Not Your Typical Beef Soup, an Asian Family Recipe

Two months is how long I went on a blogging hiatus, and boy did that go by quickly.  Toward the end of September, non-blog-related things generally called life got a little crazier; then friends from out of town visited; then I took part in my civic duty to vote in an informed way; and overall, I fell out of the habit of food blogging.

Well, Thanksgiving is coming up, so what better time to get back into writing about food than the best possible holiday for an American foodie (for a moment, hand-wave away the religious, historical, and social contexts of Thanksgiving).

This time, I want to focus on home-made soups.  I am talking about everything made from scratch, nothing from a glass/metal/plastic container except the seasonings.  Certainly none of that over-salted, preservative-laden canned soup or Chicken stock "stuff" sold in supermarkets.  And I am talking about a perennial contender that brews its way into my parents' home every winter.  It does not have a name, but who needs a name when it is a simple family recipe and it tastes amazing.

As with any soup or stew, you start off with your stock.  In my case, Whole Foods was selling really cheap packs of beef bones with marrow, although my parents usually use lamb shanks.  I stewed two pounds of that for two hours and let the soup cool down all the way in the refrigerator in order to remove all of the solidified fat.  Believe me if you do not remember from biology class, marrow is FATTY...notice the fine oily layer floating on top of the stock after the one centimeter thick layer of solidified fat was removed:

And yes, those are dark chunks of marrow from inside the bone floating around in the stock (what restaurants who make their own stock do not show you).  At that point, I stewed the bones for another four hours with hearty chunks of skinned ginger.  The best part about making soup stock like this is that it naturally lends itself toward multitasking: as long as you are mindful that your stove is on and you replenish the water, you will probably not burn down your home.  If dried scallops or tiny prawns are available from the Asian store, chuck a handful of those into the stock for taste.  Since I had neither, I used Asian fermented fish sauce.

Afterward, I removed the bones and then boiled potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbage in the soup for an hour, and that was all.  If serving guests not accustomed to ethnic foods, remove the bits of solid bone marrow and add some garnish on top to disguise relatively "weird" ingredients and to make the soup look prettier.

All that said, I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving.  Thursday night, I will be fine wining and dining at my parents' home with family friends.  No promises on pictures being taken before the food mysteriously disappears.