Hisako Medicinal Cooking

Hisako’s Medicinal cooking.

This episode, the episode introduces Hisako’s Chinese medicinal cooking.  I’m not as familiar with Chinese Medicinal cuisine compared to the 8 regions of China, the most two I’m familiar with are Cantonese (The one Chinese food region everyone knows), and Szechuan/Sichuan cuisine.  But I do know a lot more about Chinese medicine compared to molecular gastronomy, which is what Alice specializes in.

For this topic, I am going to talk a lot more about Chinese medicine compared to Chinese medicinal cooking, considering how medicinal cooking is a subset of Chinese medicine.

  Chinese medicine is probably one of the best alternative medicines (and the only alternative medicine worth considering compared to other alternative medicines, in my opinion, considering I was actually cured from a bad flu and stomach cramp due to my mom’s limited knowledge in medicinal cooking) , and one of the oldest forms of science out there.  Chinese medicine famously discovered acupuncture, cannabis medicine (Yes, really, they smoked weed everyday blazeit420, get that dank meme out of your head), and an ancient form of anesthesia that was lost somewhere in the three Kingdoms (Which I will get to when I talk about Hua Tuo, the doctor that was killed by Cao Cao (Yes, that Cao Cao, Dynasty Warrior fanboys) and the man a lot of people think of when it comes to ancient Chinese medicine)

Chinese medicinal cooking studies the health of the human body, what ways to make the body react, and the like, kind of like a modern day health diet.  Chinese Medicinal cooking isn’t really cooking per se, compared to what Shokugeki No Soma would tell you, but it’s more of a scientific thing or a lifestyle kind of thing, like vegetarianism (Execpt Chinese medicinal cooking does allow you to eat meat).  It explores an ingredient, and sees what potential by doing different things to ingredients that would help the human body.   For example, in Chinese medicinal cooking, they would take an ingredient, like Chinese cabbage, and use it to make a dish that raises body temperature and increases sweat.  Most people stereotype Chinese medicinal cooking as “boiled and steamed vegetables”, but it’s far more than that stereotype.   The thing about Chinese medicinal cooking is that boiling and steaming are only two methods used to cook in Chinese medicinal cooking.  Chinese medicinal cooking, for example, uses quite a bit of spices to help the body out, such as making sweat, increasing body temperature, and the like.   It also places some emphasis on dry ingredients to make soup stock.  Delicacies in Chinese cooking are also considered valuable in Chinese medicinal cooking, such as Swallow’s nest (One of the world’s most expensive ingredients), sea cucumbers, and shark fins.

Now I’d like to get off a bit to talk about Shark finning.   Chinese medicinal cooking is one of the big reasons why shark finning is illegal, at least in the United States.   It’s not as big as Shark fin soup, but it’s close to it.  Shark fins are said to give you a healthy skin complexion if used in soup broths and as an ingredient, due to the texture.   It’s that reason why in Chinese medicinal cooking, dried shark skins are some of the most valuable ingredients.  When I was a child and I had to accompany my mother to the Chinese medicine store, they always had a lot of shark fins for sale because it was often used in that form of cooking.  Now for me, what do I think of the practice?  I think it’s cruel, yes, considering how they only kill the shark for the fins and toss the poor shark out to sea to die, but the practice is also wasteful, considering how shark meat actually tastes quite good.  Now for those of you who do not know what shark meat tastes like, it actually tastes similar to swordfish, and considering how luxurious swordfish is (If cooked right, swordfish has a wonderful taste, even better than even a perfectly done rare steak if done right), I see the cutting off of fins and tossing off potentially delicious meat as an insult.

But that’s enough about me ranting on shark finning and the wasteful practice of the preparation.

Chinese medicine also tried to find ways to find immortality, which ironically, caused more deaths than actually helped people.  A Chinese medicine person during the Tang Dynasty who was trying to find immortality once accidently mixed sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal, and the powder exploded on him.  For those of you who know shit about chemistry, that makes gunpowder.   In a sense Chinese Medicine made the start of modern warfare, in a way.  The Qin Dynasty actually FELL because of Chinese medicine attempts to make the tyrant Qin Shi Huang (The guy who made the Great Wall of China, the terracotta army, and if you believe some of the Chinese historians, possibly the entire Japanese race were descended by sailors that ran away from him) immortal.  The day before Qin Shi Huang died, he took Mercury to cure splitting headaches so he can still rule China.  Unsurprisingly, he died the next day.  Cue an embarrassing attempt to hide his death, succession issues, and the like, and the Qin Dynasty fell shortly after.

