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#gastronomy
useless-catalanfacts · 3 months
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The artist Laia Baldevey (she makes BEAUTIFUL illustrations of Catalan mythology and folk culture, find her on Twitter here) has illustrated a 2024 calendar with drawings of Catalan cuisine that we eat in each month, be it because it's a food eaten in a certain holiday that takes place then or because it's a popular food that's in season.
She has shared some of the illustration on her Twitter, which I reshare here. The calendar is on sale in bookshops around Catalonia, some of which also sell it online.
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She has also made another 2024 calendar for Catalan mythology.
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Sean bienvenidos, japonistasarqueologos, a una nueva entrega en esta ocasión comentaremos de por qué en Japón se come poca carne, una vez dicho esto pónganse cómodos que empezamos.  -  Seguramente todos pensemos, que en Japón se come carne y no otro tipo de alimentos, ya que eso sería un estereotipo alimenticio. Para empezar el tema hay que entender que la geografía juega un papel muy importante en todo esto porque hay pocos focos donde los japoneses puedan tener el ganado, por el hecho de que su país es muy accidentado geográficamente hablando, el 90% de la carne es importada como otros muchos productos porque Japón escasean muchos de ellos.  -  En su territorio crían pollos y la Wagyu que es la más conocida y más cara del mundo, además, Japón es el segundo mayor importador de carne de cerdo del mundo, llegando a importar unas 923.835 toneladas de carne en 2020. Por eso comer carne en Japón es muy cara, hay platos con carne, pero no os creáis que hay muchos, al contrario de los que hay más son de: pescado, arroz, verduras, es decir los brotes de soja, el arroz les sale más barato por poner algunos ejemplos y los lácteos es otro de los productos que son muy caros. Su dieta es una de las más sanas del mundo y eso se ve en su población la más longeva del mundo, llegando a los 100 años, aparte de un gran equilibrio alimenticio, aplicado a una buena filosofía.  -  En esta publicación no he hablado de la influencia Yankee en Japón, pero qué país no tiene su influencia de su asquerosa comida chatarra, normal que sean el país con más problemas de obesidad del mundo. Espero que os haya gustado y nos vemos en próximas publicaciones que pasen una buena semana.  - ジャポニスタ・サルケオロゴスの皆さん、ようこそ!今回は、なぜ日本では肉をあまり食べないのかについてコメントします。 - 日本では肉を食べ、他の種類の食べ物は食べない。というのも、日本の国土は地理的に非常に起伏に富んでいるため、日本人が家畜を飼うことができる場所はほとんどない。 - さらに、日本は世界第2位の豚肉輸入国であり、2020年には約92万3,835トンの肉を輸入する。そのため、日本で肉を食べるのは非常に高価である。肉を使った料理はあるが、その数はそれほど多くない。彼らの食生活は世界で最も健康的なもののひとつであり、そのことは、優れた哲学に基づいた栄養バランスの良さとは別に、世界で最も長寿で100歳に達する彼らの人口にも表れている。 - 本書では、日本におけるヤンキーの影響については触れなかったが、ジャンクフードの影響を受けていない国があるだろうか?それでは、また次の記事でお会いしましょう。 - Welcome, japonistasarqueologos, to a new installment in this occasion we will comment on why in Japan they eat little meat, having said that, make yourselves comfortable and let's get started. - Surely we all think that in Japan they eat meat and not other types of food, since that would be a food stereotype. To begin the subject we must understand that geography plays a very important role in all this because there are few places where the Japanese can keep livestock, due to the fact that their country is very rugged geographically speaking, 90% of the meat is imported like many other products because Japan has a shortage of many of them. - On its territory they raise chickens and Wagyu which is the best known and most expensive in the world, in addition, Japan is the second largest importer of pork in the world, importing some 923,835 tonnes of meat in 2020. That is why eating meat in Japan is very expensive, there are dishes with meat, but do not think that there are many, on the contrary there are more: fish, rice, vegetables, i.e. bean sprouts, rice is cheaper to give some examples and dairy products is another of the products that are very expensive. Their diet is one of the healthiest in the world and this can be seen in their population, the longest in the world, reaching 100 years of age, apart from a great nutritional balance, applied to a good philosophy. - In this publication I have not talked about the Yankee influence in Japan, but what country does not have its influence of its disgusting junk food, it is normal that they are the country with more obesity problems in the world. I hope you liked it and see you in the next posts have a nice week.
