that's right yeah well good afternoon oh yeah I snuck in the back way yeah sure yeah no it's fine it's quite all right oh yes of course hi yes you may something oh I wouldn't worry about it because you know I can always fill in the blanks this picture that's in the tomato birth inside is the

[01:11]

one that I sent them for my 40th high school reunion booklet most of the pictures aren't in the 40th and 40th high school reading but they're not like this one huh I didn't go no I just sent him this photo in a little bio and I also sent them like twelve or fifteen dollars or something you know for a copy of the book the booklet which just came funny it was the renewals in September and then look what came sometime last two weeks anyway this afternoon I wanted to talk about flavors and tastes which we haven't done much so this is more specifically about cooking and less you know generally about Zen practice and being mindful or attentive or thorough or you know not wasting etc and it's a subject that's very interesting to me and you know somehow there's not a lot

[02:17]

about it and so I don't know why that is exactly but I don't know maybe maybe other people think differently than I do I'm kind of interested in like you know what makes biscuits biscuits what makes bread bread you know what makes a pie to a pie dough rather than a tart dough so does it have more butter less butter it has milk or it doesn't have milk or you know why did why did things what makes things the way they are so to me this is all kind of interesting because then if you have a basic structure a concept in your mind then you can go ahead and do lots of things you don't need to have okay I'm gonna put this with this and then you know and you don't need a lot of recipes maps you have a kind of

[03:19]

overall understanding so this is similar to for instance when I went to some classes with the chefs of Sichuan they said that when you're going to cook a dish you it's useful to think like what are the main ingredients what are the seasonings so what's what makes this dish what it is so you know it's a different dish if you have like last night we had tofu and it has lots of garlic which is different you know it's a dish the guest did you know so that's different than if you have tofu in curry or tofu that's fairly plain you know so you're thinking about the ingredients the seasonings and then then you have a sort of picture in your mind of approximately what's what's happening here so anyway this is interesting to me so I started thinking about you know

[04:28]

flavors and classically and though there's various relationships here with what you know we think of as Zen but I did find finally that it's useful to taste what you put in your mouth a lot of times you know and this is a different way of cooking then you put in the various things and then you taste it and then and then you don't you haven't exactly studied in that process like how did how did it get to be like this so one of the things I do for instance when I cook is if I make lentil soup I cook lentils and then I taste what what do lentils taste like so to me that's interesting what do lentils taste like and then why would you what is there some problem with the way lentils taste you know last night we were talking about the true spirit of the grain so then

[05:30]

yeah maybe a little salt is good maybe a little what what what makes it you know and then some people like lentils and then some people don't so for instance apparently very few people historically like vegetables because if you look in you know any number of cookbooks the joy of cooking or various places most vegetable soups you you might saute some onions and you have some garlic and then you cook the vegetables in there and maybe you put in a little bit of flour and cook the flour a bit and then you add chicken stock because you want to have the flavor of meat in there and then you finish it with you blend it up maybe and then you finish it with some cream so you kind of what you're kind of ending up with is chicken stock cream flavored with vegetables so so as a

[06:32]

vegetarian cook of course then you end up having to be more interested in what are these flavors and how would I work with this and how would I how would I end up with something that is appealing see anyway so I've been tasting things carefully so then if you start with lentils and then if you saute some onions and you put onions in with lentils what does that do you know and it changes you know so sauteed onions are in a lot of things so to me it's interesting why are sauteed onions in so many things what's the point so in a simple sense you see in and this is kind of hard to talk about because we don't have a lot of language for taste exactly I'm going to introduce you to some but if you just have I've often done with people like having canned tomatoes and it's just tomato and if you put in sauteed onion with it instead of a single note it's like a chord and and it's like instead of just tomato there's this other sort

