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National cuisines in bullet point form

Hugh
2008-11-11 22:34:00 UTC

It may astonish those of you who’ve been watching me doing my best Clarkson impression on KKCook that I’m actually terribly Politically Correct about international cusines. I’m always thinking that each style has huge depth and complexity, that you need to study it for years to really understand it, and so on. I suspect some of that comes from studying martial arts, and some from the fact that I’m just a nice Guardian-reading boy.

And so it was that I was chatting to Alex the other day about noodle soups, and he mentioned that he’d quite like to learn to cook Tom Yum soup. Just one version, mind – but he wanted to know because it was useful to know how a different culture’s food worked.

My first thought was, of course, that you couldn’t possibly do that. That in order to understand Thai cooking, for example, you’ve got to study it for years. Go out there, probably, spend weeks on a course. You’ve got to live the cooking to know it.

But then my mind moved back to martial arts, and I thought over the idea again. In Muay Thai kickboxing, for example, it’s true that to really master the style you’ve got to spend five or ten years. But you can learn some of its useful self-defence moves – some of the best in the world – in an afternoon. I spent one afternoon learning Jujitsu wristlocks six or so years ago, and I still use them today.

And Alex’s idea made me think about the same things you can do with world cooking. Sure, it takes years to really master Italian cooking. But you can learn basics that can change the way you cook dramatically in a single lesson – the soffrito, for example, or the use of pasta shapes depending on the meal you’re cooking. And then you can apply them to infuse a dish with a sense of a region’s style, or to create something new by combining lessons.

So, what are the three top tips you can learn from a few world styles?

Singaporean/Malay/Thai/Vietnamese area

Chilli, lime, ginger and garlic. The four ingredients behind most of the region’s cooking (OK, Thai would add lemongrass) give a distinctive, immediately recognisable flavour. You can add them to virtually anything, from beef to scallops, to create a fantastic meal.
Soup is a meal. Ok, this one’s Chinese too. But the Vietnamese, in particular, raise noodle soups to an artform. Get some fine noodles, some stock, some spice and some chooped meat and veg. Mix together whilst boiling for a couple of minutes. Serve. Uber-quick meal.
You don’t have to be subtle. I attempted to recreate a Singaporean noodle soup the other day, and one thing immediately made itself apparent – the tiny, almost undetectable levels of seasoning in some Western food isn’t the only way to go. It seems that all the tastes of this region operate according to the Meatloaf school of seasoning (the singer, not the food) – “everything louder than everything else”. Eight birdseye chillis, four cloves of garlic, a chunk of ginger the size of my thumb, and about a quarter of a bottle of lime juice – and it tasted awesome.

French

Fats for the win. The movie “No Reservations” has a joke about the three secrets of French cooking – butter, butter and butter. French cooking relies heavily on fats, both butter and cream-based. These fats smooth and deepen tastes (dissolving some of the flavour compounds) as well as promote a smooth, creamy mouthfeel which makes French cooking feel so luxurious. In particular, I’ve ended up using the techique of monte au beurre, stirring in butter at the last minute to a meal, with all sorts of things.
Everything is better with wine. Wine’s close to the ultimate seasoning. It adds both a sour note, some astringency (both of which work very well in many dishes), as well as a depth and complexity of flavour offered by almost nothing else. French cooking seems to add either red or white wine to just about everything, and it’s amazing the number of non-French dishes that are improved with wine.
Separate and purify. French haute cuisine is infamous for requiring dozens of seperate, highly precise stages of reduction and purification. The thing is, those stages are in there because they work. Spending the time to create and then clarify a stock gives you an incredible base. Precisely controlling the time at which you add the sauce and the meat together allows you to fine-tune the exact flavour base of the meal, and preserve the individual tastes to be more of a symphony than a muddle.

Chinese (Beijing style, primarily)

Cooking high and fast preserves flavour. Stir-frying is probably the best-known technique associated with Chinese cooking, and there’s a reason for that. Whilst we rarely manage to get it right in the West, partially from our irrational fear of huge pillars of flame, a really good, really hot stir-fry is a nearly unique cooking style, cooking food through so fast that it preserves the texture and water content of what we’re cooking, giving a Chinese stirfry that incredibly fresh, “crunchy”, flavourful, alive taste.
Less is more. Chinese meals traditionally use very small quantities of meat – far, far less than we’d use in a conventional Western meal. And yet, for some reason, this very scarcity really highlights the meat in the meal. A few prawns or a small piece of chicken in a meal somehow become far more obvious and desirable whilst still not offending with their scarcity. (Italian cooking does something similar).
Yes, you can eat it. Chinese cooking is, of course, infamous for its bizarre (to the Western mind) ingredients. Chickens’ feet, shark’s fin, very fatty pork. And yet, as the saying goes, a million Chinese cooks can’t be wrong. And they’re not. I had this epiphany whilst cooking a Chinese banquet a couple of years ago, and serving belly pork, complete with the inch or so of fat, because the braising recipe said that it was prized as a delicacy and we were trying to cook authentically. And it was just damn gorgeous. Chinese restaurants in the West don’t normally serve very fatty dishes to Westerners, because we’re not culturally equipped for it, but I’ve tried them a few times now, and I’ll tell you – yes, you can eat that fat. In fact, it’s gorgeous.

What do you think? What about other cuisines – Indian, Russian, Polish, Italian? Do you think I’ve gotten something wrong, or missed a key ingredient?

