LA CUISINE HUMAINE

                    LA CUISINE HUMAINE
              How to cook like a human being even if you are one         
                 The  only cookbook you will ever need

                $4 on Amazon

                Free on NORMAN SPINRAD AT LARGE

                 Can be read in any language on the planet Earth!

OK this does take some explaining. When I was about 24, I chanced to have a bar conversation with a Chinese cook who taught me the basics of Chinese cooking and I've been cooking it ever since. Years later I wrote for a magazine how to cook Chinese cuisine in 1500 words.

Later in France I was asked to write a science fiction story by the annual Jules Verne Almanac, anything I wanted as long as it could be cut up in pieces between the science news of the year.  I wrote this story as an alien chef explaining to other aliens how to cook like human beings.

A story that is really the cookbook that it says it is.   After which, Dona kept bugging me to write a cookbook because by then I could cook many many things from many human cultures and she didn't want my recipes to be lost.  I finally realized I had already written it, and this is the expanded version.

I just wanted to have printed copies to friends some of whom are actually chefs, so the easiest way to do it was to self-publish a pamphlet on Amazon.  I put a $4.95 price on it because if I went any lower I wouldn't get any royalties at all because Amazon would take 40% of the cover price plus $2.00 shipping charges.

I have now dropped the printed pamphlet to $4.00 and I get $.20 a copy, and Amazon won't let me go any lower.  So this being Christmas and  Hanukkah  here's the free gift of an online version that can be read in 140 human languages.  If you like it, $4 wouldn't be so expense to have the pamphlet version at hand in your kitchen and I would make $.20.

                             LA CUISINE HUMAINE

                           How to cook like a human being

                                       by Norman Spinrad

                                       Introduction

      

           Most beings, sapient or otherwise, must eat.  What they eat, in 

      terms of raw materials, is determined by the requirements of their 

      evolved biochemistry.  Most species intelligent enough to have 

      developed even the rudiments of a fire and tool using culture 

      prepare, preserve, and combine these ingredients in a self-conscious 

      manner.

           It may be as rude and simple as charring animal parts over an 

      open fire, allowing vegetables to ferment under controlled 

      conditions, smoking, pickling, or drying victuals in order to 

      preserve them for future use, or rotting them with bacteria or 

      fungus, but the preparation of food, implying as it does at least 

      the mastery of fire and the use of tools, has long been regarded as 

      a universal criterion of sapience.  

           The point at which such food preparation attains the status of 

      cuisine, like the point at which a species may be said to have 

      evolved a true civilization, is more elusive of definition, and 

      indeed the argument has often been made that they are one and the 

      same.

           While some strictly carnivorous or entirely vegetarian species 

      have evolved both cuisine and civilization, it is generally fair to 

      say that cuisine begins with the combination of ingredients.  Meat 

      and vegetable matter(if only for flavoring)or different species of 

      vegetation are combined in the same dish, melded via heat, 

      decomposition, or chemical processes to produce a whole which tastes 

      different than the sum of its parts, and voila, cuisine, civilized 

      dining, and with it civilization, are invented.

           The point at which rudimentary cuisine attains the status of a 

      true artform is a matter of critical judgment on the part of the 

      diner, or, as the inhabitants of Earth themselves have it, “one 

      man's meat is another man's poison.”

           Nevertheless, all civilized beings, given a sufficient degree 

      of biochemical congruence, can recognize artful cuisine when they 

      taste it, and within the fraternity of galactic gourmets, the 

      cuisine of the planet Earth has certainly attained this status.

           Indeed a certain mania for La Cuisine Humaine has been sweeping 

      the galaxy ever since the recent discovery of the humans' otherwise 

      not-terribly-noteworthy civilization, resulting in many pleasurable 

      new dining experiences, but also, alas, the prevalence of all too 

      many misconceived and loathsome concoctions that the humans 

      themselves would rightly consider vile desecrations. 

           This cookbook, prepared after several months on Earth sampling 

      its fare and discussing culinary matters with both master chefs and 

      a sampling of ordinary humans is a modest attempt to remedy this 

      unfortunate situation.