[07:38]

of sense of which are of a kind of a viney herbaceous you know somewhat fruity tart flavor and you put in sauteed onions and it kind of makes it a little more earthy a little more mellow and one way I describe it is from a single note you have a sort of chord of flavor so when you have a chord of flavor then and then when you when you taste it people oh this is nice and tomato sauce is you know not that complicated yet people buy it you know because it's too hard to saute onions and add a little garlic and you know some dried thyme and oregano or basil or something and canned tomatoes and maybe have a little wine you know for another flavor element that's too hard for people this is not complicated though it's like taking tomatoes and then sauteed onion and maybe a little garlic and then you have some herbs and if you want you can finish it with fresh herbs and then there's whether the tomatoes are fresh or canned but there's

[08:45]

so many good canned tomatoes now this is not a difficult thing to do so so the concepts I want to introduce you to first of all the categories are nutritional categories are salt sweet sour bitter and pungent pungent is the pepper element of peppery things and then in Asian cuisine there's also sometimes a sixth flavor called plain and you know the concept of the concept of food more often than not in in the Asian the Asian idea is that you have a food that's plain like white rice and then you can come it's something you come home to in your palate and then you go out on little flavor adventures and you have something salty or something sweet and sour something sweet and pungent

[09:46]

something kind of moist and cooling refreshing and you can always come back and home in that sense is not supposed to have a lot of surprises it's not supposed to it's supposed to be kind of safe and what we might call comfort food you know so you know in our world maybe it's mashed potatoes or something but also we have something that analogous that is bread but bread isn't home in the same way because we have more the idea that a meal is a main event you know otherwise known as an entree you have this main event and then partly you get a main event by having the things leading up to it be not very good and not very interesting you know how many warm-up acts are yeah vegetables sometimes how many warm-up acts you know are that good compared to the main act the main attraction you've been waiting for and sometimes when you're at

[10:49]

restaurants you know the bread and butter is not that good that they serve you at the beginning it's just something to fill you up or pass your time or something and anyway so probably if I take like you know Japanese cooking this is fairly simple but we have all these we have these five elements because soy sauce is salty and then for sweet usually sugar for sour vinegar rice wine vinegar and then punch an element is green onions cilantro is both tart and pungent and then dark sesame oil is a kind of bitter element so for instance if you make teriyaki sauce you have two parts two parts of soy to one part sugar

[11:50]

one part vinegar that's teriyaki sauce then if you also add you oh and then garlic and ginger you can have two so garlic and ginger are pungent elements green onion is kind of a pungent element and cilantro is kind of tart and pungent and then the dark sesame oil so you can you can use these things either in the same dish or in different dishes so you might have one dish that says soy sauce and then another dish that so cuisine is put together by using these elements and then but having them in different places and within this kind of framework one of the things that if you go out to restaurants oftentimes what restaurants try to do is they overuse salt to bring up the flavor of things sometimes restaurants you know there's just way too much salt in there and that's supposed to make it flavorful but it

[12:52]

just in my taste it just makes it salty and so a lot of times what what people cooking don't understand is that you need some of the tart element for my cuisine the way I cook you need something tart and that helps to for the flavor to be fresh and vibrant on your palate so one of the primary examples of this of course is you have if you have salad these things aren't just sort of these things don't just kind of like happen but if you have salad you know you have lettuce and then you say like well this is pretty good this is kind of crunchy and refreshing and well maybe depending on the kind of green it is you know it's a little bitter or it's a little mustardy like the arugula is kind of mustardy and some greens are a little bitter so yeah because you have bitter greens and then some greens are a little more sweet and but generally lettuce is it's kind of you know some like some like iceberg lettuce you know it's popular for various reasons but one is that it has no flavor and in an American

[13:54]

cuisine it's important the things that have no flavor are really important parts of the cuisine because we don't want to because in America we're more like I was saying the other night or whenever it was happiness is not having to relate to anything so anything you put in your mouth wouldn't be you want it you wouldn't want to have to have it be something you had to pay attention to or notice that you had it in your mouth like broccoli oh I have broccoli in my mouth so it's the same with you know beer you know Americans for a long time like the beer is sweet and bland that's what we like sweet and bland we don't want to actually taste anything we don't want to taste that we don't want it to be bitter pale ale or you know have some flavor of hops or something there was a woman who one time wrote a column in the in the Chronicle years ago she said that she'd been going to culinary school so when her when her family came to visit her mom and dad she was taking that to restaurants and finally they they went out to have a burger and they said we want to just have a hamburger without

