Minestrone is a lovely simple hearty dish. Literally meaning “big soup”, it’s basically a thick soup made with vegetables and pasta or rice. It is commonly available with other Italian pasta dishes. To me, it is similar to Asian noodle soups.

I think the wonderful thing is that it doesn’t take much time to cook, you only need to wash one pot, and you have the soup, grain and vegetables all combined into one dish, no extra preparation is needed. Even though I do enjoy cooking, I don’t always like washing dishes. When I am busy with other things, and our ayi (housekeeper) is not available, I prefer to cook something simple like this. And it’s such a wonderful soup on a cold and rainy day, I can eat this soup with some nice vegan rye bread or whole grain bread.

 

Two weeks ago I visited the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum. It’s located in the north part of the town, where there used to be a Jewish ghetto. The Moses Synagogue is used as the main exhibition hall where the Auschwitz Concentration Camp is featured. Visiting such a place is always difficult and upsetting. It’s hard to believe such atrocities against humanity has happened within the last 100 years. Oppressed people were treated worse than animals – deprived of food, water, and shelter. As a vegan I think what makes me sad is that some animals are still treated badly, but they can’t build a museum for themselves.

On a lighter note, the part played by people in Shanghai is not that bad. The lucky Jewish people who managed to escape to Shanghai settled here and rebuilt their life. Many of them returned home later but still had fond memories of their life in Shanghai. One of them commented: “Actually Shanghai life wasn’t much better back then, but the people showed great sympathy for us.” It makes me glad to know Chinese people were compassionate back then. Compassion is the light in the darkness of evil, it shines like a gem in a pile of coal.

After my visit I wanted to cook krupnik again. I cooked it once when I was researching Polish food. I wonder if people talked about it when they were in the camp. It is such a common dish in every home in Poland, but it must sound like the yummiest food from heaven when they were fed a few potatoes and rice porridge with worms back then. I really hope that something like that never happens again. Maybe we can start to refuse violence from our dining table and embrace the compassion for all creatures. :)

 

Korean doenjang is a black, fermented soybean paste, and doenjang soup has always been a traditional dish on the Korean dinner table. Unlike miso, which is finer and creamer but can’t be heated, in doenjang you can still detect traces of soybeans and also doenjang is able to endure the heat during boiling.

In China there is also a bean paste called 大酱, bearing not only similar sound to doenjang but also similar taste. It is said to start from Machurian people, who live in the north-east. I don’t know who influenced whom, but that doesn’t matter; we can take healthy foods from all around the world to add nutrition and diversity to our vegan table. :P

The first time I ever had doenjang soup was back in my university years. A Korean mother wanted to be closer to her kids who attended university in China, so she opened a small restaurant serving ordinary Korean dishes. I occasionally visited this place. I love the nori wrapped rice (close to sushi rolls but the rice is not flavored by sushi vinegar), fried rice cakes, various picked vegetables, and also the doenjang soup. She always served the soup for free and it felt warm to eat in cold winter. I am not sure whether she is still there, but whenever I have Korean food I think of her and her small restaurant.

 

Silver wood ear (银耳) is a type of fungus used in Chinese cuisine, especially in sweet dishes. It tastes pretty neutral so you have to add extra sugar to make it taste good. Many Chinese women believe eating silver wood ear that has been cooked for hours so it becomes gelatinous, is beneficial for their skin as it improves the collagen matrix. It is also soothing for your lungs if you suffer from long-term, dry coughing, according to Chinese traditional medicine.

I am not a big fan of silver wood ear. I believe good skin results from eating a healthy and balanced diet, proper exercise and good sleep, if you just want to rely solely on this, it’s not going to work. After all, it’s not a magical medicine. It’s just a nice sweet and nutritious soup to have from time to time. ;)

Fresh lychees are great, though if you can’t find it in your city, you can choose the canned one also.