A garden blooming is a joy forever.Sometimes a pair of yellow sunbirds dive in among the purple and lavender flowers,chirping merrily.At night the shadows lengthen and pale moonlight streams in through passing clouds,illuminating the white blossoms with a silvery tinge.A whiff of sweet orange blossoms linger in your mind long after the wind has passed.A garden in bloom is an exercise in meditation to soothe your mind with awe at the wonders of nature-opening your heart to the cycle of life and death.
Friends enter your life for a reason,some linger whereas some leave.
Appreciate their company while we can,savour the small moments of joy and fun. Some leave without a word of farewell but leave behind a treasure of memories.Some we stay till the end and have a chance to be together till the end of our days.
Delight in the small things that matter.Yesterday ,for dinner i revived some old familiar ancestral recipes of eight treasure chicken instead of duck that causes gout,old cucumber soup double boiled with old chicken,dried oysters,honey dates,dried cordycep flowers simmered for 10 hours.Jun loved it as it reminded him of grandma's cooking.Thank goodness for inventions like slow cookers.
I believe to study the history of chinese cuisine is to study how resilient and innovative people in the past adapt to environmental challenges like famine,drought and preservation of food as well as maintenance of good health is one of it.A student who would like to understand a culture should study the ancient style of cooking and recipes.
Laurence Brahm nailed it when he said at a recent interview that the Confucious Institute is insufficient to represent the depth and breadth of chinese culture as the philosophy is so diverse from Mencius,lao Tze,the I ching,Sun Tzu, Sima Chien
and the records of the historian and etc.The philosophy extends to food,medicine,martial arts,poetry,music.So it would be more apt to call it Cross -cultural chinese civilization Centres or the 4 Cs or Four Seas.Chinese culture assimilated Buddhism from India and borrowed from central Asia its music and dance like the pipa,yang qin,the cheongsam from manchurian influence ,sweet sour pork and egg tart from western influence.On the other hand sino influence can be traced to the japanese koto,zen buddhism,tea ceremony,calligraphy and so too its influence on Korean and Vietnamese.Chinoiserie artistic designs of wallpaper,blue and white china and the afternoon yum cha of high tea became a part of Western lifestyle.Martial arts kung fu became a form of self defence practised by all ethnicities like judo,karate,taekwando.So the centre should be a centre to teach chinese painting,art forms,dances ,classical music instruments, culinary skills,martial arts,talks on philosophy,gardening,fashion,architecture and so on.
When i think of chinese cuisine,i think of the philosophy of balance between yin and yang and food for health and medicine.heaty food and cooling food maintain the body's immune system.Herbal soups use ginseng,cordycep and herbs.Chinese adapt to food shortages and are frugal not to waste food so i think the recipe for my favourite black century egg came about after a fire destroyed an egg warehouse and the starving peasants discovered the burnt eggs in the black soot covered by rice husks had a delicious taste.So too is the recipe of beggar chicken in which the whole chicken in encased in a mud crust and roasted on a fire over coals.I'm looking to learn ancestral recipes like dried pomelo skin cooked with dried shrimp or chicken steamed with preserved clams in wine sauce and dried tangerine peel.I'm also looking for the Sayap recipe of stewed duck stuffed with minced bean paste ,pounded sesame and groundnuts,tangerine peel ,then deep fried whole in boiling oil and stewed for another four hours until it's so soft and tender.
Cuisine has a history of a locality or a personal family history.This year I plan to relearn past traditional recipes and cook up a storm.I love food.music,travel,books,movies,plants and culture .
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