[14:57]

the goat cheese and you know the arugula and she thought they might be interested in things like you know her dad was a chemist so she thought well maybe he'll be interested in and you know he's not interested no I know how I want to eat and then and then said well this is just food well yeah I mean there can be such a thing as getting too precious about food but on the other hand food isn't just food it's it's our life it's sunlight and earth and people's hard work and it's a lot a lot goes into it and then when she went to visit her sister in st. Louis you know they went out to a bar and she ordered a bass ale and her sister said to the waitress she means a Budweiser because you see if you have any taste or interest in taste this is like pretentious and you know and you you're you're sort of separating yourself from

[15:58]

people and so to actually taste anything in this sense is it's it's for some people it's like a world apart you're you're in a different world so America generally is like let's have let's eat things that you know are of no have no flavor interest and and then if anything if it has any flavor element it's sweet we don't mind sweet yeah so so we're in sort of a wasteland seems like at times but California is a little different Berkeley you know in the Bay Area we're in sort of in California especially with all the produce we have we're in the sort of in a certain sense it's a food mecca compared to a lot of places I guess but I started to tell you about salads so the lettuce which can have you know various flavor qualities or the arugula is mustardy and some of lettuces are bitter and then occasionally there's a lettuce that's kind of sweet there's there's lettuces that are more tart you know I mean like of course the

[16:59]

you know sorrel of course is tart but there's also some little greens that are kind of tart or lemony you know rather than mustardy or rather than peppery or you know rather than bitter so there's a whole range of elements in there so when you go to eat them you think well this is pretty good but you know it might be nice a touch of salt and pepper well how do you get it to stick to the lettuce so people figured out that you oh you toss the lettuce with some oil and then you can put on some salt and pepper and the salt and pepper sticks to the lettuce now you've got these oily green things so when you put on a little vinegar or lemon juice now it's like oh that's good that's refreshing so the tart element classically is considered you see to cut the grease cut the fat and literally the acidic element of tartness it cleanses your palate and it cleanses your taste buds and it kind of clears away what's in your what's on your

[18:03]

palate and you taste things more some people say well it actually kind of irritates your taste buds a little bit and that's why they're more sensitive as you add more of a tart element okay this is also true by the way and where I actually in some ways started studying this was in wine tasting and actually in wine tasting when classically you know European wines have a cooler growing temperatures for the season and so the the grapes have more acidity and less sugar and here in Napa Valley and American wine regions there's generally hotter temperature throughout the summer total degrees per day you know it's usually higher so there's lower acids and higher sugars and that means that American wines have higher the sugars what gets converted to alcohol and and so American wines tend to have higher levels of alcohol and then European wines tend to have lower levels of alcohol and higher levels of acidity

[19:03]

well this is why some people say they like European wines better with food because the higher acidity is more actually more refreshing and refreshes your palate as you're eating and tasting you have food and then you have the wine and you feel refreshed whereas American wines often have a lack of acid and so then it's it's a big flavor but it doesn't feel as refreshing when you have it with food it's nice it's it's nicer sometimes to sit around and drink your California wine in the afternoon or as an appetizer or something before dinner but it's for some people it's not as it's not as good as good with food and literally the wines that and it's very rare that it would be a European wine but the wines that have a lack of acid they're actually that the wine in in wine terminology it's called fat or flabby that a wine when it's called fat or flabby what they mean is it doesn't have enough acid it has all this flavor but

[20:05]

it doesn't have the sort of crisp crispness is another word for in wine vocabulary the crisp quality of a wine is another word for the amount of acid so if it's crisp it has a little bit above average tartness that's what makes it so called crisp the crisp that's a quote that's a word for the the amount of acid so with wine definitely is in with salad with if you didn't have your vinegar or something tart it would it tastes greasy if you have if you can have too much and then you go like this is this is no puckery so when you have the right amount it's refreshing and tasty so yesterday we were trying for instance with the and we didn't it never quite worked out but we tried you know the the tofu dish we had which then had garlic we put on some lemon peel and we had the little lemon things but we didn't actually put lemon juice on there

