will travel for soup (and potatoes)

joining James’s Food Question Challenge, this was a fun trip down culinary lanes ✈️🍲

what was your favourite food growing up?

hands down, my gran’s legendary pots of soup, especially her lentil and vegetable soups. like everything she cooked or baked, it was almost entirely effortless; she’d throw together whatever she had on hand, dart in and out of the kitchen while busy multitasking 50 other things, and voilà! best meal you’ve ever had.

to this day, giving me some soup is the easiest way to stop me in my tracks. my dear YA, her great-grandchild, has inherited her knack for cooking, skipping me entirely in the process 😅 however, the “prepared with love” bit is a key factor—no store-bought or restaurant-made soup in the world could ever come close!

what is your favourite food that is made locally? (In your region/country.)

I have a few favourite cuisines; thanks in no small part to having lived in many different countries. I’m a very picky eater, and it’s only being forced to eat outside of my comfort zone that’s allowed me to expand my comfort zone (which, if left to my own devices, is what some would consider a rather boring palate, or so I’m told).

if all else fails, I’m known to eat the exact same “meal”—like fresh tomatoes with salt and vinegar—three times a day! during my pregnancy, I wanted nothing but (what ended up being kilos of) strawberries 🍓I tend to have a favourite in the country I’m in, and will eat that same dish over and over again as if nothing else exists on earth. not picky at all!

guaranteed favourites, in no particular order, include:

soups & broths

• Vietnamese pho^{1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho}
• Ukrainian borscht^{2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borscht}
• Japanese miso soup^{3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miso_soup}
• Korean miyeok-guk^{4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyeok-guk}

vegetable dishes & salads

• Georgian ajapsandali^{5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajapsandali} (also, Georgian salad^{6 https://georgia.to/en/georgian-salad/} )
• French ratatouille^{7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratatouille}
• Turkish baba ghanoush^{8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_ghanoush}
• Italian Caprese salad^{9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprese_salad}
• various Indian vegetarian dishes (aloo gobhi^{10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloo_gobhi} , dahl^{11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal} , mattar paneer^{12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matar_paneer} , and many more)
• South African chakalaka^{13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakalaka}

dairy products

• Indian raita^{14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raita}
• Indian lassi^{15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassi}
• Turkish ayran^{16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayran}

fermented foods

• Ethiopian injera^{17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injera}
• Russian kefir^{18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir}

desserts

• Thai mango sticky rice^{19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango_sticky_rice}
• South African sago pudding (I was now-old when I learned my favourite childhood dessert isn’t exclusively South African)^{20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sago_pudding}

what is your favourite food generally?

I tend to favour individual food types rather than dishes:

• vegetables, specifically bamboo and mushrooms
• fruit, especially mango, rambutan, or strawberry—but I’m really not that picky!
  • also smoothies, preferably orange, banana, mango, or strawberry
• tomatoes (which is not a fruit, but a gift from the divine 😍)
• various salads, since they usually includes many of the above (the more experimental the combo, the better)
• potatoes, whether baked, mashed, boiled, or fried (I’d totally survive ever so happily on Mars!^{21 https://the-martian.fandom.com/wiki/Potatoes} —and yes, experiments suggest growing them there might actually be possible^{22 indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars: according to experiments using soil collected from the southern Peruvian desert, alongside tests under simulated Martian conditions} )
• milk products (pretty much all of it; I might as well be a baby cow 🤷‍♀️)
• nuts and legumes (particularly, peanuts and lentils)

what is one food you have had in the last year that you remember warmly?

we’re fortunate enough to live across the lake from a lovely little restaurant owned by a world-class Swiss chef, where we treat ourselves to the exact same meal once or more each week (we’re both habitual eaters like that). we call it our “happy meal”, as it’s guaranteed to lift any funky mood!

however, the most memorable dish would have been one time when they didn’t have it available and, as a consolation prize, treated us to a genuinely finger-licking dessert. while I wouldn’t normally single out a sweet dish as my favourite anything, the layers of pavlova, mascarpone cream, and mixed fruits danced airily over the tongue without, somehow, being sickeningly sweet at all. it tasted the way I’m sure miracles do!

what food do you really want to try?

I’m not a terribly adventurous eater, though I’ve sampled any number of interesting or strange dishes around the world (generally, not to be repeated 😅). I appreciate fine dining because of the quality of the ingredients and the passionate care with which the food’s prepared, so I’m always open to trying food created by a great chef.

do you take photos of your meals?

yes when the presentation is pretty, or when I’d like to preserve a memory of the occasion. I never post them anywhere. I also never look at the photo again 😆

savoury or sweet?

sour! I eat vinegar with nearly everything, “seasoning” my food with it the way most people turn to salt.

spicy or no?

absolutely frigging not. despite having lived in countries where it’s nearly impossible to eat non-spicy food, I’ve only ever adapted as little as I could get away with, before reverting back to my non-spicy ways ASAP.

we’ve a great rhythm at home; my other half eats seemingly nothing but spice, so between the two of us, we get to equitably divide meals that are “too much” or “not enough.”

tea or coffee? (both? neither?)

both. I love Love LOVE South African rooibos tea^{23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos} , Indian masala chai^{24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai} , and Japanese matcha^{25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matcha} , while I couldn’t function without my daily cuppa (or three). (though, having finally taken the plunge 😉 to get a proper coffee machine at home, I seem to drink less coffee than ever 😅)

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footnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho ↩

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borscht ↩

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miso_soup ↩

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyeok-guk ↩

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajapsandali ↩

6. https://georgia.to/en/georgian-salad/ ↩

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratatouille ↩

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_ghanoush ↩

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprese_salad ↩

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloo_gobhi ↩

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal ↩

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matar_paneer ↩

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakalaka ↩

14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raita ↩

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassi ↩

16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayran ↩

17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injera ↩

18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir ↩

19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango_sticky_rice ↩

20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sago_pudding ↩

21. https://the-martian.fandom.com/wiki/Potatoes ↩

22. indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars: according to experiments using soil collected from the southern Peruvian desert, alongside tests under simulated Martian conditions ↩

23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos ↩

24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai ↩

25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matcha ↩