Welcome to HARMONICS COOKING
By Yumi Kikuchi
HARMONICS COOKING invites you to healthy, enjoyable, happy and gratifying meals for you and your family. It brings harmony not only in your body but to the earth when many of us practice.
Principles are Shindo Fuji and Ichimotsu Zentai
Shindo Fuji means to eat foods in season that grow in your area. Fragrant and pungent foods to stimulate appetite and metabolism in spring, juicy foods in summer, high-carbohydrate and high-fat foods in autumn (to store energy for the coming winter). Your physiology and taste should follow the course of nature.
Ichimotsu Zentai means to eat "the whole thing". Eat in such way that you use the whole vegetable from skin to root thus enjoying the subtly balanced blessing of nature. I recommend not to remove acridness, not even the skim when making stock. If you are a meat eater and can eat the whole thing of chiken, pig or cow, go ahead. But if you are to eat only a part of it, you'd better avoid meat for it creates imbalance in your body.
Locally grown vegetables in season give living energy to adapt to the climate. You should be concerned to eat the foods produced in your area. Avoid imported foods as much as you can. Locally grown pumpkins are not same with the imported ones from Brazil for instance. The best way is to grow your own vegetables in your backyard. If you are a city dweller without such place to plant, you can at least improve your eating habit toward self-sufficiency by growing simple vegetables such as green onions or parsleys in the planter or making bean sprouts from soybeans.
Foods in season are best in taste, economical and good for health.
Avoid unseasonal vegetables. You may always find lettuces, tomatoes and cucumbers in the salads at restaurant even in winter which are summer vegetables that cool your body down. By eating those cooling vegetables, your body tend to become weak to coldness. Green houses with vinyl sheets and frequent usage of pesticides are inevitable to grow such vegetables out of season. Both of them make the cause of endocrine distrupting substances (environmental hormones) hazardous to our health and the earth. Therefore, it is very important for each of us to know the seasonal vegetables and choose the correct ones in cooking.
Yin and Yang Foods
Foods which have the characteristic of cooling the body are considered as yin and also can be scientifically described as pottasium rich foods. Yin vegetables grow in summer and protect us from heat, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, eggplants and so on. Those which grow toward the sun are more yin. All fruits are yin and especially tropical fruits such as bananas, mangos or papayas are extremely yin. Therefore, those who live in rather moderate or cold climate areas and eat fruits all the time would become constitutionally cold. On the contrary, in winter yang vegetables grow which have the characteristics to grow into the soil against the sun and warm the body. Root vegetables such as burdocks, carrots, lotus roots and radishes are these yang group.
In Japan there is an old saying "Do not let a young wife eat eggplants in fall". This was not meant "A young wife bullying". Rather this maxim is giving a wise warning to avoid eggplants in early autumn because yin eggplants which cools the body causes sterility from constitutional coldness. Though potatoes which grow in the soil are often considered yang, they are actually yin and same as other eggplant family. Just remember the simple rule that the plants which grows more up toward the sun have more yin character like fruits that grow rather in the tall tree, and those which grow deeper down into the soil avoiding the sun have more yang character. Accordingly the one grown in tropical area is yin and the one grown in cold climate area is yang. But as the leaf of a raddish is more yin relatively to the rest and it gets more yang going toward the root, yin-yang character is not an absolute but rather relative definition.
Those who like to eat potatoes in winter should add such yang seasonings as miso or soy sauce to regulate the yin-yang balance. Above all, natural sea salt is the best kind I recommend. Sea salt is always recommended to change yin character to yang one.
Cook in Layers and Heat Conservation Method
The next important thing to food ingredients selection is how to cook those. In Harmonics Cooking vegetable skins are recommended to wash well with a scrubbing brush (tawashi) without peeling off. The whole vegetable including joints, cores and branched roots is eatable. The whole food is life itself and has a complete energy as a whole. Eating a portion results in creating energy imbalance in the body. Eat the whole thing is essential in daily cooking and it also contributes to the reduction of garbage.
When the ingredients are cut ready for cooking, the most yin food is laid down first at the bottom of the pan then the less yin foods are added on the top one by one in order of less yin character as konnyaku, mushrooms, seaweeds, fruit vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, cucumbers), leaf vegetables, root vegetables, grains, fish and natural salt. You do not need all these materials to cook, but in Cook in Layers, make sure to put more yin foods closer to the heat and more yang foods away from the heat, add a small amount of water or seasonings for pan cooking and then cook covered with the lid. When boiled, reduce the heat to low or medium and cook for five minutes (cooking time can be shortened on the materials or the way of cutting), then wrap the pan with a bath towel for heat conservation cooking and leave it for 20 minutes. You would be amazed how much flavor is produced by this method, which is very energy conservative, earth friendly and makes the most of all the ingredients for they do not get cooked too much.
Use Real Seasonings
Most of the seasonings you may find at the regular store such as salt, miso, soy sauce, venegar and oil are not the real ones containing chemical additives. It is not exagerating to say a little amount of seasonings you take daily are supporting your life or rather destroying it. They may cost a little more but I recommend to replace those commercial seasonings with the real natural ones without any toxic chemicals. Thus your cooking will improve the taste drastically and health as well.
Regular seasonings recommended in Harmonics Cooking are salt, soy sauce, miso and umezu (plum venegar). Oil, sake (rice wine) and regular venegar are used occasionally. But others like mirin (sweetened sake), sugar, mayonnaise, ketchup and sauce should be avoided. With cooking in layers and heat conservation method, the natural flavor and sweetness are drawn out from vegetables so that there is no use of any sweetening seasonings. Venegars which are yin can be used with yang foods like fish, but if you are vegetarian plum venegar in stead is always recommended.
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