Archives for posts with tag: soup

nutnut

L300xW250xH150mm, Seychelles

A box that is smooth and polished like on the outside and full of texture in the inside.  A container that is made out of the shell of the Coco de Mer, the largest seed of any plant in the world.

The first time I heard about Coco de Mer, was through a radio commercial when I was a child.  In this cough syrup commercial, the Coco de Mer was referred to as African deep sea coconut, my imagination went wild – an African jungle at the bottom of the ocean where none of the animal would cough.  Then when I am older, occasionally I would be told they are in the content of an exotic soup, it is as hard as wood and taste of nothing in particular.

Only in this research did I realized that they are the seed of a palm tree (not a coconut at all) and only exist in thePraslin islands of the Seychelles (not a underwater jungle).

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Soup Dumpling Mould

W60xL330xD20mm, China

In the book Dream of the Red Chamber (Chapter 35), the young Pao Yu described a soup he had, one with young lotus leaves and lotus flower.  These leaves and flowers are little ornamental dumplings placed inside the soup.  The book went on to describe the moulds for their making.  A set of 4 silver moulds, each just over a foot long and an inch thick.  The moulds are the size of beans, of chrysanthemums, plum blossom, lotus seed, water chestnut.  The Red Chamber is a family of culture and wealth and for the ordinary folks the moulds are made of wood instead of silver.  With the pace of modern living, this delicate soup has now become the 疙瘩汤 … soup with comes from a stock cube and dumpling simply squeeze out of a plastic bag.

Isn’t this sad …

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