I love cooking in a way of science experiments - weighing the amount of flour
accurately, caring the order of cooking. During “Cooking experiments”, my senses feel sharper.
Galette with salad for a beautiful morning is perfect.
This New Year’s Holiday was not the usual. I usually go back to my home town and spend a whole time with my family. I tried doing the different this year so I stayed in Tokyo. I had several things I wanted to try - to cook osechi(Traditional Japanese New Year Foods), first visit to Shrine in Tokyo, to decorate traditional Japanese flowers in my house, to design a poster where I write down my mission.
I wanted to focused on traditions - I felt those are very important and I need to keep in mind. I have experienced some technology start-ups and innovations are we have to focused on there. I also have focused on it, maybe too much. Last year I realized both of traditions and innovations are very very necessary and important - traditions still exist because of the very reasons.
Cooking osechi was a lot of fun actually - it took a long time to prepare only some dishes, but I felt I meditated during cooking somehow.
(Hanabira-mochi, Toraya)
My goal this year (Maybe for some years) is “Basic and Dignity” - focus on basics and at the same time have confidences to create innovative things for the society.
There is a book of the collection of the essays by Yoshiko Ishii.
She writes about foods around her life. I love the way she write down, which makes me hungry like this .
“Oh, I really want to eat omelette she write here.. Where can I eat? Hey Google. Hmm there doesn’t seem any place.. I should cook it by myself..”
The reason of appetite or deliciousness are not only taste, but also sentences. We can express how delicious they are in books.
I wanted to explore more so read a book about “Science of deliciousness” (Japanese book).
The author features Dashi - Japanese soup stock - a lot. He says that the deliciousness of Dashi is not only because of its taste, but also smell.
About Dash. It includes nucleic acids, minerals, more than 20 kinds of amino acids. We can create artificial Dashi soup by mixing them and salt, which doesn’t have any smells.
There is an experiment with mice. One group of them eat feed with natural dashi in childhood, the other do with artificial one. After they grow up, the result is that one group which has natural one prefer feed with it but the other which has artificial one doesn’t have any preferences.
This shows that smell is very important factor of deliciousness.
Without smell, we can’t feel delicious.
We could imagine this is why spices are popular all over the world and they used to be very important elements for trade.
Even we know this, in the digital field, we can usually use only a sense of sight and hearing..
So, what is the delicious color? What is the delicious sound?
Dinner for my friends. It was inspired by Indian and Sri Lanka food, using various kinds of spices and vegetables.
One of my main recipe I really wanted to try this time is "corn beef". (You can see it at the bottom right)
I referred to the book "Salt" about the recipe, which was published in Ireland in 1968. (Ireland seems to be the origin of corn beaf) It was preserved with salt and spices for a week, then boiled for five hours with herbs.
You can feel spices and salt when you taste it. Vegetables and brown rice around it are perfect combinations.
I tried to recreate one of meals from the book, "Salt" by Mark Kurlansky.
In one chapter, "salt cod" is a key food for the history of salt and some recipes where it's used are included.
Chopped salt cod, apples, raisins are in this pie with spices, like cinnamon, nutmeg.
I just read “Salt: A World History” by Mark Kurlansky. This book shows a long history around salt, including politics, culture, historical recipes.
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619
It contains too many important and interesting things to mention on only this post here, so I’ll pick up just some random parts.
・Salt is the oldest international trading products, which causes the strong control of the production by governments. In addition, It was used like money, so salary is coming from the Latin word for salt because soldiers were paid in salt sometimes.
・Salt has taken a important role religiously. Ex. In Jewish religion, salt stands for food, and gift from God.
・A lot of recipes - how people used it for preservative food. Especially I’m very curious about how they cooked meat with salt.
・In Asian region, they tend to cook with seasoner containing salt, but not with salt itself. Ex. Miso, Soy sauce
… There are more interesting findings in the book. Just one book inspires me to enrich my understanding about salt.
I'm curious about recreate meals from the recipes! Next mission is decided.
I’ve needed a place where I can express my thoughts. I have two main interests , digital and food. This is why I decided to try to think about the combination of them.
Now I chose an ingredient, SALT, and started from it to everything I can do.
Salt is one of the most fundamental ingredients in food and it has a lot of histories which have created varied and important culture, not only in food cultures.
I’m trying to make researches about salt from various perspective, such as chemistry/food culture/digital, and indulge inspirations from it.
Of course it’s possible that I would change the theme - but including this possibility, I started from SALT.
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