Scrounged Soup

The Office

So I've started this blogging thing. I still have no fucking idea what it does, but people tell me that I have to keep blogging. As I was sitting here in the office drinking my coffee and listening to The Atamis, "Sing Me A Song of Hawaii," I felt it prudent that I think up some bloginess. Then it dawned on me that last nights meal was absolutely delicious, yet thrown together out of stuff that friends had given us, combined with the last of the fortnights fresh veg.

We recently visited a good friend who works in food service logistics. He used to work at a place where the over dated dry goods were thrown away or given to staff. He gave us a big pile of dried herbs, some arborio rice and a catering size pack of dashi powder. Dashi is the most commonly used Japanese stock, often made from flakes of fermented fish such as bonito and skipjack tuna. Dashi powders are usually high in sodium inosinate, which is responsible for the flavour of the month flavour "umami." Umami is nothing new and simply means savoury in Japanese.

I won't rabbit on for too long about umami, because I think that's another blog thing. I'll just say that it was a word given in the 1930s to a manufactured product derived from naturally occurring components. The product evolved to be more accurately named monosodium mlutamate. Without pushing the issue, MSG works on certain taste receptors, namely mGluR1,mGluR2, T1R1 and T1R3. When people talk about "umami," they are in fact talking about flavours that work on these receptors. It doesn't matter how the flavour is achieved, it's invariably the result of glutamates. Some unfortunate people react badly to glutamates. Truth be told, they react to them, no matter what form they take. 

The reality is that like many things that taste good, MSG is perfectly fine in moderation, despite having been maligned for many years. Call me a cynic, but it wouldn't surprise me if the anti-MSG movement was driven by processed food manufacturers in an attempt to take the focus away from the plethora of total shit that goes into their products. What I love most, is how as a result of food media, the "free thinking culinary aware" blow endless rays of sunshine up umami's arse whilst maligning MSG as if it's the work of the Devil. Same gear, different names and it all tastes good.

Back to the subject of this bloggy thing, which is Scrounged Soup. OK, we scored some instant "umami." Well roger me senseless with an impressive scombridae if a mate didn't turn up with a bloody big northern bluefin tuna frame. A frame it may well have been, but Michelle still manged to retrieve enough fillet to make 2 meals for 3.

I chopped an onion, sliced some ginger, minced up a whack of weapons grade chili and half a dozen cloves of garlic. The only vegetables in the fridge were a couple of lovely fresh zucchini, so they too got a Gurnsey. Whilst the onion, ginger and chili were fried in peanut oil, Michelle julliened the zucchini. They went in with the garlic and were fired for a few more minutes. I added a tablespoon of "umami" powder, about a tablespoon and a half of Japanese rice vinegar and a table spoon of Japanese dark soy I'm not sure which of the 327 names for Japanese soy to give the one I used. Just use your favourite type.

I gradually added about 1.5L of pure FNQ rainforest water. It's OK, it's fine to use whatever your particular council provides. I laboured to keep the simmer going as I added the water, so as not to make the soup gods angry. When everything was simmering away, I lobbed in a large pack of vermicelli rice noodles, which were cooked within three minutes at which stage I turned off the flame. I then chucked in about 400 grams of splendid, very finely chopped fresh tuna and transferred the soup into 3 bowls with the fish still cooking a la shabu-shabu.

Easy as pie, Well no. Much easier than pie, as quick as Les Darcy and as tasty as Helen Mirren in "Age of Consent," which was shot on Dunk Island (which I'm looking at) in 1968.

Dunk Island from right here

  

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