The scent of chive soup and nostalgia for the home kitchen

While spring onions are often cut short and mixed or sprinkled to add flavor to some dishes, chives alone can also create very rich and concentrated soups. Chive soup evokes familiar flavors, from peaceful everyday country meals to busy, hurried harvest meals.

If you say "anyone can make chive soup", it's not wrong. But to have a pot of chive soup with "beautiful smell and standard taste", no one in my family can make it, except my mother. My mother often says that you guys are like your father, flattering me and praising me for trying, but a few handfuls of chives, a little minced meat, some fried onions, and normal spices are enough to have a pot of soup that brings coolness on hot days that make you want to... melt your fat.

Watching my mother "make" the pot of chive soup, it doesn't seem complicated, just requires a little care. My mother sauteed a handful of thinly sliced shallots, then added half a cup of minced meat and stir-fried it. When the meat is slightly firm, season it. My mother emphasized: Remember to stir-fry it briefly! If you stir-fry it too much, the meat will be numb, it won't be able to breathe, won't be able to absorb the delicious, pungent aroma of the chives.

Mom is so smart! If you need two bowls of soup to make a full meal, then mom measures that amount of water and pours it into the pot. I understand, if you pour too little water, you will not have enough food, and if the meal is "disappointing", the meal will be a failure. If you pour too much water, the soup will just be... floating, the water will be watery, the thing will be different, it will be bland, wasting the ingredients and the cook's effort. When the pot of water just starts to boil, pour in the chives immediately. Take the pot of soup from the stove to the tray right when the chives are just cooked.

The chives are so soft and delicate that they are too fragile. Just a few seconds later and the leaves will turn green and bruised from being boiled too long. Dad said that before pouring the soup into the bowl, just looking at the green color of the chives leaves would tell that the soup was more successful than expected. Feeling inspired, he even "philosophized" that it was like smelling the aroma of rice when it has become cooked, smelling a very light, pungent aroma means that the chives have become soup.

And then you know what? The soup hasn't even been served yet, but the aroma has already spread far and wide. The whole family voluntarily comes to the table to eat. If it's not the inviting aroma of chive soup, then what is it?

Later, living far away from home, in the nostalgia for the countryside kitchen, the image of my mother and the aroma of chive soup occupy a significant "proportion". I call it the scent of memories. I also often remember what my mother said while cooking soup: "Chives are easy to grow, and easy to cook soup. But the leaves are soft, sticky, and tangled together. So when pouring or picking up, be gentle and slow, don't let it... get tangled like chive soup, it will lose its beauty". Perhaps this is how my mother taught me how to eat and live gently and modestly from this simple soup.

Chive soup with a little minced meat is a cool, refreshing green soup that occupies a corner of my childhood. Even though it is far away, every time I cook a pot of chive soup, I imagine the kitchen with the flickering fire and my beloved mother beside me. That simple dish creates a beautiful memory, as beautiful as the image of the green, fluttering chive leaves in the corner of the yard in the countryside, where small butterflies often flutter.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/mui-huong-canh-he-va-noi-nho-bep-que-18525091321503631.htm