Winter Melon Soup with Shiitakes and Speck Ham

dianakuan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:21:27 +0000

Rice may be a pivitol part of Cantonese food, but every Cantonese mother worth her hoisin sauce knows that no meal is really complete without soup. I got this drilled into me from an early age: a home-cooked lunch or dinner must must must start with a tang, or else you might as well be eating barbarian (Western) food. (Oh, Chinese parents.) According to my mother, a good soup - whether it was chicken & ginseng, pork & lotus, or fish bone - opens the appetite and provides as much nutrients as the rest of the meal. (That, and the Cantonese are sticklers for dinner rituals.)

Her biggest concern before I set off for college many years ago was how the heck I could survive without her tang every night. "I'll be fine. They have food on campuses," I would say, rolling my eyes. And every time I came home to visit and exhibited anything that remotely suggested I was not 100% healthy, like coughing to clear my throat or looking pale in the winter due to lack of sun, she would shake her head knowingly. "It's the lack of tang."