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Pastimes : Favorite Quotes -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (7365)	5/1/2001 12:54:46 AM
From: Volsi Mimir	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13020

The Most Difficult Thing about Cooking [Chinese] ....As soon as he [Zhu Ziye,a Chinese gourmet] got on stage, he asked an interesting question. "Comrades, who can tell me what is the most difficult thing about cooking?" The audience's interest was aroused, and they began to make guesses. "Choosing the ingredients." "Chopping." "The actual cooking." Zhu shook his head. "No, you're all wrong. It's the simplest yet the most difficult thing to do-the adding of salt." They were riveted. Nobody thought he'd mention something every little girl could do. When old ladies went to the well to wash rice they would call out to their granddaughters, "Put some salt in the pot for me, would you, dear?" A few old chefs nodded in agreement: this simple thing required great skill. Zhu elaborated, "Sour in the east, hot in the west, sweet in the south and salty in the north. People all believe that Suzhou dishes are sweet, but actually apart from dessert, Suzhou cuisine is very careful about salt, which enhances all tastes. A fish lung without salt is tasteless. Salt makes the fish lung tasty, ham more savoury, the water chestnut more slippery and the bamboo shoots crisp. It brings out all these tastes and yet itself vanishes. The right amount of salt is not salty; if there is too much you taste nothing but the saltiness. Then all the skill in the chopping and careful cooking is wasted." "The quantity of salt varies with the people and the time. The first few dishes of a banquet should have more salt because the diner's body needs it and his palate is still not ready. The dishes that follow should have less and less salt. The soup that comes at the end of a forty-course meal should have no salt and people will appreciate it all the same, because after so much wine and food, the body is already saturated with salt and people need water..." The Art of Salting a Dish discussed by Zhu Ziye, a most unrevolutionary elderly Chinese gourmet ~Lu Wenfu's The Gourmet and other stories of modern China [for anyone planning a forty-course meal]..... for me that would be a salad, a burger and 38 beers- screw the salt.