Ahem.
I'll break up all that ambition into smaller segments that I can actually accomplish, starting with my impressions of Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh. This is the first of the many cookbooks I hope to use and write about in the near future.
It's not necessary for me to point out that these book reviews are going to be amateur to their core except to explain one thing: I am going to skip summarizing, and sometimes whole chapters, and write solely about how the book fits into my own habits (which I hope to explain later). These should be among the least objective reviews you might find.
Now then.
Washoku, "harmony of food," doesn't sound far from that vague notion of Zen that I assume we westerners have: a holistic, intrinsic, intentional sense of things that make those things, strangely, work smoothly. That and a sense of calm, right? It's as if you have real purpose when you, say, put on your socks in the morning. That it means something and gives you satisfaction back.
I'm not mocking any of this but I do want to write superficially. What I appreciate about this book is that the following principles don't require anything spiritual to work. For my own purposes, I want to distill these and any ideas into the practical essence of why they work and leave spirituality for another time.
The principles are simple, that within each meal the foods represent the following:
- Five colors: red, yellow, green, black (or dark purple, brown, etc.) and white
- Five tastes: salty, sour, sweet, bitter and spicy
- Five ways (cooking methods): simmering, broiling, steaming, baking, frying, raw, etc.
- Five senses: taste, sight, sound, smell, touch (texture)
My takeaway from this book is almost solely in these few paragraphs, and the practical theory they suggest grounds an idea I've had trouble closing for some time: variety itself is the best philosophy in the kitchen. This would be true if you're worried about losing weight, eating enough vitamins, getting more enjoyment out of food, etc. If you start with color, which is the most basic (a colorful plate of food is a virtue that was instilled in me many years ago), you can immediately improve upon the basic meat (white/brown), potatoes (white/brown) canned veggies (green or yellow, mostly). Unless you're using food dye you'd need at least two vegetables to make this happen (even with colorful spices).
Also with a variety of cooking methods I see these principles as freeing a cook from the need to be too healthful in their thinking. Deep frying is one of the least healthful ways to cook. Steaming is one of the healthiest. You don't have to eat only steamed foods, however, if you keep your methods of cooking in balance, and that can give you a wider variety of foods to enjoy. I've recently rediscovered the joy of frying in oil and I don't feel guilty when it's a small portion of my diet.
This also works well for me because I try to avoid light and low-fat versions of foods. My ideal use of food (which is not yet a reality, I'll admit) would not lose on flavor or richness to low-fat, but would use variety and portions to keep everything in check. This is sometimes referred to as the French Paradox. In France they eat lots of rich foods that healthy Americans would shun but they remain in better shape.
I don't remember the article but I read that perhaps it should be called the American Paradox: a unhealthy nation that is obsessed with the idea of healthy eating.
And I'll point out that I buy as much "low-sodium" as I can, because most processed foods are over salted. This leads to:
The Spice of Life by Jack Turner from Bon Appetit Magazine (March 2009). This article points to some evidence that spices can actually be used to trigger self-regulation of portion control in a person. Strong senses of flavor, aside from the usual saltiness or sweetness, send signals to the brain that tells one to stop eating. Picture fries and a milkshake versus Indian food.
There's also evidence of other healthful effects that come from spices: changes to metabolic rates, the burning and absorption of fat, etc. Certain spices trigger certain effects.
But it's right here, after all this talk of healthful foods and metabolic rates, that I want to stop and try to really make my method clear: In the end, when I've got my techniques down, my recipe book full and my routine settled,
I don't want to think about any of this crap.
Ever.
I don't want to spend time counting calories, scheduling certain foods to certain times, reading every study about how good this food is for you this week and bad the next, and I don't want to be so reliant on a certain food that I can't live without it if I should lose access.
And in washoku I have the answer. Just mix it up.
I truly believe that if you have enough variety, both consistently and serendipitously, you will come out ahead. The amount of good you eat will vastly outpace the bad. It doesn't need to be any more specific than that.
Before I can comment on the recipes of this book I should probably try one or two out as per my plan, but there are a few thoughts I can give after spending some time trying to build a menu.
The double-edge of a variety of foods is the cost of food. Rice is cheap in bulk, but a particular breed of fish can be a large chunk of your food budget. Since I'm not a man of money I look for recipes that don't require me to buy every ingredient new from Whole Foods, and in that sense this book is tough (it may actually be a problem with my whole plot to cook a tour of world foods). The recipes also have no pictures for reference and lean on the denser side.
But I have to mention the wonderful sections about ingredients (example). In these sections, split up into categories like Noodles, Rice, Pickles, Spices and Seasonings, etc, there are detailed descriptions and full-page photographs that show off every item. There are also chapters on the different techniques used. I'm sure if I spend more time on these chapters the recipes would seem much simpler.
My final verdict on the book will have to wait until dinner, but I think it's clear that I've been waiting anxiously for the philosophy to arrive in my kitchen. So far, I'll consider it a win.
Now to get cooking...
