Archives for January, 2010
Menurama analyses increasing soup availability on menus
Thanks to the recession and an ever-growing interest in healthy eating, soups are taking British menus by storm, with chefs finding interesting new ways of creating crowd-pleasing variants on the dish all year round. In Asia, soup is a very big deal. Whether it’s pho in Vietnam, miso in Japan, tom yum in Thailand, laksa in Malaysia or won ton soup in China, it forms a staple part of the diet for many Asian societies.
Daniel Galmiche, head chef of the Vineyard at Stockcross, knows this only too well, having perfected his soup-making when working at L’Aigle d’Or in Singapore, where he was expected to create two different soups for the menu each day. “There was no room for error,” he says. “The soups had to be perfect because there was such a demand for them.” French-born Galmiche also credits his mother’s consistent soup-cooking as an influence on him, and cites France’s brasseries as thriving soup hubs. “Brasseries usually have a soup of the day or speciality of the region, like soup de poisson in the South of France, or soups in Brittany made with different bouillons,” he explains.
But on this side of the Channel, soup has traditionally been considered more of a winter warmer, or comfort food; its puréed vegetable bases seeming somewhat prosaic in contrast to the fragrantly infused broths of its eastern cousins. And while we may occasionally see the odd gazpacho rear its chilly head come summer, a year-round soup offering has been limited in the UK.