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x-e-n-i-a-nice · 8 months
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𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑀𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 - Aʀᴄʜɪᴠᴇ
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southeastasianists · 13 days
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Often described as the world’s largest Buddhist monument, Borobudur rises from the jungles of central Java: a nine-leveled step pyramid decorated with hundreds of Buddha statues and more than 2,000 carved stone relief panels. Completed in 835 AD by Buddhist monarchs who were repurposing an earlier Hindu structure, Borobudur was erected as “a testament to the greatness of Buddhism and the king who built it,” says religion scholar and Borobudur expert Uday Dokras.
Though Buddhists make up less than one percent of Indonesia’s population today, Borobudur still functions as a holy site of pilgrimage, as well as a popular tourist destination. But for the Indonesian Gastronomy Community (IGC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating Indonesian food culture, Borobudur is “not just a temple that people can visit,” says IGC chair Ria Musiawan. The structure’s meticulous relief carvings, which depict scenes of daily life for all levels of ninth-century Javanese society, provide a vital source of information about the people who created it. Borobudur can tell us how the inhabitants of Java’s ancient Mataram kingdom lived, worked, worshiped, and—as the IGC demonstrated in an event series that ended in 2023—ate.
The IGC sees food as a way to unite Indonesians, but the organization also considers international gastrodiplomacy as a part of their mission. Globally, Indonesian food is less well-known than other Southeast Asian cuisines, but the country’s government has recently made efforts to boost its reputation, declaring not one, but five official national dishes in 2018. To promote Indonesian cuisine, the IGC organizes online and in-person events based around both modern and historical Indonesian food. In 2022, they launched an educational series entitled Gastronosia: From Borobudur to the World. The first event in the series was a virtual talk, but subsequent dates included in-person dinners, with a menu inspired by the reliefs of Borobudur and written inscriptions from contemporary Javanese sites.
In collaboration with Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other partner organizations, the first meal in the Gastronosia series was, fittingly, held at Borobudur, with a small group of guests. The largest event, which hosted 100 guests at the National Museum in Jakarta, aimed to recreate a type of ancient royal feast known as a Mahamangsa in Old Javanese, meaning “the food of kings.” The IGC’s Mahamangsa appeared alongside a multimedia museum exhibition, with video screens depicting the art of ancient Mataram that inspired the menu and displays of historical cooking tools, such as woven baskets for winnowing and steaming rice. Another event, held at Kembang Goela Restaurant, featured more than 50 international ambassadors and diplomats invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
But how does one translate 1,000-year-old stone carvings into a modern menu that’s not only historically accurate, but appetizing? “We have to have this very wide imagination,” says Musiawan. “You only see the relief [depicting] the food…but you cannot find out how it tastes.” The IGC designed and tested a Gastronosia menu with the help of Chef Sumartoyo of Bale Raos Restaurant in Yogyakarta, and Riris Purbasari, an archaeologist from the Central Java Province Cultural Heritage Preservation Center, who had been researching the food of Borobudur’s reliefs since 2017.