Comments

matthijs | 2008-11-12 00:25:20 UTC

While you’re mostly, as far as I can tell anyway, right (in a very broad sense, of course), you’re absolutely wrong when you say French stocks are heavy in fat – they’re not. Go look up a classic stock recipe: the fat has to be skimmed off.

Other than that (not quite) minor nitpick, here’s one I’ve learned:

Indonesian: onion, garlic and chilli peppers pounded together. Note you should be using small chilli peppers and the small pink SE Asian onions for maximum effect (shallots also work, kinda) for maximum effect.

Dougal Stanton | 2008-11-12 10:49:39 UTC

I remember asking in a wee Italian restaurant (after learning that the chef was from Napoli, and having just come back from there) why the pizza we are given in the UK, even in Italian restaurants by Napolese chefs, isn’t a scratch on what you can get for nowt in Italy. (I phrased it slightly more diplomatically at the time, I’m sure.)

Well, apparently, the British taste is for shitty pizza, and we can’t cope with the good stuff. Though I can’t say that was my opinion when I got to taste the stuff they sell in the homeland of pizzas.

Hugh | 2008-11-12 11:19:09 UTC

Matthijs – yeah, fair point. That was, actually, balls – the stocks are pretty heavy with a lot of things, including gelatin, but you’re right, the fat gets skimmed off. I’ll edit.

Dougal – I’ve found there are a few places in the UK where you can get decent pizza, but not many, I agree. Pasta I’ve found to be even more of a problem – it’s very hard to find a restaurant in the UK which is even normally set up to serve the classic four-course Italian meal.

Sabrosa | 2008-11-17 23:09:05 UTC

‘I spent one afternoon learning Jujitsu wristlocks six or so years ago, and I still use them today.’

Note to self: never shake Hugh’s hand when he’s in a bad mood.

Chinese dishes: is it true that you need a whole bag-full of MSG to make any Chinese dish authentic?

Italian dishes: Supermarkets seem to be obsessed with thick creamy sauces that you drown your pasta in. However my dad cooks a very reduced but concentrated sauce that contains herbs, sundried tomatoes and some other stuff, like perhaps anchovies. I tried that sort of thing in Bar Roma (Edinburgh opposite festival theatre) and it tasted amazing.

I tried my dad’s too (sin anchovies) and it was pretty good. What think you of reduced sauces oh holy trinity of cookery?

Hugh | 2008-11-18 19:51:48 UTC

MSG – nope. Whilst MSG doesn’t deserve the demonisation it has received (there’s very little evidence of its supposed health effects, I understand), and it is used in some Chinese styles to add the unami taste, it’s not vital at all.

Italian sauces – yeah, all the authentic Italian sauces I’ve seen have been very reduced, coating rather than drowning the pasta. It works much better – indeed, I’d say this was a bullet point for Italian.

SpudTater | 2008-11-18 20:56:59 UTC

AIUI some people suffer an allergic reaction to MSG, but it’s generally considered safe. (Well, except by the tabloids).

Fhtagn | 2008-11-19 12:43:19 UTC

@SpudTater – I would be amazed if anyone were actually alergic to monosodium glutamate. Glutamic acid and the glutamate anion are a fundamental part of everyone’s cellular metabolism and proteins. That said, anything can be poisonous if the quantities are too high, but I think you’d need to eat a phenomenal quantity of the stuff to suffer significant effects.

Hugh | 2008-11-19 13:03:04 UTC

A quick bit of Googling on the subject reveals that MSG may be dangerous for people with “severe, poorly controlled asthma” (the FDA’s words).

One study has shown that some people may develop “MSG syndrome” after eating foods with MSG in – if it exists, it’s a non-serious (unless you’re a severe asthmatic) reaction including nausea, chest pain, and various other things. I’m not a doctor, so you shouldn’t put too much weight on this, but it’s worth noting that the symptoms appear to be quite similar to anxiety symptoms.

Other studies have shown MSG to be harmless. The EC and the AMA (American Medical Association) are amongst those bodies.

FDA summary here: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/msg.html

Sabrosa | 2008-11-20 00:03:09 UTC

I have friends who get headaches after eating food containing msg. I also heard that it acts like some sort of neurotransmitter that fools your brain into thinking food tastes good. I’ve done absolutely no research on this but I saw that Knorr stock cubes contain it, as does a lot of crisps. I’ve also heard that it causes depression. Again note the lack of research on my part.
cheery stuff! noodle soup anyone?

Hugh | 2008-11-20 00:29:50 UTC

“I also heard that it acts like some sort of neurotransmitter that fools your brain into thinking food tastes good”

From my reading, that’s not the case. That was the initial hypothesis from scientists and foodies who refused to accept that the fifth taste, Unami, existed.

“I’ve also heard that it causes depression”

If it does, it would appear that the AMA, the FDA and the EU have not yet found evidence of that fact. I’d need pretty strong counter evidence at that point. In short, naaah.

“I have friends who get headaches after eating food containing msg”

One of the problems with this entire deal is that it’s very hard to isolate whether it’s the MSG causing it. Have they checked this by just eating a little MSG? If not, it could be any number of other things that commonly go with MSG. Or it could be the MSG, of course.

Adam Stein | 2008-11-27 02:02:37 UTC

One thing to add to the Southeast Asian list: fish sauce (/nam pla/ if you’re Vietnamese). Very evocative, delivers salt, sour, AND umami in one dash. Sounds like a small issue but it’s useful stuff: it goes wherever anchovies go and, hey, no anchovies!

Foodies bring up the brandname Three Crabs alot.

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