All recipes are for 2 servings unless noted. Oil is canola oil and salt is kosher salt.

2012-03-05

Tom cooks 4: First misoshiru

A surprise was waiting for me this morning (March 4). Tom made miso soup. Did he finally figure out it's so easy to make after many, many years of eating it?

I know, it doesn't really matter how often you have seen or tasted something. No matter how simple it is, unless you throw yourself into making or doing something, it just seems so foreign and unfamiliar.

Tom's miso soup contained daikon radish, carrot and mysterious black mushrooms we got yesterday at the farmers market, and was topped with thickly sliced green onions.

Everything was cooked, and the soup tasted good.

The daikon was long, and the carrot was short. Why bother so much about matching sizes? Ingredients cut in a matching size work better as a team, either during cooking (done in a similar timeframe) or while eating (taste more harmonious in your mouth). 

Green onions sliced more than several millimeters … the pungent flavor is too strong as a topping for soup, although the size would be OK with skinny chives. With miso soup, unless it contains some fatty or strong flavored ingredients, the pungent flavor of bulky cut green onions simply stands out too much and disturbs the cohesiveness of the soup in the bowl.

Anyhow, it was such a big leap from not-ever-never making a Japanese breakfast, I was pretty shocked.
I give him five stars.

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