It’s Just Making Stock
Art by Maddy Worth
It had been one of those long, irritable, restless days, and I realized that all I needed was a warm, soothing bowl of goodness to nourish the belly and the mind. Perhaps some exotic flavors would drag me out of the doldrum of the day’s existence, but as I stared at the list of ingredients for tom kha gai, I was perplexed by this soup.
My expectations were etched by fond flavor memories from the best Thai restaurant in town. I didn’t have all the traditional ingredients and fretted over whether, without the galangal, I’d get the desired results. My mouth watered incessantly just thinking of coconut and kaffir lime. Lemongrass wafted through every taste bud in my mind, and thoughts of Thai red chile began beading just above my brow.
I read and reread the recipe. I scoured the cabinets and refrigerator for sufficient substitutes; ginger was nowhere to be found. I contemplated running to the store or digging up the immature rhizomes in the garden, but in the end, I decided I was just making stock. I’d made plenty of stock over the years to serve as the base of many meals. For the longest time now, broth in my kitchen had been born from the amalgamation of whatever was on hand, and the best soups materialized when recipes served only as inspiration– that pot never to be tasted in that exact way again.
It’s just making stock. That revelation was all I needed to begin. The magic potion for annihilating my funk began to brew as each ingredient lent its individual flair.
I’d heard of chopping wood and carrying water. I had mulled over my own versions of that Zen proverb before– my all time favorite being pulling weeds and planting seeds. On this day, it was stirring the pot and simmering stock.
The effect is in the overlap– the disappearing back into One.
Years before this kitchen conundrum, my husband came upon the idea of layers of goodness and had passed this sage advice along to me as I had been simmering in a stew of spicy symptoms for some time. Slowly I began to embark on layering helpful modalities as I grasped for comfort amidst the chaos. There were yoga asanas and breath practices, herbs and other supplements, elimination diets, therapy sessions, meditation techniques, and many other attempts in search of the secret ingredient. Turns out there was no one thing. Each practitioner I visited, each grounding session in nature, each piece of wisdom gleaned from this workshop or that contemplation were ingredients for the greatest soup I’d ever make.
It took years for this particular stock to brew. In fact, it’s still brewing, and from where I simmer now it seems my cauldron will continue to bubble with an evolving elixir so rich and so comforting that I can’t even imagine its future flavor or potency. Each layer of goodness— the bitter and pungent, astringent and sweet, sour and salty, enhance each other and combine with uncomfortable grace into a wholeness I have yet to fully remember. When I dip my ladle in and pucker my lips to slurp a taste of where I’m currently at, the flavors are more settled, more refined, yet clearly not finished with their mingling. For really good soup takes time and a lot of layering, I find.
