Heavenly Fragrance. Carol Selva Selva Rajah
all the wonderful countries and cuisines of the tropics.
Shopping for aromatic herbs and vegetables in Sydney’s Asian market at Cabramatta, where the largest concentration of Asian migrants live, grow their market produce and serve an amazingly eclectic range of Asian foods.
Markets smell different in Asia than elsewhere. Enter one and you are met with an onslaught of fragrances: musky, fishy, yeasty, nutty. The salty tang of fresh fish in large, musty-wet bamboo baskets—I picked up some whiting so fresh it almost leapt at me! The trevally is particularly tempting and the snapper always inviting because of its pink shiny scales. Further down, there are the caramel-like smells of roasting chicken satay. The pungency of chili powder being ground; the clean aromas of galangal and warm nutmeg; the sweet scent of cardamom and cassia perfumed tea, poured out in a tall, thin stream to create a magnificent, spicy froth. Asian markets are always a beehive of activity with people jostling and carrying baskets—busy, busy everywhere.
Aromas alone can announce the culture and the nationality of a market. Indian markets are suffused strongly with the pungency of curry leaves, cumin and coriander. The magical dry-roasting of these spices creates completely new aromas, such as those found in a vegetarian dal dish cooked with tomato and garnished with black mustard seeds and frying onions. And everywhere in India there is the faint lingering aroma of cardamom and chocolaty cinnamon.
Chinese markets announce their presence by the squawking of live ducks and chickens and row upon row of pork butchers. Herbal concoctions boil in vats and onion-mustardy smells emanate from rows of stalls selling choy sum, bok choy, een choi and various other cabbages piled in pyramids with other greens. In another area one finds assorted pickles and preserves in large earthenware jars, close to stalls with charcoal braziers where pork is slowly roasted, yielding the arresting sweetness of hoisin, and the ever-enticing caramel aromas of char siew pork and anise-glazed ducks which hang on hooks like soldiers in a row.
Fresh garlic chives not only look attractive, they pack a garlic punch when added to a tossed noodle dish or a chili crab dish (see Chili Crabs with Ginger and Garlic Chives—page 64).
Every country has its characteristic aromas: the Balinese ones are best represented by the delicately perfumed ginger flower chopped into the babi guling roast pork salad; Thailand by its coriander and lemongrass with peppery chili and the lemony tang of its Tom Yam Soup and Mee Krob; Vietnam by the herbal fragrance of perilla in its beefy Pho soups.
The importance of aroma
Over three quarters of what we taste in fact comes from smell. When we put food in our mouth, its aromas travel to the back of our throat and up to the nose. To demonstrate this to my students, I have them eat a few grains of strong, aromatic cumin, fennel and sugar while their nose is blocked with a clothes pin. They get nothing—no sensation of taste or smell. Then I have them remove the clothes pin. Whoa! Smell and taste return with surprising force.
Max Lake, the famous food and wine critic and my personal mentor and friend, has reinforced and influenced a great deal of my own understanding of aroma and taste. He writes that olfactory memories are strong because the nose is connected to the primitive brain, and thus connected to our sensual drives. Perfumers and sommeliers have long been aware of this relationship. His analysis of how the part of the brain devoted to smells affects our enjoyment of food and wine serves to confirm what I have learned through personal experience—that the emotional and physical functions of the brain are conjoined via the nose.
Because they are so closely tied to personal and cultural memories, aromas affect different people in very different ways. The smells of a ripe durian and of a ripe blue cheese are equally strong, yet they evoke either repulsion or greedy anticipation in a person depending upon whether their upbringing is Asian or Western. However, a look at the long queues at a bread shop or an Italian pizza shop redolent with roasting garlic, will also confirm that many aromas are universal.
Elegant star anise pods—an aromatic star-shaped spice with the fragrance of cassia and anise.
I feel that taste memory—the ability to perceive and differentiate between aromas—is always present in a person, but requires training through cultivation and practice. I recall Amah’s natural ability to use her taste and smell memory to recreate flavors in a dish quite foreign to her. Once she tasted something, her own senses would guide her through a personal library of ingredients and formulae, enabling her to cook from intuition rather than from a written recipe. Even if the ingredients were not quite right, as when she tried a new curry recipe (she was not Indian, but Cantonese), she managed to arrive at the desired flavor anyway by adding other ingredients—for example 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