Perhaps you have come to know your SBS Cheap Tart well enough these past months, you won’t mind a moment of intimacy. Here we go: I see a shrink. This shrink treats me for a manageable ailment I prefer to know as Highly-Strung Lady Syndrome. Sure, Doctor calls it something else, but Doctor prefers scientific language. I was surprised, then, when Doctor passed a note at the end of a session which appeared to read, “. Daily. All seasons.”
I trust this doctor’s treatment, but can trust no doctor’s . One must always take a doctor’s handwriting to a pharmacy, where workers are trained to interpret.
“Today, it’s hot. So, I recommend something light, like number 17,” said the pharmacist translator, pointing to a shop sign that promised . “Number 17. Phở. With .” The pharmacist, added, sotto voce, “The they use there is red hot.” As though she were talking about a scheduled drug.
Soup. Daily. All seasons.
This delightful broth, with a high rating, was a strong medication. Soup does have a calming effect. There’s a reason it is prescribed by everyday people of all nations to those suffering grief, stress or a head-cold. It contains an element we all recognise, but science is yet to pin down.
I began to eat soup daily, as prescribed. In colder months, this was easy. A treacly , a warming or a tonne of are all easy to prepare and impossible, on a , to resist.
Summer presents a greater soup challenge, which, for a Highly-Strung Lady, can be cause to fall upon our couches, crying, “It’s simply too much. I cannot bear the trial!”
Fortunately, I had the wisdom. Any broth-based soup is perfectly digestible even on the warmest day. While the immediate effect is to elevate body temperature, the longer lasting sensation is to lower it. And, no. That’s not just me, a person who creates fictitious names for her disorders, saying this. Scientific authority now bears out what the tea and soup drinkers of many warm regions already knew: the ingestion of hot liquid cools the body. You can read about the findings of a “Thermal Ergonomics“ lab , or you can trust your Desi aunty. She knows. Warm liquid keeps the body and the .
Phở, so palatable in summer, is the work of experts. If you’re able to cook it yourself, you enjoy exceptional skill. Me? I visit Melbourne’s Springvale, and set down a few bucks, usually in Buckingham Avenue. (I have heard the proprietors also own a butcher, and are therefore never short of quality stock bones.)
An important part of Soup Therapy is the preparation of stock ... to take time to draw out the flavours to resist the pressure of fast production, so trying for the Highly-Strung.
A well-known summer soup is, of course, . I adore it, and it is a snip to make. But, I do not consider this a therapeutic soup. This is for two reasons. First, and most obviously, it is served chilled, ergo less likely to cool the Highly-Strung body and mind. Second, I have come to believe that an important part of Soup Therapy is the preparation of stock. To take time to draw out the flavours of bones or of , even of miso paste, is to resist the pressure of fast production, so trying for the Highly-Strung.
So, what else for soothing summer soup? Here at SBS Food, Eater and Baker in Chief advises . I second that potion. I am wont to dabble in December in that Chinese wonder known in the West as “hot and sour”. may make concessions to a US palate, but it is also one I refuse to quit.
No matter the pace of life, or its season, there is always room for soup. Even the Highly-Strung can manage it.
* No actual evidence but the musings of Cheap Tart, Helen Razer, your frugal food enthusiast, guiding you to the good eats, minus the pretension and price tag in her weekly Friday column, .