Since we are talking about Chinese medicine, let me talk a bit about Hua Tuo, considering how a lot of people have a LOT of misconceptions due to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is nothing but pro-shu propaganda.

Contrary to the popular belief, Cao Cao (Yes, THAT Cao Cao, for those of you who play Dynasty Warriors) did NOT die because he killed  Hua Tuo.

Hua Tuo was a doctor that lived during the ancient Chinese period of the Three Kingdoms, and his reputation is EXTREMELY exaggerated for all the wrong reasons.  He was the personal doctor of Cao Cao while Cao Cao was working for the last Han emperor Liu Xie/Xian (The whole Wei Dynasty thing happened AFTER Cao Cao died and everyone wanted a competent guy on the throne).  Hua Tuo was simply famous for his skills in acupuncture and cannabis medicine (Yes, he even got a title involving his specialty in cannabis) and was said to invent an ancient anesthesia that was lost after his death.

Despite Cao Cao surviving multiple assassination attempts and having an incredibly healthy diet of absolutely nothing but vegetables (Yes, Cao Cao was a vegetarian.  Really.  His wife, lady Xian, made him and his children eat vegetables, because Lady Xian was born a commoner and since peasants don’t eat a lot of meat, the Cao Family shouldn’t eat meat at a time of crisis, so thus the Cao family became vegetarians.  Yeah, Lady Xian wore the pants in the family, even after Cao Pi and later Cao Rui took the throne), Cao Cao got his infamous headaches that eventually killed him.  The headaches started before the Red Cliffs campaign (Which isn’t really as big as everybody makes it, it wasn’t a big loss for Cao Cao), and is one of the reasons why Cao Cao lost his campaign, because he rushed the campaign because he feared he would die before he can establish proper defenses against him against Liu Zhang, the only guy other than Sun Quan who could hold off against his army.  But over time, his headaches got bigger and bigger, so Hua Tuo constantly had to cure his headaches.  Eventually, Hua Tuo faked a permission to leave by saying he had to see his wife, but Cao Cao eventually find out that he was lying and Hua Tuo wanted to slack off, so Cao Cao excecuted him because Hua Tuo broke the law by lying the death penalty was a common punishment for people who broke the law.
So yeah, this whole “Cao Cao killed an innocent doctor and died as karma” thing was a load of baloney.  Hua Tuo broke the law, he was dealt the punishment.

However, Cao Cao did regret killing him, considering how his son, Cao Zhang, a prodigy who figured out the weight of an elephant, died shortly afterwards.

  Also, Hua Tuo did not cure Guan Yu at Fan.  That was Shu Propaganda.  What really happened at Fan was that Guan Yu managed to lose an important battle somehow despite having an important advantage on his side due to a flood that took out a majority of the Wei forces, and he became so arrogant and rude to his own soldiers that Lu Meng managed to get Guan Yu’s ENTIRE ARMY to defect because Lu Meng was such a nice man in comparison that Guan Yu lost all of his defenses and soldiers and died a pointless, pathetic death.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong tried to get rid of anything Ancient Chinese.  A lot of lives were lost in this terrible event, many ancient buildings and arts were destroyed, and many ancient Chinese techniques were lost. Schools were closed an entire generation of children did not have a formal education.  Chinese cooking and medicine were naturally involved in all of this.  The culture of the Chinese would have been lost forever, but Mao Zedong died afterwards before anything else could have happened, and Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping helped cleaned up Mao’s mess.  Deng Xiaoping helped save Chinese cooking by recruiting many Chinese people aspiring to become chefs and  encouraging chefs to come out of the Revolution to help show off Chinese culture.  So thus, Deng Xiaoping helped saved Chinese cooking in a sense by encouraging the Chinese to cook, and by extension, Chinese medicinal cooking.