11 November 2007

East Asian cuisine

In common with most British people, I have a good deal of familiarity with Mediterranean cuisine: pizza, pasta, polenta; tomatoes, aubergines (eggplant), courgettes (zucchini); olives, onions and garlic; basil, oregano and rosemary. Moving to the eastern Mediterranean, I include hummus, felafels and pitta bread: staple vegan food when eating out in Paris, Berlin or Kyoto. Likewise, I am familiar with a wide variety of Indian dishes, and although I have never visited India, I have eaten in Indian restaurants from Edinburgh to London, Bruges to Toulouse, Tokyo to New York. Consequently, when I cook Mediterranean food (several times each week) or Indian food (fortnightly), I have a good idea about what it is supposed to taste like.

I do not know what most East Asian food is supposed to taste like. As a vegan, I have never eaten in a Thai, Indonesian or Malaysian restaurant. I have twice eaten in an excellent partly-Vietnamese restaurant in Berlin, and very occasionally eat in vegetarian Chinese restaurants, such as in Boston or New York. In Japan we ate in so few Japanese restaurants (we ate felafels and Indian food in Tokyo and Kyoto, and Mediterranean food in Tokyo), that I have as much familiarity with Japanese food in New York. Consequently, when I cook East Asian food, I have little idea about whether a person from the country would recognise what I had prepared.

For me, the ultimate case in point is my miso soup. I make it with miso, lots of miso. I also use vegetable stock, onions, garlic, capsicum (bell) peppers, sauteed shi-itake mushroom, fried tofu, arame (seaweed), ramen noodles, basil and black pepper. It is delicious ('oishi'), but we never tasted anything like it in Japan. Similarly my Chinese sweet and sour vegetables is packed full of vegetables (such as bamboo shoots and water chestnuts) and flavours (such as pineapple and vinegar), whereas in Chinese restaurants the sweet and sour has been a sweet, sticky sauce packed with MSG. My chow mein cauliflower and broccoli florets are sauteed in garlic, ginger and shoyu. My sauteed mushrooms, tofu and mange tout in black bean sauce is extremely moreish, but I doubt that it has a trace of authenticity. My South-East Asian noodle soup/stew, made with coconut milk, tomatoes, capsicum (bell) peppers, baby corn cobs, arame (seaweed), spring onions, garlic, basil, vegetable stock, turmeric and chilli pepper, rarely lasts long, but who knows where the recipe would be recognised?

Does it matter if the food tastes good? To some extent, yes it does matter. I enjoy using authentic ingredients, such as tempeh for Indonesian dishes, and wasabi, shoyu and mirin on my sushi. Without an intent towards authenticity there is a danger that everything I cook will eventually taste like variations on a single theme.