We eat a lot of chawan mushi in this house. There is nothing like the silky custard with slightly sweet and smokey broth topped with delicacies like crab, lobster or just a really good roasted shiitake sliced paper thin. I recently tried David Chang's bacon dashi which substitutes bacon for the bonito flakes and could not shake the idea of taking it a step further. In order to replace the seaweed I needed some other umami booster and pondered the tomato. I wanted the custard to stay a lovely pale yellow and settled on making a bacon-infused tomato water in place of the broth. This will obviously be a better dish to make at the end of summer when tomatoes are abundant, but I couldn't shake the idea and gave it a go. The garnish, I think, is crucial, but could be a variety of options on hand.

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