[21:07]

and it would have been helpful because that was so relentlessly garlic tofu with garlic if you like that that's fine but it would have been it would have helped on the palate for it to have maybe a little bit of lemon and the other thing that would have helped which is a classic combination is sweet and pungent so garlic is a pungent element so I'm a little curious and we might if we have a chance this afternoon we could try it out when we're back in the kitchen we could take the garlic and taste it again just out of the walk-in and then we put a little sugar on it and see how does this change in our palate for it to be sweet and pungent and not just pungent so this is these are this is a classic kind of combination that you don't just have pungent necessarily but you may have something sweet so in a certain sense you know you can think about these flavors and then you can if if you sometimes your mind or your awareness

[22:08]

you know works fine to come up with what to have in a meal and the various elements you know and then sometimes it's sort of obvious because if you have meat and potatoes and vegetables and but you know you what makes meals really tasty is to have a good combination of the various elements not necessarily in each dish but overall that a meal has various aspects so in our world you know certainly with vegetarian cooking you know the bitter element is often aside from the fact that you can have bitter greens nuts and seeds like almonds walnuts pumpkin seeds sunflower seeds these are things that are they're kind of oily but they're also kind of a little bit bitter so they're very useful in cooking especially in vegetarian cooking as accents or to accompany you know to have in your salad or so one of the things for instance at home I do is toast sesame seeds and then dress the salad you sprinkle toasted sesame seeds

[23:09]

on it and then you have the the greens which are there various things and you have the tartness and then you have the bitter and sometimes I actually put a tiny bit of toasted sesame seeds and then tiny bit of sugar melts in the pan and coats the sesame seeds and so then we have almost all the flavor elements because well we have salt we have sweet the oil is kind of a sweet element and then we have not necessarily pungent but depending on the greens and then we have a bitter and we have the tart so to me it's like I enjoy that you know and if I don't have it in one place I kind of it kind of may end up in another place all right so in traditional cuisines you know the Chinese are well known for adding sugar to things to bring up flavors and in my cuisine I like to add tartness to things to bring up flavors for a while I was putting

[24:13]

like lemon in everything I made is it it just is it tastes refreshing and there's there's a kind of brightness about acidity or tartness all right I want to then I want to tell you about my other flavor category which in some ways is more useful or it's certainly more poetic and these are dividing flavors into three so there's the earthy flavors, stem leaf flavors, flowery fruity flavors okay and to some extent this corresponds to parts of the vegetable but not necessarily so earthy things like you know beans like I was mentioned lentils so some people just don't like the earthy flavor so they you know they don't like lentils, beets, beets are earthy some people don't like beets and then there's black beans you know beans so beans are generally rather earthy tasting and and then all the grains grains are earthy tasting and dairy is

[25:19]

an earth element meat is earthy so there are all these sort of things you know so meat and potatoes is all earthy so it's no wonder that if you have mostly meat and potatoes you're gonna you're gonna turn into earthy and girthy you're gonna have some earth and girth and so it's the stem and leaves that kind of bring the element of movement you know not only you know in plants it's the part that moves but when you have vegetables just classically and even in for the Heart Association etc you have vegetables and that helps things to move they say have some fiber fiber is vegetables that helps with that's you know literally moving things and you know through the body in that sense of movement but also these are these are elements of cooking and cuisine or food that you know move the energy in your body so in Chinese medicine the so the

[26:23]

meat the meat elements or protein or grains and beans they're the sort of they're the sort of stuff but to actually move that stuff and have that stuff turn into energy you need this other element of the stem and the leaf that's what you know so as a kind of generality here this is what allows for movement and the dispersing of Qi the movement of vitality throughout the body and the fact that things are moving is a kind of quality of vitality and things are solid or stolid or in place then you have less the sense of vitality and more than just the sense of heaviness which is the sense of earth okay and also of course you know if you think about whether it's Chinese medicine or Indian medicine Ayurvedic medicine you know where we tend to be different types so some of us are more earth types some of us are more the mid-range type and some