           Since the humans have published thousands upon thousands of 

      vast volumes of recipe books down through the centuries, the present 

      work can hardly pretend to be definitive.  What is instead presented 

      here is an introductory work designed to initiate the neophyte into 

      the philosophy, principles, and working methods of La Cuisine 

      Humaine, rather than a definitive compilation of recipes.  

           It may not produce chefs to match the human masters, but 

      hopefully it will at least allow its readers to more or less cook 

      like human beings.

      

                                The Planet Earth            

           Earth is the third planet of an unpresupposing yellow star.

      About three-quarters of its surface is ocean, the rest being seven 

      large continents and numerous islands.  The planet is still 

      geologically active, and many ecospheres have therefore evolved and 

      continue to evolve, resulting in a rich profusion of plants and 

      animals, most of which are eaten, in one form or another, by one or 

      more of the many human tribal subcultures, though, alas, the 

      planetary mismanagement by the still rather primitive humans is 

      presently resulting in a certain narrowing of this wonderful 

      biological diversity.

           Life on Earth is entirely based on the carbon-biochemistry 

      quite prevalent galaxy-wide, so its cuisine is nourishing and 

      palatable to the majority of sapient species.  The humans themselves 

      are omnivores, and have therefore evolved cuisines incorporating 

      both flesh and vegetation.

           I say “cuisines” rather than “cuisine” to point to the fact 

      that human civilization has reached that delectable stage when the 

      local cuisines which have evolved in isolation over the centuries 

      have begun to merge, thanks to easy transportation and mass 

      communication, but have not yet ossified into a single standardized 

      planetary style. 

           In the major human cities, one may still find a profusion of 

      restaurants dedicated to most of the folkloric “ethnic” styles, side 

      by side with emporiums devoted to the free-form merging of same 

      which has created the glories of the emerging cuisine humaine.  

           Which is to say that we are fortunate indeed to have discovered 

      this planet at the very peak of its culinary Golden Age, hence the 

      mania for La Cuisine Humaine presently titillating the jaded taste 

      organs of more “advanced” civilizations.  To judge by general 

      galactic cuisinary evolution, such a Golden Age is usually fleeting, 

      soon to be overwhelmed by contact with the so-called advanced 

      cuisine of interstellar society.

           Enjoy it while it lasts!

      

                                Basic Principles  

      

           Human biochemistry requires the consumption of ten basic amino 

      acids, which may be obtained entirely from the flesh of terrestrial 

      animals, or from various combinations of plant material.  Human 

      metabolism runs on the oxidation of sugars, which may be eaten 

      directly as such, or which the human digestive mechanism may produce 

      from carbohydrates.

           As a result, while it is possible for humans to subsist on a 

      sufficiently varied vegetarian diet, it is all but impossible for 

      them to survive on meat alone, especially since their metabolism 

      also requires traces of many elements not available to strict 

      carnivores, and is unable to synthesize many necessary complex 

      molecules.

           In some human cultures, meat is cheap and easy to obtain, and 

      forms the basis of the local cuisine, with vegetables and fruits 

      serving as garnishes or “side-dishes.”  But, at least throughout 

      most of human history, meat has been a comparatively scarce and 

      expensive item in the majority of local cultures, serving in smaller 

      quantities as a supplement to more vegetarian diets.

           Indeed, historically speaking, meat has not been readily 

      available to great masses of poorer humans at all, leading to the 

      evolution of “peasant cuisines” cunningly based on the 

       combination of vegetables which, eaten together, supply both 

      metabolic fuel and all ten essential amino acids.

           On Earth, there are, generally speaking, two main groups of 

      such plants; carbohydrate-rich plants called “grains” or “tubers,”

      and legumatious plants which produce “beans” or “haricots” or 

      “frijoles,” seeds rich in the essential amino acids not obtainable 

      from grain plants.

           Thus basic human cuisine characteristically combines a “starch” 

      ingredient (corn, wheat, potatoes, rice, etc.) combined with either 

      some meat or a bean (of which there are a vast profusion) or 

      frequently both, flavored with other vegetable products called 

      “herbs” (leaves and stems) or “spices”(usually seeds or dried 

      fruits or seed pods).  In addition, humans tend to add sodium 

      chloride to most foods which do not contain significant amounts of 

      sugars, the only mineral they consume directly, and which, indeed, 

      is taken to excess.

