My mom rarely used the tiny oven in our little apartment while I was growing up. For the longest time, I thought that everyone just used ovens as storage for other pots and pans.
She is an excellent cook and when it came to dessert, she had a solid repertoire of various Vietnamese sweet soups and puddings.
I have no memories of fresh baked cookies, let alone frosted cakes or even banana bread. It wasn’t until highschool that I first discovered the joy of baking, through a now ex-friend, Betty Crocker.
Dessert as I knew it was stuffed mochi balls in sweet syrup. Tender red beans in coconut milk or green beans simmered with kelp. Desserts made with less than 4 ingredients. Whatever it was, she would make a huge pot of it and ladle the sweet stuff into our blue and white porcelain bowls. We would eat the same dessert for days. My favourite is one she makes with taro, tapioca and coconut.
Somehow and somewhere between then and now, I got a little bored with asian dessert flavours.
French pastry had become my life. I found myself obsessed with petit gateaux, pate a choux, tarts and entremets. Go figure that I end up working at a very French restaurant in Hong Kong.
Sweet soups still have a special part in my heart. Since our move to HK, we’ve been eating more asian desserts when we’re out. I get my fill of French pastries from working 60 hours a week.
Last week after a quick dinner of Shanghainese dumplings in Jordan, we discovered a little dessert shop off the main street.
There was a single photo of a bowl of black sesame soup posted on the door, and through the windows we can see happy diners with bowls of simple desserts.
We go in and it feels like we’re in someone’s basement, even though the shop is ground level. The walls are barren with the exception of a couple of random photos. The tables are mismatched and the stools were very uncomfortable. The “open kitchen” had a few big stock pots that held various sweet soups and against the walls were two big fridges with take-away puddings.
It was a cool night, so we ordered a couple of hot soups. Bruce chose the black sesame while I went with the mochi in ginger syrup.
Both arrived within a few minutes, piping hot in the classic blue and white porcelain bowls I know so well. I almost expected to see my mum pop out from behind the counter.
The black sesame soup was smooth, thick and fragrant.
The mochi was stuffed with black sesame as well, though the paste was a bit coarser, which I like. The mochi was tender and supple. The soup was alive with fresh ginger, just sweet and plenty spicy.
Both were delicious and roused all kinds of happiness from within me. The simple soups humbled me.
In my dedicated pursuit of French pastry, I briefly forgot about the soul-satisfying sweet asian soups.
As fate would have it, our tiny HK kitchen did not come with an oven. There is very little hope for any experimental French pastries of any kind to come out of our kitchen. The thought of not having a home oven for a year makes me a wee bit nauseous. I hate not being able to bake.
But we do have a couple of pots, gas burners and a city’s worth of asian ingredients at our disposal.
And plenty of porcelain bowls in our cupboard.
avec chantilly 