine and I went
over to Gung for just that. A meal which consisted of just one soup,
along with a few shot glasses of sochu (a kind of Korean vodka) and
of course the little accompaniments which they serve up with every
meal. I look forward to this restaurant all summer long because the
food otherwise is too spicy for me to digest otherwise.
The soup which I had last Sunday was
beef bulgogi and octopus, but the thinly sliced beef grilled just
right and then thrown into the flavoursome broth and the octopus
which was cooked and cut with a pair of scissors right in front of us
was a little tough maybe, but that is only to be expected. It was the
vegetables,rice noodles and what I assume is the Korean version of
dumplings (like in European cuisine) which really took our meal to
another level.
What I find different about the soup is
the lack of the sweet edge, which I find in both Chinese and Japanese
food, and as a diabetic, this is most welcome. The other thing I
liked about the meal was that the soup was the hero of our meal. The
whole dish was spicy, but not in a way which burnt my tastebuds,
though it did make me break out into a sweat. It was a pity that the
small dishes of savouries which were served before had filled us up a
bit. Because I would have liked to have finished it all. I did enjoy
the warmth which spread over me all the way on my drive home. And
yes, the sochu did play its part.
