soups

i like to drink soup. i think i got my fetish when i was a young boy growing up under my grandmother's care back in taiwan. she made the BEST 酸辣汤 (hot and sour soup) in the whole world. there was lots of 料 (ingredients) inside, and the balance between the hot and the sour was just perfect. i could consume one whole cauldron of it in a single sitting...and that was as a 6-year old kid who had only got his teeth a few years before that.

the best part about soups is its' ability to warm up your entire body almost instantaneously after consumption. when i went to the states, i missed my grandmother's soup so much that i disturbed my mother on endless occasions to learn the secret, but she never could achieve the similar high that i would get after drinking my grandmother's recipe. (btw, that's not an insult to my mother's cooking, cuz she can conjur up majical taiwanese feasts as well, but the soup just wasn't the same.) eventually, i evolved and started satisfying my soupy cravings with my mother's 猪肚汤 (pig stomach soup) instead.

naturally, living in the states meant that i was forced to eat ang moh food most of the time when i wasn't at home...so i developed another love in the form of clam chowder. and it had to be new england clam chowder. the thick kind with lots of clams and potatoes and 料 (ingredients) inside. i would add lots and lots of black pepper to spice things up a bit...kinda like asian style...and drink it by the bucketfuls. i remember when my family went to boston, where they have the authentic stuff everywhere, my dad and i went bonkers and had it every single day during the 5 day visit. my mom and siblings practically had to drag us away from the bowls. lovely.

singapore has most of the soups listed above...but somehow, they didn't taste as good as the real stuff. so i figured i should try the local delights and found yet another soup that was worthy of my taste buds. mutton soup (the greenish colour ones found normally in indian / malay stalls) soon became a firm favourite of mine, even though it was the most fattening of all soups. almost everynight when we went for supper at the prata shop next to fong seng's behind nus, i would pamper myself with a bowl of the oily stuff.

rain or shine, soups always make my day. i think i'll have my daily dose for lunch later. i love soups. =)

**update**
i forgot another soup favourite of mine that definitely deserves mention. you've never tasted tom yum soup until you've actually had the real mccoy in thailand. the best place the i had this siamese version of 酸辣汤 was in chiangmai, when i visited my good friend fye, who's studying there. to cut a long story short, i've actually posted about this incident a few months ago...anyway, the tom yum soup there is very different from the stuff they serve here. basically it's much more yummy. it's thicker, it has more zing to it...and i don't know, maybe it was just the scenery and the company as well lah...which just made it the best tom yum soup experience in my life. thanks fye, for being there...albeit as a translator. hahaha. =)