The world in a bowl of soup!

I am a soup person when it comes to food. With Dhaka's ongoing coughing feats and sneezing bouts, I needed a bowl of hot soup for my flu-ridden body and soul.

My feverish palate initially wanted a Korean-styled hot pot, and then it fluttered to Japanese ramen, weakened for Thai Tom Yam, and finally zeroed in on authentic Chinese chicken noodle soup. The word "authentic" plays a vital role here as we know how wide-ranging Dhaka's international food scene can be.

To appease my cravings, I relied on the memory of those rare childhood treats in Chinese restaurants and decided to make my own pot of chicken noodle soup. I want to reiterate that our palate for anything authentic has been compromised, more so if we want to do our own cooking.

I say this because our grocery markets in Dhaka are flooded with ingredients needed for cosmopolitan recipes -- Japanese mirin sauce, dried black fungus, Chinese black bean vinegar, Korean marinades, tahini, sumac, smoked salmon, curried meat, and kimchi.

Coming back to authenticity, I fail miserably because I am an experimental cook. I will do sacrilegious acts like adding mirin to anything I cook, marinating with shrimp paste and adding sumac, and even tossing basil leaves on fried noodles.

I lose myself in these outlandish spices and jump over the moon because they are so easily accessible in Dhaka now. Such acts in the world of cooking are punishable offences, according to my son, who follows every recipe to the tee.

So, ultimately my chicken noodle soup had a dash of Japanese soy sauce used for raw fish dishes, a spoon of Chinese noodle sauce, miso paste, and beef stock. I also put in frozen shrimp dumplings and thinly sliced beef, a bunch of baby spinach, handmade noodles and a few pieces of stir-fried chicken.

The soup was a "truly international but made in Bangladesh" sort of a mix. And strangely I liked it. I think it was the fever doing all sorts of mumbo-jumbo with my palate. However, I realised my taste has changed or evolved and I liked the globalisation of spices and ingredients.

Dhaka has several marts and grocery stores that carry such food items from Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and other places. The Gulshan-1 DCC market is a treasure trove for these. Uttara, too, has stepped on this multi-cultural food bandwagon and caters to its diverse residents.

Cooking is now a major hobby in Dhaka. Every millennial and generations beyond are experimenting with their culinary skills. The exposure to different cultures and availability of these ingredients has added to this shift in taste and cooking habits. And the market is fanning this new habit, which is all good as far as experimental cooking demands.

Dhaka's young crowd prefers a hearty meal of ramen over plain old piping hot rice and lentil soup. It seems, our "daal-bhaat" needs a fancy name to survive the food race in Dhaka! Me, I am just happy to mix what I please and cook up a storm in my noodle soup.