Five Flavors Kitchen

Bowl of Cherries

Chinatown, June 2009

 Chapter 2 of the Su Wen discusses how we can be in harmony with each of the four seasons. Summer it says is characterized by abundance. The Qi of heaven and earth come together making "the ten thousand things" possible. It is a season characterized by exuberance. Summer is the season of the heart.

The stone/pit fruits which are in season now all have an affinity for the heart. We're probably most familiar with peaches, apricots, plums and cherries.

Cherries, are warm in nature and circulate blood upwards towards the head.  They are often used for memory loss. They are to be used with caution, however, by anybody with "heart heat" also known as "vexation" also known as "somebody done somebody wrong song". On the other hand cherries flambe might be just the thing for lighting a metaphorical fire. Too many cherries - not so good, though, so keep consumption under 1/2 pound a week even in therapeutic dosages.

Apricots are neutral in nature and so can actually be used for the aforementioned "heart heat". You can have about 5 a day, but should not eat them in therapeutic amounts if you have eye conditions with elevated eye pressure or muscle/tendon injuries.

Plums are also neutral and have an anti-spasmodic effect, tonifying qi and blood, increasing fluids and clearing the Liver.

Peaches are warm and open up the chest. They also lubricate the intestines, produce fluids, tonify qi and blood and eliminate accumulations. Again, don't eat too many if you have "heart heat" even though they are thought to get rid of parasites (see somebody done somebody wrong song).

All of the stone fruits have a slightly astringent nature so it good to eat them in moderation mixing them with other fruits, like watermelon for example. Watermelon can cool things off and flush things out - the cooling and flushing idea always useful when dealing with heat conditions. Also useful (perhaps at your next barbecue) is the factoid that peach wood was traditionally used for exorcism. Something to keep in mind when considering the demons and ghosts of "heart heat" past.

The Easy Way

So much potential, June 2009

My mother made the best pasta sauce in the universe. Actually she and probably all other Italian Americans would refer to it as "gravy" an entirely different entity than "sauce". Gravy has meat. Sauce, alfredo, marinara, pizziola or whatever does not. When you conjure up the picture of red delicious goodness simmering for hours on the stove -  that's gravy. Gravy prepared in the style of my mother and countless Italian mothers like her was a mysterious laborious process bordering on the mythic - and the process may have somewhat of a meditative quality, but who has the kind of time to take the better part of a day to make something for dinner. My mother may have enjoyed doing things in the most difficult way possible, but I have worked hard to overcome this aspect of my genetic make up and have come up with a pretty darn good really easy way of making a top notch gravy. 

Gravy like a lot of Italian food is pretty simple, relying on the quality of ingredients for its flavor. You'll need cans of plum tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, salt, olive oil, basil maybe some parsley, pork and beef. Now to do it the hard way you would brown several types of meat in a little olive oil. This would include meatballs, sausage, spare ribs, brasciole, and some sort of roast like meat. The whole plum tomatoes would be strained though a foley mill and put into a large pot with a handful of basil and parsley. For 4 large cans of plum tomatoes my mother would add 2 small cans of tomato paste. She would then add all the browned meat and let the pot simmer on low for several hours.

Gravy the slacker way can be pretty close to amazing as well, but you need a slightly more involved piece of hardware: the slow cooker aka the crock pot. Again for "gravy" you will need meat -  traditionally pork and beef. Here is where you can start simplifying, though. You don't need to brown a million tiny pieces of things to get a good flavor. A few pork chops and some sort of beef will work just fine. Brown the meat and put it on the bottom of the crock pot. Add tomatoes, (yes you can use crushed to save even more time)  tomato paste,  fresh basil, parsley, garlic ( a clove or two per can of tomatoes depending upon how you like garlic) and maybe a little salt and pepper. The amount of salt will vary with the kinds of tomatoes you're using. Set the cooker on low and walk away.

As you simplify, the quality of the ingredients takes on more importance. You may want to taste several brands of tomatoes to find the ones you like best. My mother would never use certain brands of tomatoes because she found them "too acidy". Her sister Flora's solution to the acidy tomato problem was to add a little baking soda. Warning: the tomatoes will foam up like some 4th grade science project. Use too much and it will turn into a 4th grade science project gone horribly wrong. Some people add sugar, but please lets not even think about that. It's best to find some good tomatoes. Whole plum ones are a little less bitter than crushed since with the whole ones you remove the seeds. The factory crusher process isn't as particular. 

Taken as a whole tomato gravy is a fairly balanced and nourishing. Tomatoes are cold, sweet and sour and tonify qi and blood. Beef is neutral and sweet, but more yang in nature also tonifying qi and blood. Pork is neutral, sweet and salty and affects the Stomach, Spleen and Kidneys. Generally considered a tonic, pork also clears the liver and removes heat. Basil and garlic are pungent, parsley sweet and bland. So you have something which is fairly substantial with some aromatics which lighten things up a bit. Oh and cooking dramatically reduces the alkaloid, solanine present in nightshades that many people try to avoid.

