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With everything in life that we flood our energies and thoughts into, we notice that the knowledge with which we started off with begins to not only expand but diversifies into new dimensions of appreciation. So the story is proved true with my discoveries in the health and culinary field.
Recently, my questions have been how to incorporate variety and flavors into my kitchen and table experiences and due to a rediscovered appreciation I have recently redeveloped of the far eastern people; their culture, attention to detail, variety, color, rich and various flavors and philosophies of food, I have made a natural shift (if not just temporary) from Indian and Iranian cuisine where I tried to bring in as much whole grains, pulses and beans into my families diet to the delicate, artistic and variety methods the far east (particularly China and Korea) use to bring in not only their rich and delicate flavors but the skilful ways that they use to prepare those meals.
I was reminded of how the far east in contrast to the Middle East and West do not focus on bulk and quantity but the combination of many carefully prepared and quickly cooked foods for the table experience. As a result, I have found my self looking over a number of vegetables and purchasing smaller amounts of each but selecting a greater variety (no new herbs just yet) and experimenting on harmonizing flavors of vegetables finely cut or cubed rather than the large cuts that I was used to preparing in order to get the food on the table as quickly as possible and "fill em up".
What I found is that my children were more exited about trying new things and appreciated the new flavors that I have not used for a while (such as soy sauce). I also noticed that I find myself sitting infront of the TV carefully chopping Cabbage, carrots, zucchini and that I now focus on how fine or carefully I can cut the vegetables as opposed to how I can fill up the children.
For the last two days we have had stir fry. I looked over a number of recipes online but decided to come up with something of my own and play it by ear. The first day, I used much more soy sauce since I relied entirely on the garlic and soy sauce for flavor but today I added vinegar, sugar and salt along with the garlic while stir frying the cabbages (red and white) before stir frying the carrots followed by the zucchini.
The result was a much richer and satisfying flavor that everyone loved. Even I was amazed at what I came up with by myself not having a great deal of experience in cooking Chinese or Korean food except for eating my mothers version of Chinese.
What was interesting was that although what I made something that was nothing new for most people who have experienced cooking or preparing far eastern dishes, I achieved a wealth of new appreciation and understanding of food by trying to understand these cultures which I find are highly upper chakra and focused in their lives.
Part of the experience of food in these old and delicate cultures lies in the textures not of the food itself but of the way those foods are cut and prepared as well as in the small amounts but large varieties of the flavors that they add when cooking or marinating these foods such as the ginger, soy sauce, hot sauce or sugar which are added.
Its amazing how much we can learn from a people through their foods and from the foods through looking at the people who prepare those foods. To me its a way to understand eachother that hopefully brings us closer to living amongst other people in peace by focusing on their positives and blending our philosophies together.
I'd love to hear about what others have to share from their experiences from food.
Although I have not mentioned Japan in this post, it is only because I was deliberately focusing on Korea and china. Japan is a whole other ball game in their very skillful chefs and years of deliberation to perfect the art of precision in food preparation and although my knowledge of their food does not go far beyond my family's love for sushi and attempting several times with mediocre although clumsy success, I believe that a focus on the Japanese culinary experience deserves its own series of posts as do Korean and chines food preparation. In this post I merely wanted to share my raw thoughts for today.
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