Popular Asian Cuisines

With cooking shows rivaling sports broadcasts celebrities like Emerald Lagasse and Rachael Ray are as popular now as Dale Jr. and Tiger Woods. What used to be boring, best nutrition for least effort, meals has been reinvigorated with creative dishes from many different cultures. Asian cuisine is at the forefront of this movement.  

Years ago, when picking an Asian restaurant many people used a general term called Chinese, just like Italian or Greek. In recent years this general (American) term for all of Asian cuisine has finally diversified. We now have a myriad of choices in this once “Chinese” only category. There is Japanese sushi, Korean, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Thai recipes just to name a few. These options have also crept from restaurants into our homes.

The definition of Asian food has different meanings in different areas of the world. In different cultures it refers to specific areas of the continent of Asia. For argument’s sake we will use as broad a stroke as possible focusing on the three most popular styles.

The first is the Southwest style which includes countries such as Burma and Pakistan. This is influenced by Arabian civilization which uses flat bread, hot peppers, strong spices along with kebabs. There is rice used with much of the food, but also chapatti and beans.

The second major cooking style is the northeast, which includes Korea, China and Japan. This style uses oils and sauces in much of its cooking. Food in this culture blended with many of the medicines and religious meanings. This was probably the first culture that consciously used food to bridge the mind body relationship.

The third style is the southeast (Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia). This style employs stir frying and steaming. Spices in this style are more subtle that the southwest using juice and herbs such as mint and cilantro.

The most important tool in the southeast cooking is the wok. This was directly based on the poor economic situation of the culture. Because of this they needed to invent a pot which they could cook a myriad of foods in. The rounded bottom of the original wok allowed for a variety of temperatures and cooking capacity with this one pan. Today, the western version of this has evolved into a flat bottom pan for use with electric stove tops. It is a universal tool, which to this day can be easily mastered to cook a variety of dishes.