[27:24]

of those are more the the bird-like energetic and then of course we'll tend to eat the way that confirms our type and we kind of just do that naturally because that sort of appeals to us and then we go on being our type and there's not a problem being our type except that sometimes it ends up being a problem that we better if we kind of work with our diet a little bit to kind of bring in some of the other elements you know so that so those are the earth things now earth tends to be either sweet earth or bitter earth and that's in our language and nobody says we don't have the expression the tart earth and we don't have the expression the pungent earth so sweet and bitter tend to be associated with earth so like the nuts that I was mentioned earlier being bitter those are earthy elements oil is an earthy element dairy is earthy some

[28:28]

cheeses are you know earthy you know I used to think there was a word but I checked with my daughter you know excremental I thought that was a French word for stinky cheeses because some French cheeses have that kind of quality you know like and some people like it and some people don't and you know but that's a kind of that's this earth element you know it's like whoo this is this is the barnyard you know this is this is intense and all right so you have these earth elements and then of course things like potatoes you have potatoes and then mushrooms mushrooms are you know if anything earthy so and then of course within any particular category like grains you know and if you think about it like buckwheat isn't really a grain but buckwheat is particularly earthy compared to like wheat compared to like and then corn and millet which coincidentally are yellow rather than brown corn and millet are

[29:31]

more have more of a sunny characteristic than some of the other some of the others are more earthy as earth goes the corn and millet are more kind of sunny and bright so there's a kind of range within all these things if you think about meats you know like shellfish or fish isn't as earthy as beef and lamb and pork you know red meats are more like earthy and then chicken is not quite as earthy fish is even less earthy but it's still if you were going to put it into this category of being the earth element even it's coming out of the water but you but that's an earth that's an earth thing or so then in the mid-range here is all the the whole realm of you know basically vegetables so we have things that are stocks like asparagus and celery and then we have leafy things and then we have a cauliflower and broccolis and we have cabbages and you know lettuces greens you know green beans peppers so you know

[30:33]

bell peppers green peppers red peppers those are the fruit part of the plant but they have a vegetable kind of quality and then the and this is these flavors in here are kind of maybe mildly pungent maybe a little bit tart they're they're not but they're you know they're not appealing because again the most appealing flavor oftentimes for people is a sweet flavor but you see one of the things you can do in cuisine which Chinese do for instance if you stir-fry something when you cook things with high heat in oil a lot of the starches in there get converted to sugars and some of the sugars caramelized and then people say this is good so you're working with starting with something that's not necessarily so sweet and then when you apply intense heat with oil and you can also do that by roasting vegetables you know if you roast garlic

[31:34]

you know for 30 or 40 minutes it gets very soft and it gets very mellow and it's not nearly it's sweet now it's kind of sweet and it's kind of mellow rather than being intense and onions are the same way which you know raw onions can be kind of intense or vibrant or exciting on your palate but and if they're cooked and they become sweet and mellow and that's the starches getting converted to sugars and then sugar quality is making things more earthy then okay then it's making it sweeter toastier nuttier the heat if you steam vegetables instead of sauteing them you're not getting that you're not you're not bringing out the earthy element that's in there you're bringing out the vegetable element so steaming and blanching things in boiling water leaves them more like vegetables and they and then they you know then then

[32:37]

then people are less likely to go like oh this is good the way they do with things that are stir-fried because again that's sort of tends to be our taste but there are things you can do when you steam vegetables and then the third category here flower fruit there's a whole range of things here which is literally literally fruits so apple orange lemon peaches bananas so some of these are sort of sweet things like bananas but a lot of fruits are actually kind of tart you know apples although they're sweet they're also kind of tart and strawberries although they're sweet they're actually kind of tart and raspberries are kind of tart and so there's sweetness and especially now that we don't necessarily get fruit that's like right off the vine because the more sugar I mean the more sunlight again that something has on the vine the more sweetness it's getting as it grows just like the grapes which you know they're

