The Asian Food: Facts, Types of food, Asian Cuisine And many more.

ASIAN FOOD

Asians love to eat and eating occupies a high place in Asian life. It has been said that eating is "the principal means of celebrating an conceivable event." Meals are a time to socialize and relax, and often the more people the merrier.

Food found in Asia often has more bones, shells and body parts than food found in the United States. It also tends to have more vegetables, less meat and often times less oil. Food varies a great deal from region to region, with rice being the staple in the south and noodles the staple in north, although both rice and noodles are generally offered everywhere.

Many Asians believe that food has medicinal qualities. They regard the collagen found in shark fin soup for instance as good for the skin. The vinegar from dragon fruit is said to be good for the spleen, pork is said be effective in increasing qi and tencha. Teas, traditionalist believe, keeps allergies at bay.

It has been said that the Chinese make food choice decisions based on the Five Fs: fresh fish, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meats and fresh seafood. Chinese have traditionally liked their food very fresh. That is why you see so many live animals in the markets, Chinese like to see turtles that can still swim, chickens that can run, crabs that can pinch. Waiters at restaurants often show customers a live, flopping fish before it is thrown in a skillet. When shopping Chinese cooks look for fish with bright clear eyes and deep red gills; pork with a good ratio of meat to fat. They try to get vegetables that are as fresh as possible; get them from the market to the kitchen in as short of time as possible; and cut them at the last minute.

Shopping habits have changed as people have acquired refrigerators and microwave ovens and have started shopping at Western-style supermarkets. Consumers now buy more processed and frozen food and more dairy products than they used to. One customer at a Shanghai supermarket told the New York Times, “I come here more than 10 times a month. You can get everything here. And you can do all your shopping at once."

Buddhism, Meat, Eggs and Milk.

Buddhists are not supposed to slaughter or witness the slaughter of animals. But eating meat is okay as long as one does not take part in the animal's death. Buddha himself ate boar meat. In Tibet, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other Buddhist countries priests eat meat and dairy products.

Technically Buddhists are not even supposed to break open eggs. In some places they can get eggs that have “accidently” been broken open or are broken open for them on request. The same hold true for live animals purchased at a market. In some cases a Buddhist individual picks out what he wants, pays for it and leaves. As he walk down the street, the butcher runs behind him and give him the freshly killed animal, saying has just died n an accident.

In traditional Asian cooking you find no cheese, milk, cream sauces, or butter. In many places people have never tried milk or milk products. Dried fish is often used in mousetraps rather than cheese.

Milk, Butter, Cheese and Lactase Races.

Some Asians don't like cheese, butter, milk or other dairy products and in some cases get physically sick if they eat them. In the old days, many Asian didn't even like their smell. Nineteenth century Japanese described Europeans traders as bata-kusai ("stinks of butter").

The aversion for dairy products is partly the result of the fact that many Asians lose lactase, an the enzyme which helps in digestion of milk sugar, as they get older. Groups that don't possess the lactase enzyme are called lactase negative races and those that have it are called lactase positive races.

Most adult animals can not tolerate lactose. Over time through evolution humans have developed a tolerance to lactose. Around 8000 years ago most people were lactase negative because they stopped consuming milk when they were weaned form their mothers. Beginning around 4000 B.C. some groups of people began drinking milk from domesticated animals, and later milk became an important food source for people in northern and central Europe, Arabia and parts of West Africa. Natural selection enabled these people to retain the lactase enzyme into adulthood while groups that drink milk lost the enzyme in childhood.

Exposure to American food like pizza and cheeseburgers have made dairy products more palatable to young Asians.

Rice.

Rice is the world's No.1 the world's most important food crop and dietary staple, ahead of wheat, corn and bananas. It is the chief source of food for about 3 billion people, half of the world's population, and accounts for 20 percent of all the calories that mankind consumes. In Asia, more than 2 billion people rely on rice for 60 to 70 percent of their calories. If consumption trends continue 4.6 billion people will consume rice in 2025 and production must increase 20 percent to keep up with demand.

The seeds in rice are contained in branching heads called panicles. Rice seeds, or grains, are 80 percent starch. The remainder is mostly water and small amounts of phosphorus, potassium, calcium and B vitamins.

The texture of rice is determined by a component in the starch called amylose. If the amylose content is low (10 to 18 percent) the rice is soft and slightly sticky. If it is high (25 to 30 percent) the rice is harder and fluffy. Chinese, Koreans and Japanese prefer their rice on the sticky side. People in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan like theirs fluffy, while people in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Europe and the United States like theirs in between. Laotians like their rice gluey (2 percent amylose).

Freshly harvested rice grains include a kernel made of an embryo (the heart of the seed), the endosperm that nourishes the embryo, a hull and several layers of bran which surround kernel. White rice consumed by most people is made up exclusively of kernels. Brown rice is rice that retains a few nutritious layers of bran.

Noodles

Noodles are cheap, nutritious, and convenient. Dried noodles can be kept a long time without going bad. More than 100 different kinds of noodles are produced in Asia. More than 50 percent of the wheat consumption in the region is used in noodles. There are hundreds of thousands of noodle shops in Asia. Many people insist that the best way to eat noodles is to slurp them directly into your throat without chewing them.

Noodles are arguably the most popular food in China. Children are taught how to stretch dough into noodles at school and noodles makers can make dozens of shapes ranging from "silk hair" to triangular. The noodle business is very competitive. There are more than 2,000 manufacturers of instant noodles. Unlike European pasta, which is pressed out a machine, Chinese noodles are kneaded, and then stretched and pulled into thin threads or rolled or sliced into flat ribbons. Describing a noodle maker at work in northern China Mike Edwards wrote in National Geographic, "He massaged a lump of dough, then drew it out to a length of about five feet. Then his arms flexed, his fingers twitched in cat's cradle maneuvers, and suddenly the dough strands doubles, then quadruples and octuple."

Noodles have been consumed since 2000 B.C. A bowl with remarkably preserved yellow noodles dated to that period was unearthed at the Laija archeological site on the Yellow River. Found in a sealed earthenware bowl, the noodles were 50 centimeters long, 3 millimeters in diameter and resembled a traditional variety known as la nian that is still popular today. They appear to have been stretched by hand from dough made from millet.

Boiled pasta is more likely to have reached Italy via the Arab world between the 5th and 8th centuries. The story that Marco Polo brought back the first pasta from China is a myth. Documents from 1279, sixteen years before Marco Polo returned from China, show that Genoese soldiers were carrying pasta in their provisions.

Asian Cuisine

Chop Suey: You may believe this dish is a part of authentic Asian cuisine, but it was actually invented by Chinese immigrants in America.

Utensils: Chopsticks are the traditional form of utensils, used for eating every meal. This is because, historically, forks and knives were not used at the table as they were considered to be weapons.

Soup: Contrary to eating traditions in the West, bowls of soup are eaten at the end of the meal, instead of at the beginning, to aid in digestion.

Tea: Many cultures around the world have a set time of day to enjoy their tea, but that’s not the case in China. For thousands of years, they have drank their tea throughout the day.

Ice Cream: Supposedly, ice cream originated in China a few thousand years ago. Kept as a royal secret, it didn’t make it to the West until Marco Polo brought the recipe to Italy during his travels.

Authentic Asian cuisine has a long, interesting history. To learn more about this delicious food and to try some of its most cherished dishes, call China Bowl Asian Cuisine.