more about my goals
what I'm doing
As of my writing this, the goals I have set for myself involve making 343 new dishes that I have never prepared before. This is a really big, long-term series of projects that will push me to develop many, many new skills as a cook. The decision to embark on such a large undertaking is motivated by my curiosity, but it's more substantial than that.
In every single thing I care about, I want to push myself. Above all else, I'm driven by my love for others and it's embodied in everything I try to do. This is an opportunity to do something really special for both myself and the ones I love and hold dear to me. I'm going to make a lot of recipes knowable and accessible to my friends, many of whom struggle to eat enough. It's difficult when you're limited by knowledge, dietary restrictions, and a lack of energy. I really hope that by compiling and adapting different recipes from around Asia, I can give them more than enough variety. It's very important! Variety is one of the keys to happiness. :)
Not all of this is going to be very easy to make, but I still want to try. For my own sake, I feel like I have to. I want to get better at taking care of my friends, so even when it takes a lot of kneading and simmering and grinding spices and cutting and fermenting, I'll be there to do it for them so they can try something really tasty and fulfilling. It's already inspired a couple of them to cook more, and I'm really hoping more of them feel able to try new things. 💜
dietary choices and accessibility
In general, I cannot really eat most land-based meat. Things like beef, pork, and poultry are off the table for me. I sometimes make exceptions for lamb because it's really tasty, but I keep it to occasional consumption since it hurts my stomach just as much as the rest. Unlike many of my peers, who are either vegan or don't like it, I do eat fish and enjoy it quite a bit. I don't intend to make substitutions for fish and shellfish, but for the meats I can't have, I try to find substitutions like mushrooms, tempeh, seitan, TVP, and tofu.
defining regions
Dividing the Indian subcontinent into regions is a task that is not as straightforward as mainland China, which is already an incredibly multicultural country with no shortage of similar categorization problems. Determining what regions should count towards this project and what should not is difficult due to the complex situation of contested international borders between Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, and Nepal. Some regions, such as Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, and the historic region of Bengal were split violently during the Partition of India and are vastly different on either side of the border today.
I will be treating certain contested areas as one region. I will be doing the same for the countries of Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. (I will likely be revisiting the latter two, as I know Nepalese cuisine to be incredibly varied.) Doing so ignores the last 80 years of independent development since then in cities like Bahawalpur and Chandigarh, on opposite sides of what was once the same region of Punjab. It also diminishes the violent divide between the Sinhalese and Tamil speaking people in Sri Lanka, and it obscures the Nepalese contributions to Bhutanese cuisine and vice versa.
Why make this choice? Every decision made with the categorization of any given region, even and especially in the realm of food, is political. To acknowledge Arunachal Pradesh under Indian terms, separate from Chinese terms, which argue that the region belongs to Tibet, gives strength to the position of the Indian state and those who support it. Further, only making three dishes from a region as geographically diverse and historically complex as Tibet serves to flatten it, detracting from the diversity of the region's culture. The decisions I am making here are not based off of a desire to create an optimized equitable map of the cuisines of half of the most populated continent. It is mostly for convenience and to hopefully take a thoughtful geographical approach to exploring the food of China and India. That being said, it will inevitably be skewed towards what interests me personally and what I can reliably eat according to my dietary needs.
This is all not to make a declaration of ignorant political views about such an incredibly diverse region of the world, but rather to acknowledge that any act of regional categorization is political. This is not a defense of my categorization as the correct one, but an opportunity to illustrate that all borders are political and none are equitable. Without a tremendous amount of effort that is outside the scope of this project, it's not possible to capture the entirety of the regional culinary differences of Asia. It is inescapable, and rather than despair over it, we can view it as an opportunity to learn more together.
As I learn more, I may add or remove regions based on the availability of recipes or in the case of significant similarity to a neighboring region. I have chosen not to include certain very small territories as full regions, such as Chandigarh, Lakshadweep, or Puducherry.