a thick soy sauce. Friends often wondered why Amah’s curry had such powerful flavors. This ability to recreate flavors from memory is one of the most desirable gifts that all good chefs the world over possess.
This leads me to the concept of yin and yang. Another attribute of Asian cooks is the ability to achieve a balance in their cuisine between the opposing energies of yin (earth, darkness, cold and receptivity) and yang (sunlight, heat and activity). In food this is important because some foods are known to be cooling (yin) and others heating (yang). This relationship is encouraged and fostered in both aroma and flavor, and has little to do with actual temperature, but more with creating heating and cooling sensations in the body with dishes and their ingredients.
Pickled garlic can be truly surprising when used in salads and meat dishes and can be easily made at home.
Yin aromas have a calming effect on the chi (life force or human energy). Examples of this are the delicate, almost feminine perfumes of the grassy pandanus and green teas, the citrusy lemongrass, the floral bouquets of the ginger flower or the delicate keng hua (cactus flower). Yang aromas are warm and stimulating. Examples are pepper, ginger, chili and the musky and nutty aromas of spices and some meats. Do not turn down a cup of “heaty” ginger tea offered to you when you have a cold coming on—the aromas will clear the sinuses and the ginger will warm your chest.
I have often felt homesick for the tastes and smells and that little chili patch back home, and for the Asian kitchens which always beckon with their spicy, intriguing aromas that change each day as the daily menu changes. Living in Australia, I slowly came to realize that in the West herbs are subtle and gentle, whereas the herbs used by Asians are intense and fiery, and clash together as they cook in the wok. Moreover, the spices that are strong in their own right, such as cumin, coriander and fennel, are often dry-roasted to give them added punch. This represents a major difference in our cultures. Our cuisine in the East is so aromatic because that is what is most important to us. Good Asian cooks are trained to bring out the aromas of each individual spice or herb. Garlic aromas are teased out in woks, and curry pastes are slowly cooked until they became aromatic. The abundance of perfumed ingredients makes it easy to create such food once you understand this simple point. To this day I live by one of my Amah’s major tenets: “ Ahh, ho heong, ho sek mah!” which means “Good smell, good to eat!”
Friends who travel with me to Asia are enraptured. One friend, a television producer, used to looking at things through the confining lens of a camera, turned to me in the midst of filming a market and remarked that he wished he had a “smell-a-vision” camera. Canadian and Australian friends repeatedly walk into my kitchen and are seduced by the aromas, immediately heading for the stove and lifting up the lids to breathe deeply of their contents, trying to analyze each of the dozen herbs and spices I had painstakingly layered into a tender rich Rendang. An Australian diplomat who had lived in Asia for many years once walked into my home and immediately asked whether I had forgotten he was coming to dinner. Prior to his arrival, I had cleaned the kitchen thoroughly and sprayed it with air freshener to extinguish the curry smells and he assumed there was nothing cooking! I never did that again. Today I bask in the aromas of my food and its glorious flavors, and my kitchen remains a proud outpost of my native land.
This book was born from a discovery that Asian flavors and aromas are simple to recreate in your kitchen. Follow my Amah’s rule “If it doesn’t smell good, it will not taste good!” Just go ahead and have fun with these aromas.
Perfect for a summer lunch that speaks of rarefied paradise (see Black Pepper Lobster Tails with Garlic Butter—page 183) with a glass of your favorite bubbly.
If your childhood memories are stirred by the gentle aromas of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, as well as by a Simon and Garfunkel ballad, then you are clearly a child of the West. If, on the other hand, memories of your mother’s kitchen are summoned by the citrusy perfume of kaffir lime, the freshness of Chinese celery, the peppery blast of basil, the comforting softness of coriander, and the pepper and lemony aromas of curry leaves and sweet lemongrass, then you are a child of the East. It is the variety of herbs, the leaves and flowers of plants, that separates the cuisines of Europe and Asia.
I think the place to understand the strident tones that tropical herbs create is in an Asian market. Everything is loud, colorful and “in your face” here. A gaggle of geese, ducks in cages, the flower lady advertising her wares in her loudest voice—hoping to drown out the hot tofu seller next door. Walk past the fish stall, and above the cacophony of market calls you will hear the screech of the auctioneer. Stand still and breathe deeply. There is nothing subtle about this at all. It is raw and vocal. So are the herbs—strong, pungent, perfumed, aromatic and unforgettable—there is nothing bashful about the herbs of the tropics. You are reminded of countless curry meals in the roadside stalls of Thailand and the fried kway teow hawkers cooking their noodles with abandon in the night markets of Malaysia. Bunches of herbs are plucked hastily and thrown into a mee krob salad, or into a biting-red chili crab dish.
The Asian cook blends many ingredients together to make a dish. Imagine the cook as a builder starting from the foundation and working upwards, with garlic and hot oil forming the base of the structure. From there, as each ingredient is browned and releases its fragrance, other contrasting ingredients such as onion or chili are added. And so different aromatic layers and enticing flavors are added—one on top of the other—to provide an extraordinary blend.
In the West, flowers are cut for decoration and their perfumes waft through the house. In the East, flowers are more likely than not cut for the kitchen, and their fragrance is distilled and decanted into foods and dining rooms. It is true that in the West one might find candied violets by a grandmother’s bedside, or peppery-tasting nasturtium leaves in the salads of Vogue readers—but the former is rarely seen these days and the latter is subject to the whims of fashion. In Asia, banana blossoms and ginger flowers release their floral grassy or cinnamon-like gingery scents, always distinctive, into fish sambals and krabu herbal salads on a daily basis. These dishes are as commonplace and as widely prepared as a Western Caesar Salad, a Salad Nicoise or a Lebanese Tabouli.
A wise cook once told me that the main difference between spices and herbs is that you go out to buy spices whereas you grow herbs in your garden. In other words, herbs are more accessible and freshly available if you grow them in a pot or devote a tiny garden bed to your most commonly used varieties. I believe the most beautiful herb in the world is the statuesque “Jerry Hall” of herbs—the ginger flower, locally known as bunga kantan. It grows tall and straight, blossoming out and facing toward the sun, then curving inward again, like hands cupped in prayer. The aroma is unbelievably subtle—containing the perfume of ginger and roses, slightly peppery, with a touch of cinnamon, jas-mine and sweet chilies. The ginger flower has a stunning cherry-colored heart that slowly lightens into pink, fading into warm creamy-yellow petals.
A shrimp sambal or a salad cooked with chopped ginger flower makes all these wonderful aromas come alive at once in the mixture. I have witnessed an amazing Balinese salad called babi guling —roast suckling pig with many herbs and vegetables including chopped ginger flower. The ginger flower perfume was so infused into the dish that diners couldn’t resist bending forward to inhale the wondrous scents as the dish was served. Now wouldn’t you think a ginger flower is something worth exploring?
Lemongrass grows in a prolific clump like tall grass. The root clump divides into many individual stalks and each one produces a fat, juicy, lemony, fragrant bulb that can be harvested and used to perfume your curries, or ground into aromatic sambals, drinks and teas. Vietnamese mint grows like the Triffids spreading