[33:39]

getting so there's a lot of tart tart elements there and then there's also elements like you know vanilla or a kind of butterscotch flavor which are kind of and then also flower things occasionally there's things that are well the sort of thing that comes to mind is like Riesling wine Riesling wine or Gewurztraminer it has this sort of sense of flowery or floral so that flowery or floral is a kind of sense of sweetness or and it's it's it's kind of more vibrant now I want to give you some examples here of ways in which this flowery fruity element is used to actually then make other things you know interesting in your palate so one of the very common things is like chocolate chip cookies flour is an earth element cocoa if it's unsweetened it's dirt it's bitter you know and then and

[34:46]

then again this is why there's so much milk chocolate in our country you know because you can't have that bitter and so the chocolate the cocoa is bitter the milk is bitter the I mean not bitter but the milk is earth the eggs are earth the butter in there is earth so everything in the cookie is earth except for vanilla extract and then if you didn't have vanilla extract in your cookies and like this is just so you know this is just heavy this is just all this you know and it's sweet enough and it's got some oil in there but the vanilla extract is what sort of brightens it and you don't need very much but if you have a little vanilla extract and you go like oh this is good how pleasant or sometimes cookies have you know a little bit of lemon in them and then again you know like oh this is nicer because then literally sometimes there's like lemon

[35:47]

bars sometimes in desserts you know there's German chocolate cakes where between the layers is raspberry there's chocolate cake by itself it's it's it's after a while it's just heavy it's heavy in your taste if you have a little bit if you have a little layer of raspberry goo there you get a little tartness and then you say this is nice and you know if you have espresso and some people like in their espresso you take just a little tiny bit of lemon peel and you give it a little twist and you get just a little hint of that lemon essence of lemon oil off the peel and you put that in your espresso and you oh this is this isn't so intensely dirty you know and just you get this just this little brightness on your in your palate you know so this is actually all of again you know these are this is there's actually you see a kind of conceptual underpinning to all of this these are these are things that people have figured out but it's actually it all makes sense that actually this third

[36:51]

category of flowery fruity things is what helps to make earthy things palatable what helps to make the vegetable things you know alive and vibrant and with the middle category you can sort of go both ways so you know for instance if you take greens and greens can be spinach, chard, kale and you cook them now some of these need to cook longer than other things like kale tends to be more leather and you want to cook it longer to get it to be tender and spinach barely needs to be cooked and it gets them pretty fast and chard is somewhere in between there and these things have in a certain way they're kind of meaty spinach probably less so and kale more so you know and chard again somewhere in the middle but kale is kale it's a pretty earthy flavor so if you want to if you want to if you want to sort of make kale a little sort of brighter and and it's not like you're trying to get rid of the flavor of kale

[37:54]

I mean but if you add if you add a little sweet and sour to this now it's it's kind of alive and you you get the earthy quality and you get the quality of kale but you also have the quality of sweetness which is a different kind of earth and you have the quality of tartness lemon say which is the other which is makes it brighter now I want to remind you at this point that for any particular flavor thing you know one of the things that happens to me this is not complicated you know and maybe it's not complicated to me because I've thought a lot about it and when I cook I I learned a long time ago again you taste things and as you taste things you catalog them you kind of just catalog them it's like you you file it you file it in your memory what is kale taste like when there's nothing on it you know and then what does it taste like with

[38:58]

you know some lemon what does it taste like with some honey and lemon and so you're thinking about so in terms of these elements you know like salt isn't just salt, salt is also soy sauce, salt is also hard dried cheeses you know Parmesan cheese, Romano cheese is another example of something that's a very earthy cheese you know more so than Parmesan and it's a little and a lot of those Italian dried Italian cheeses are salty so you're actually adding a salty element and classically in salt substitutes onion, celery, carrot, parsley are dried and that's salt substitute so actually there's a certain amount of salt already in some of the things that are going into your cooking. Tartness well it's lemon and lime and orange it's also tomatoes tend to be somewhat tart, wine in certain instances is tart and then there's also vinegars and nowadays you know there's many different flavors of vinegars and then