The range of human activities depicted in the reliefs of Borobudur is so wide that it has inspired research in areas of study stretching from music to weaponry. There have even been seaworthy reconstructions based on the “Borobudur Ships” displayed on the site’s lower levels, exquisitely rendered vessels like the ones that facilitated trade in ancient Southeast Asia. So it’s no surprise that Borobudur has no shortage of depictions of food-related scenes, from village agricultural labor, to the splendor of a royal Mahamangsa, to a bustling urban marketplace. Baskets of tropical fruit, nets full of fish, and even some modern Indonesian dishes are recognizable in the reliefs, such as tumpeng, a tall cone of rice surrounded by side dishes, which is still prepared for special occasions. Some images are allegories for Buddhist concepts, providing what Borobudur archaeologist John Mikic called “a visual aid for teaching a gentle philosophy of life." Uday Dokras suggests that these diverse scenes might have been chosen to help ancient visitors “identify with their own life,” making the monument’s unique religious messaging relatable. The reliefs illustrate ascending levels of enlightenment, so that visitors walk the path of life outlined by the Buddha’s teachings: from a turbulent world ruled by earthly desires at the lowest level, to tranquil nirvana at the summit.
Musiawan says that the IGC research team combined information from Borobudur with inscriptions from other Javanese sites of the same era that referenced royal banquets. While Borobudur’s reliefs show activities like farming, hunting, fishing, and dining, fine details of the food on plates or in baskets can be difficult to make out, especially since the painted plaster that originally covered the stone has long-since faded. Ninth-century court records etched into copper sheets or stone for posterity—some accidentally uncovered by modern construction projects—helped fill in the blanks when it came to what exactly people were eating. These inscriptions describe the royal banquets of ancient Mataram as huge events: One that served as a key inspiration for the IGC featured 57 sacks of rice, six water buffalo, and 100 chickens. There are no known written recipes from the era, but some writings provide enough detail for dishes to be approximated, such as freshwater eel “grilled with sweet spices” or ground buffalo meatballs seasoned with “a touch of sweetness,” in the words of the inscriptions, both of which were served at Gastronosia events.
Sugar appears to have been an important component in ancient Mataram’s royal feasts: A survey of food mentions across Old Javanese royal inscriptions revealed 34 kinds of sweets out of 107 named dishes. Gastronosia’s Mahamangsa ended with dwadal, a sticky palm-sugar toffee known as dodol in modern Indonesian, and an array of tropical fruits native to Java such as jackfruit and durian. Other dishes recreated by the IGC included catfish stewed in coconut milk, stir-fried banana-tree core, and kinca, an ancient alcohol made from fermented tamarind, which was offered alongside juice from the lychee-like toddy palm fruit as an alcohol-free option.
Musiawan describes the hunting of animals such as deer, boar, and water buffalo as an important source of meat in ninth-century Java. Domestic cattle were not eaten, she explains, because the people of ancient Mataram “believed that cows have religious value.” While Gastronosia’s events served wild game and foraged wild greens, rice also featured prominently, a key staple in Mataram that forms the subject of several of Borobudur’s reliefs. It was the mastery of rice cultivation that allowed Mataram to support a large population and become a regional power in ninth-century Southeast Asia. Rice’s importance as a staple crop also led to its inclusion in religious rituals; Dokras explains that in many regions of Asia, rice is still an essential component of the Buddhist temple offerings known as prasad.
The indigenous Southeast Asian ingredients used in Gastronosia’s Mahamangsa included some still widely-popular today, such as coconut, alongside others that have fallen into obscurity, like the water plant genjer or “yellow velvetleaf.” Musiawan acknowledges that modern diners might find some reconstructed ancient dishes “very, very simple” compared to what they’re used to “because of many ingredients we have [now] that weren’t there before.” But in other cases, ninth-century chefs were able to achieve similar flavors to modern Indonesian food by using their own native ingredients. Spiciness is a notable example. Today, chillies are near-ubiquitous in Indonesian cuisine, and Java is especially known for its sambal, a spicy relish-like condiment that combines pounded chillies with shallots, garlic, and other ingredients. But in ancient Mataram, sambal was made with native hot spices, such as several kinds of ginger; andaliman, a dried tree-berry with a mouth-numbing effect like the related Sichuan pepper; and cabya or Javanese long pepper. “It tastes different than the chili now,” Musiawan says of cabya, “but it gives the same hot sensation.” Chillies, introduced in the early modern era by European traders, are still called cabai in Indonesian, a name derived from the native cabya they supplanted.