Spoon some of this over some polenta, pasta, rice or just dip some bread into it. Have an arugala salad on the side and you have to perfect meal for addressing chaotic qi. Gravy, it just makes things right.

So there it is - the secret family recipe.  Hopefully this is more helpful than my Aunf Flora's way of giving out recipes. She would say things like, "well you get everything, mix it together and cook it till it's done." Also don't worry vegan friends. As a card carying PETA member, I will talk about veggie options  in other posts. Chow.

Sweet

Dylan's Candy Bar 5.20.2009

It comes up a lot: sweet tooth, sweet talker, sweet dreams,  and "how sweet it is".  We often sugar coat things and the word "sweet" itself has come to mean amazing, great, awesome, nice - things like that. How then did sugar become so evil?

The answer is not straightforward. There are there are many types of sweeteners each requiring separate consideration. We must also remember that the sweet flavor is essential in our lives. In Chinese Medicine it is associated with the Spleen which is responsible for the intellect. The brain generally runs on glucose so the Spleen needs the sweet flavor to support the function of the intellect. Brain cells, neurons,  need about twice the amount of energy all the other cells in the human body. Thinking can be exhausting as glucose gets rapidly depleted by mental activity. Several studies have demonstrated the importance of dietary carbohydrates in cognitive, memory and learning abilities.The brain cannot store glucose so is dependent upon receiving a constant supply via the bloodstream. You see it's not weakness of moral character that compels us to eat Mars Bars, but a biological urgency to fuel our overactive minds.

Before you all go out and buy tickets for Wonka-land though, remember that too much sugar at one time actually interferes with cognitive function. When we overload the bloodstream with glucose our body produces insulin to store the excess, taking the glucose out of the blood stream and thus dropping the glucose supply to the brain. Stupidness ensues. One can only wonder how many political decisions of recent years were influenced by  soft drinks, chocolate chip cookies or jelly-beans.

Frequent changes in our insulin levels can unsettle our emotions and cause excess stress and excess stress elevates our insulin levels dropping the glucose available to our brains and again stupidness, including maybe the decision to ignore global warming or to invade Iraq, ensues. (Should soda be banned for all elected officials while on duty? Should we all take glucose readings before making any important personal or professional decisions? Should low carb diets be considered a threat to national security and the American family?)

Fortunately there are several ways to get the sweet flavor into our lives. We all know about fruits and vegetables like carrots and yams. Increase these and you may have less desire for the hard stuff.

Sometimes, though, life does require more. Enter sweeteners. Sweeteners however, are not all created equal. Some sweeteners even have anti-oxidents! White sugar is lowest on the anti-oxident scale, but that's not what sugar's about anyway. White sugar is considered a yin tonic and is used to treat thirst, dry cough and stomachache. It is considered neutral in temperature. Honey  is also neutral, tonifies qi and blood and lubricates both the lungs and the large intestine. Brown sugar is slightly warmer than white sugar and has some blood moving ability.  Maltose (malt syrup) is also warm and can slow the attack of acute symptoms. It also lubricates dryness.The gluten intolerant should take note, however. Malt syrup usually involves barley and may cause a reaction in the sensitive.  Maple syrup and date sugars are other great alternatives to white sugar. While processed white sugar is thought to cause inflammation by many, maple syrup and date sugar are thought to be OK. High fructose corn syrup, on the other hand, is just a bad idea and it's everywhere.

*****

"Ain't nothing like the real thing", but some of you may be thinking "substitutes". OK, Stevia is a natural sweetener derived from the plant Stevia rebaudiana. It is many times sweeter than white sugar and is generally regarded as safe and even beneficial. It doesn't do the things that sugar does in baking, however and you'll probably have to make some adjustments to your recipes.  I also find it to have an after taste. Xylitol another sweetener derived from natural sources is generally regarded as safe and also beneficial. Studies connect xylitol to reduction in tooth decay, increase in neutrophill activity and even suggest that xylitol could be used to treat osteoporosis. Xylitol has a good PR firm. Agave is my current favorite in terms of taste. It has a relatively low glycemic index and has been on Oprah.

Artificially produced sugar substitutes like aspartame remain controversial. Some studies suggest that aspartame impairs cognitive function and at least one connects it to headaches.

The take away here is: sweet - nourishes yin, but too much yin and you just muck up the works. You can find sugar in salt and sugar in tomato sauce. Become a compulsive label reader and you can dramatically reduce you sugar intake without cutting back on the cup cakes one bit.

A google search for the number of love songs using the word "sweet" resulted in over 7 million hits. Can't be bad.