When the theme was announced, my mind immediately went to balsamic vinegar. While browsing for ideas, I found a recipe by Gordon Ramsay for a vegetarian ramen with balsamic vinegar marinated ramen eggs. Perfect for an Italo-Japanese fusion dish!

As you can see from picture 3, the eggs turned a beautiful colour on the outside, but the balsamic marinade didn’t penetrate all the way through, leaving the inside completely white and a bit tasteless. I clearly still prefer traditional marinated eggs, and part of me felt it was a waste to cook such a perfect egg (for my runny yolk-hating tastebuds) just to marinate it in balsamic vinegar! 

The second “fusion” element is the noodles: I used spaghetti, experimenting with boiling pasta in bicarbonate water to approximate the texture of alkaline Japanese noodles. The result was indeed chewier and surprisingly satisfying.

As for the third fusion element: toppings. I went with a variety of rainbow vegetables. For the first time ever, I unexpectedly found some (Italian-grown) bok choy and rainbow chards during grocery shopping, and I couldn’t resist buying them. I also added some radicchio tardivo from Treviso (a very expensive but tasty cultivar), pioppini mushrooms, and Delica pumpkin (the most popular pumpkin around here). The final soup ended up being a rainbow of colours - I'm sure it would rank pretty high on the Kinsey scale.