Gastronosia is just the beginning of IGC’s plans to explore Indonesian food history through interactive events. Next, they intend to do a series on the food of ancient Bali. By delving into the historic roots of dishes Indonesians know and love, the IGC hopes to get both Indonesians and foreigners curious about the country’s history, and dispel preconceptions about what life was like long ago. Musiawan says some guests didn’t expect to enjoy the diet of a ninth-century Javanese noble as much as they did. Before experiencing Gastronosia, she says, “They thought that the food couldn't be eaten.” But afterward, “They’re glad that, actually, it's very delicious.”
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morethansalad · 10 months
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Caramel Sous Vide Pineapple with Pink Peppercorns and a Banana & Passion Fruit Sorbet (Vegan)
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sidewalkchemistry · 2 years
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🥣🍂 autumnal smoothie bowls 🍂🥣 fruits: making prebiotic desserts possible since forever
Beet, Pray, Love Smoothie Bowl
Carrot Cake Smoothie Bowl
Autumn Winter Squash Mango Smoothie Bowl
Super Greens Smoothie Bowl
Cookie Monster Smoothie Bowl
Pearl Grape Smoothie Bowl
Plant-Based Cinnamon Roll Smoothie Bowl
Caramel Apple Crumble Smoothie Bowl
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ornithorynquerouge · 6 months
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Harry Peccinotti - gastronomy
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massiveluxuryoverdose · 10 months
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Cellato's “Byakuya”
The World's Most Expensive Ice Cream at $6,696 per Serving !
To achieve this record-breaking creation, Cellato sourced a highly coveted white truffle from Alba, Italy, which costs approximately $6,905 per pound. Additionally, the ice cream includes Parmigiano Reggiano, a renowned Italian cheese, and sake lees, a byproduct of sake production.
Collaborating with Tadayoshi Yamada, the head chef at Osaka restaurant RiVi, Cellato aimed to blend European and Japanese flavors to create a truly unique culinary experience. The development process took over 1.5 years, involving numerous trials and errors to perfect the taste.
The recognition from Guinness World Records has brought well-deserved validation to Cellato's tireless efforts. Despite the eye-watering price tag, the company's representative expressed their satisfaction, stating that achieving the record made all the hard work worthwhile.
Cellato also sells a black-truffe version of its ice cream,
For ice cream enthusiasts seeking an unparalleled indulgence, Cellato's Byakuya flavor promises a one-of-a-kind gastronomic adventure, combining rare and luxurious ingredients in a frozen delight.
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ickaimp · 2 months
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One of my favourite random factoids about Tucson is that the city was one of the first UNESCO Heritage sites for Gastronomy.
Yes, the food here really is that good. 😂
No, but seriously, agriculture here dates back over 4,000 years, the longest in the US, and some of those plants are still cooked and eaten here today.
And the food is really good.
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ronycore · 7 months
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recipes/photography via Just One Cookbook
Just One Cookbook (JOC) was created by Namiko Hirasawa Chen (Nami) in 2011 with a focus on authentic and modern Japanese recipes.
Just One Cookbook was the finalist for the 2017 SAVEUR Blog Awards in the Best Food Video category and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Japan Times, and The New Yorker.
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killabeeblog · 2 months
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useless-catalanfacts · 2 months
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An almoixàvena in a bakery in Xàtiva, Central Valencian Country. Photo by Joanbanjo on Wikimedia Commons.
Almoixàvena, almoràvit or monjàvena is a traditional sweet from the Costera and Vall d'Albaida areas in the central part of the Valencian Country. It has its origins in the Middle Ages, when the area was under Islamic rule, and its name comes from Arabic al-mugábbana, meaning "cheese fritter", but nowadays it's not made with cheese, only eggs, wheat, sugar, olive oil, wine, and cinnamon, and can sometimes have lard.