[40:02]

there's also as I mentioned you know depending on whether the apples cooked or not you know there's you know apple or strawberry or some things you know are little bits of tart elements possibly and also by the way as far as sweet as far as salty goes olives, olives are often you know salty so if you have and then sweet of course isn't just sugar there's honey, there's molasses, there's dried fruits, there's you know so there's raisins, dates you know dried apricots and so you can take something you know greens and you can have salt on them of course and then you can have a little sweet and sour and you can have and then the bitter element is nuts so in tomato blessings here for instance there's a recipe for chard and then it has the lemon where you cut the lemon in eighths lengthwise and then you cut the eighths in little tiny slices so you actually have pieces of a whole cross-section of the lemon which

[41:05]

includes the skin, the yellow, the white and then the pit I mean the fruit part you have little pieces of lemon and then there's raisins there I forget there might even be some little green chilies so now we have sweet and sour and pungent and then it's finished with some roasted nuts which go over the top now people have that and they're like this is so good this is and but you know it's also not complicated it's chard and it has the flavor elements and you could do the same thing you know with sugar you know vinegar we're gonna do one of our tabboulehs tonight we're taking not the tabbouleh the zucchini and we're going to we have we're gonna put on some of our zucchini we're gonna put on ginger so that's a pungent element okay and then and then to just kind of you know for our interest and to amuse ourselves we're also going to put on

[42:09]

some honey and vinegar with it so we mix the honey and vinegar together with the ginger and we'll put that on the zucchini and then we're gonna see how that zucchini is different from the zucchini that has some thyme and oregano and salt and pepper somewhat different set of things okay so we're gonna do some different things today which you know we'll have a chance to and then we're gonna do one tabbouleh with a lot of parsley and some green onions and some mint and so that's more the leaf stem flavors and we're gonna do another tabbouleh with almonds, walnuts, cumin seed, coriander seed so that's gonna be a tabbouleh that's more earthy and then maybe I'll have a little bit of mint so we're gonna we're gonna be in a certain sense playing with these various elements and just to see like get a little bit familiar with these things and you know and then as you get familiar with these things it's sort of once and then

[43:12]

there's different ways to use categories like this but you know one is when you're stumped of what to do you kind of can go like well do I want something more earthy in here or you know does it need something more bright like lemon or you know you know dried you know I'd want something sweet dried fruits do I want something tart what do I do here and then you have sometimes then something comes to mind but also if something's good then you can you have a way you know to think about it to study this. So to me you know when you cook like this it's as though you know another way to say that I think about this is you know your intelligence or your awareness is actually working because one of the things that people do when their intelligence isn't working you can go to Denny's or places and or wherever it is it's you know often supposedly good restaurants and there's a little salad and because lettuce isn't necessarily so

[44:14]

good and because we're just going to take a ladle of dressing and kind of ladle it over the top or you are going to just squirt some dressing over the top and we're not actually going to toss anything and the stuff that's on the plate is going to sit there in a puddle of the dressing you know and then because the lettuce isn't necessarily so good by itself well let's let's put on some little you know gratings of red cabbage and why don't we have some grated carrot and then maybe a few raw mushrooms and then you know some little strips of green pepper and you know and some maybe some red pepper and then what else can we put on there you know. So it's not like anybody's actually thinking about the flavor elements you're just adding more so that it has the appearance of being something and you know and and maybe if we give it enough if you have a cheese that's that can be a little salty or a little earthy or you know if you have goat cheese and then if you have one little element that's like

[45:17]

capers or olives and pretty soon you've got this this is pretty good because it's this range of things and the elements are these different elements of earth element there's a nut and a cheese and then there's the greens and there's the caper and then and then there's the apple or the pear and and now this this starts to make sense this is somebody's intelligence somebody's been tasting and somebody's you know and so when you go to restaurants that are good somebody's doing this they're thinking these they and whether they're doing it consciously or not they have a sort of sense of the different flavor elements and that we could we could kind of bring these together rather than I'm just gonna put a bunch more stuff in here and we'll hope it sort of works and maybe it'll be good and tomorrow I think we're gonna do a salad green salad I think tomorrow's lunch is I think it was carrots raisins and sunflower seeds so