In Xàtiva, it's typical to eat it on Thursdays from Saint Anthony's Day (January 17th) to Carnival (date in February or March, depending on the moon calendar).
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dolcefarnienteblog · 8 months
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niftyrecipe · 4 months
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(via Katsu Curry from JapaneseCooking101 - recipe on Niftyrecipe.com)
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southeastasianists · 10 months
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In 1960, Princess Samdech Preah Reach Kanitha Norodom Rasmi Sobbhana published one of the first definitive texts on her country’s cuisine. L'Art de la cuisine cambodgienne, or The Culinary Art of Cambodia, was an extensively researched, beautifully illustrated tome years in the making. It came at a pivotal moment, just seven years after Cambodia declared independence, when the nation was fighting to codify an identity beyond that of its former French-colonial rulers.
Only a few years after the princess’s death in 1971, civil war ripped Khmer society apart. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Prime Minister Pol Pot, purged Cambodia’s artists and intellectuals, along with records that detailed much of what came before “Year Zero” on April 17, 1975. Copies of The Culinary Art of Cambodia all but vanished.
Nearly half a century later, Rotanak Ros, better known as Chef Nak, has dedicated her career to preserving and reclaiming thousands of years of Khmer culinary history. After leaving her position at a nonprofit organization in 2017, Ros traveled throughout the Cambodian countryside documenting recipes from home cooks that culminated in her 2019 cookbook, Nhum: Recipes from a Cambodian Kitchen.
For her second work, Saoy: Royal Cambodian Home Cuisine, Ros turned her lens from home cooking to the lofty kitchens of the Khmer palace at the height of its influence. Saoy roughly translates to “dining in a royal setting” and the recipes here are the kind that might have once been served at state dinners. Princess Rasmi Sobbhana—a highly educated, fiercely independent maverick who met with President John F. Kennedy, refused to marry, and spent her life advocating for women—became something of a personal inspiration for the project. While the recipes in Ros’s work have all been thoroughly tested for a modern audience, the book is very much an homage to this powerful figure in Khmer history.
Gastro Obscura spoke with Ros about unpacking the essence of a cuisine, cooking with flowers, and the unlikely series of events that landed an original copy of the princess’s manuscript in her possession.
What drove you to shift your focus to the cookbook space?
My first cookbook came from a dream to share what I know, as well as to answer a question that I used to be asked: “What is Cambodian food?” After all these years, I still don’t have the answer, but hopefully the book helps explain some of it. It’s just so hard when you want to know about who you are in terms of what you ate if you don’t have anything to use as a reference. I thought that if I didn’t do anything about it, then the next generation of Cambodians would have nothing to show them that this is what we ate.
What inspired your second cookbook, Saoy?
A woman reached out after the first article [about my work] in The New York Times. In the email, she wrote that she used to live in Cambodia between 1970 and ’72. She was the daughter of the ambassador to Cambodia. And she remembers her mother producing a book that was written by Princess Norodom Rasmi Sobbhana. She wrote [The Culinary Art of Cambodia,] a cookbook of recipes she’d been collecting over the years from different members of the royal family. She wrote a book in Khmer and also another book in French and in English.
What do we know about the princess?
She was one of the aunties of our late king [Norodom Sihanouk]. A few things that I learned about her is that she never married. She devoted her life to lifting up women’s education, as well as to cooking and promoting [Khmer] cuisine. She really wanted to spread her cuisine to the world. She was able to do that with the support from the US Ambassador.
At that time, I thought that women in Cambodia were not taught to read or write, and I was wrong about that. But also I realized I was not the first one to start this journey to understand Cambodian cuisine. She devoted her life to this and this book is dedicated to her legacy. But it’s also a part of our culture and history.