[46:19]

that's pretty good because carrots are pretty earthy the raisins are kind of sweet and fruity and then the sunflower seeds are kind of earthy different kind of earthy and bitter and the greens are you know the vegetable things so then it should be kind of nice the kind of combination of you know different elements and then it and which is sometimes it's it's a little less obvious that these things are you know working together we're gonna need to stop anyway so there you have it something about all of this and you'll find it useful or not as I've said about this whole course you'll get something out of what I'm saying and take it with you or you won't or you know something may pop up later but again this is a kind of way you know the kind of teaching I'd like to give people is things you can use to study for yourself you know so I'm not trying to tell you exactly what's what but as you

[47:23]

taste things partly you know whatever our experience is as we experience something if we have language for it then it becomes noteworthy and then we can note it and we can catalog it and store it if we have no language for it then it's sort of like well yeah this tastes different but you know my dad used to say about fine you know nice wines that when I was the wine bar at Greens and I bring home you know nice wines from Greens they say well that's nice but I don't know why and you know the follow-up to that is who cares because I can't I don't have any language really or you know way to you know recognize this so language actually helps us recognize things and see things and experience things and then it also is some way to so in that sense it's a way to as you taste things for things to be more alive so this is you know the

[48:27]

earth stem flower fruit is just a kind of language I created for myself because I wasn't happy with the language of sweet sour salty bitter pungent so the language can be whatever language you want but this is a language that I created for myself and I find you know useful in my cooking and it's a useful way to think about and explain to people what what makes food what it is you know how does this why does this you know interesting or not for us you know anyway so if it's if language like this doesn't help you know you should create your own language so that you you can notice things and then and then as time goes on you study and then and then you remember like oh yeah the lemon really helped that or that was really good with the olives or you know that the nuts that little bit of bitter element that was nice on here you know and so anyway it's a kind of tool for helping you to observe and study yeah

[49:28]

sure of the food yes well I like I don't generally like things really cold because so I like generally things either at room temperature maybe slightly slightly below room temperature maybe and then up to you know hot and fresh out of the oven or the stove because the the colder something gets the less you can taste this is true so the best white wines for instance are actually not intended to be served ice-cold or refrigerator cold the best Chardonnays are better around 50 degrees and what they say and what I found to be true is the cheaper the wine the poor the quality the colder you

[50:29]

want it so you don't taste how bad it is this is refreshing so then you don't taste the excess of sweetness or the the lack of you know tartness or whatever it is in the wine you know so you and so I find it sort of distressing and partly this is because of food regulations you know when you go to restaurants and things that in my mind ought to be sort of room temperature are just straight out of the refrigerator because partly because you know the food people say that you've got to keep it such and such a temperature it's going to going to have salmonella or whatever it's going to have and we can't we can't have that so anyway so I tend to like things maybe a little bit cool up to you know and also for me that has something to do with Chinese medicine because in Chinese medicine it's considered that your stomach is a kind of digestive fire or

[51:30]

or a cooking pot and when you if you eat too many cold things and especially ice cold things that's dampening your digestive fire and so for instance you know salads and eating you know eating lots of fruit and sort of like this sort of Weight Watchers idea of cold raw fruit and lettuce things it's all things that are cold and dampening and actually slows down your metabolism slows down your digestive fire and you don't have so much energy and don't burn so many calories and then it doesn't necessarily work as a kind of and having foods that are more room temperature or cooked or hot you know then tends to be more compatible in at least in Chinese medicine with one's digestive fire and being able to absorb the energy of the food so anyway that's more my so I do

[52:32]

like a range of things you know I do like some things room temperature or you know if I've had them in the refrigerator I have them out for a bit so they're not like refrigerator cold there we need to so thank you we need to close up here close up shop here and head over to the kitchen.

[52:55]

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