What insights does the text offer into life in the Khmer palace?
It shows very different ways of cooking and ways of using ingredients. It also shows the influences of different cultures. So for example, in the book, Sobbhana stated very clearly that in the palace, they cooked French, Thai, Chinese, and Indian cuisines. The royal palace is a place that greets and serves people who come from other parts of the world to visit Cambodia.
Even the dancers, they danced different dances depending on where visitors came from. One of the daughters of the king, she danced more than the Khmer classical dance. She danced Mongolian, Chinese, Burmese dances depending who visited us and where she paid a visit to.
For me, I keep it the way it is, because I would like to honor the decisions of Sobbhana and also it’s part of the history. Also, I want to celebrate the differences, the varieties. No one and no culture exists in isolation. Everyone is influenced by each other.
Were there any French-colonial influences evident in Princess Sobbhana’s dishes?
A few dishes would use butter or milk to cook rice. In some recipes, instead of using cream or butter, she would use coconut cream to soak part of a baguette and then with the steamed or mashed chicken liver, then she would bake it with an egg white that had been whipped until foamy. So she would use some of the [French] ingredients and techniques, but then she would make them her own.
For example, the steamed chicken liver is very in the style of foie gras. But then she would make a sauce with fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, and a little chili. How would you imagine these two things together? But when they are with each other—foie gras is very rich and this sauce on the side is very fragrant. They balance each other out.
What was surprising to you in your research here?
For more than five years, I’ve spent most of my time, energy, and money trying to bring back the forgotten flavors of Cambodia. I’ve gone around the country talking to elderly people to try and dig out the textures and flavors that they still remember. But the process of making this book showed me that there are so many things we didn’t know about [Cambodian cuisine].
For example, I never knew that we used clove or fennel seeds or coriander in our cuisine many years ago. Initially, I thought these were international influences, but the more I learned, it’s written in very old Cambodian recipes. [Spices] had their own specific names. Like “clove” is klampu. When I first read the name in Khmer, I had no idea what klampu was. This is just one example of how what I thought I knew is small compared to what I don’t know.
In Cambodia we have a long mountain range called the Cardamom mountains, but I think at least 95 percent of Khmer don’t know what to do with cardamom. We had to journey to different parts of the country to understand Cambodian cardamom, which looks totally different from the one from India.
The other thing I learned about is that there are so many different ways of using flowers in our cuisine. So for instance, instead of using room temperature water in the cakes or desserts, Sobbhana uses rose water or jasmine water in the dough. Things could be very simple, but they make it in a way that’s on another level.
What is one recipe that stands out to you from your research?
There’s one recipe for “white pearl soup.” It tastes almost like congee, but it’s made with tapioca pearls. That soup really stands out in my mind. It’s very much comfort food. It looks simple, but there’s a lot of work behind it. The broth takes five or six hours to make.
That brings up a good point: Since these recipes were written for royalty, just how complicated are they?
Some soups can look very simple, but just the process of making the paste can take four people three hours to make. The paste contains 15 different ingredients that have to go through being thinly sliced, then sun-dried, then pounded, then sautéed again.
Of course, in the palace, they had people there to prep for the cooking. And I think that’s what makes it different from our day-to-day cooking. According to Ambassador Julio [ A. Jeldres], who was very close to our late king, who wrote one of the forewords in the books, everything needed to be prepared properly and took a lot of time.
Why does it feel so important to you to correct the narrative of what Cambodian food is? Why do you want the world to know about some of these recipes?
We as a people are struggling to really accept who we are. To know that these kinds of ingredients are being used here and there—we used to think we were copying this or that other country, but we had that knowledge a long time ago. It’s a fight that I have to fight. But it’s also a fight that is worth it to reintroduce these ideas and ingredients back.
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morethansalad · 1 year
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What Makes A Dish Delectable? (Demonstration in How to Construct Salads You'll Actually Crave) | Notes from an Amateur Gastronomist
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