           That is the alimentary basis of La Cuisine Humaine, the 

      underlying biological necessities, but the art of it resides in the 

      profusion of styles and methods humans have evolved to transform 

      these basic nutritional combinations into esthetic delights.

           Whole grains may be boiled into simple filler dishes or complex 

      pilafs containing nuts, fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, or even 

      bits of meat, seafood and vegetables.  Or they are ground into 

      flour, combined with various liquids and fats, and baked into 

      breads, or extruded into noodles and pastas (sometimes stuffed) 

      which are then gently boiled, steamed, or fried.

           Beans, depending upon type, are sauted, steamed or fried if 

      they are tender, or boiled and baked in liquids for long periods if 

      they are not.  The soybean, which supplies all ten essential amino 

      acids, is eaten as raw or cooked sprouts, or processed into “tofu” 

      or “beancurd,” a kind of vegetable cheese which may then be sautéed, 

      stir-fried, or steamed.

           Vegetables, depending upon type, are eaten raw in so-called 

      “salads” or baked, fried, steamed, boiled, sauted, roasted, or 

      baked.

           Meats are sometimes taken raw (particularly fish and certain 

      coquillages), but are more characteristically cooked, using all of 

      the possibilities utilized to process vegetables, as well as grilled 

      and barbecued.

           Sometimes meats, starches, beans, and vegetables are prepared 

      separately, to be served sequentially or ensemble on a single plate, 

      but they are frequently complexly combined in the same dish, boiled 

      into a stew or beatpot, baked into a pilaf or paella, stir-fried 

      into a delightful melange which sometimes includes a pasta as well, 

      and fowls and fish are frequently stuffed with a complex mixture of 

      vegetable ingredients to be roasted and served whole.

           The genius of it all lies not only in the combination of the 

      major ingredients but in the lavish and artful addition of herbs and

      spices which are used as a painter uses a palette and which 

      magically transform meat, grains, beans, pasta and vegetables into 

      masterpieces of the cuisinary art in a profusion of characteristic 

      and interpenetrating “national styles.”

           And then of course there are the “sauces,” liquid infusions of 

      almost any combination of ingredients.  Sometimes human food is 

      cooked in these sauces (which is to say that the sauce is in part 

      formed out of the food essences), sometimes the sauces are prepared 

      separately and applied to grills, roasts, or even breads and pilafs, 

      to bathe them in pure flavor, turning simple pasta into a whole 

      meal, a piece of meat into a complex gustatory experience, or 

      vegetables into a subtle delight.

           You name it, and some human somewhere has turned it into haute 

      cuisine, even certain organisms which in their raw form would be 

      quite poisonous!  

      

                                   Equipment

      

           Humans have developed a bewildering complexity of implements to 

      cook their food, but it fortunately all boils down to a few basics 

      obtainable in one form or another on any even marginally civilized 

      planet.

           First, of course, you need a heat source.  This can be as 

      simple as an open fire or as complex as a computerized stove.  To 

      reproduce the full range of La Cuisine Humaine, you will need 

      something that provides a hot cavity in which to bake or roast, with 

      an internal source of intense heat for grilling, and hot surfaces on 

      which to set “pots,” “pans,” and “woks.”

           Pots are containers (usually metal) in which to heat volumes of 

      liquid for boiling or steaming.  Pans are flatter metal plates with 

      low sides in which to fry or sauté drier dishes in oils or fats.  

      Woks are hemispherical compromises, ideal for stir-frying at 

      extremely high temperature.

           The only other equipment you need is something to cut the 

      ingredients into the desired shapes and sizes and implements to stir 

      and handle the hot contents of your pots and pans.  The humans have 

      evolved hundreds of specialized tools for these purposes, but these 

      are a matter of ease, artfulness, and a certain mania for gadgets.  

      You can easily enough make do with any sharp knife, a flat piece of 

      wood for a spatula, and two long straight dowels held together in 

      one hand as a pincer to form a set of “chopsticks.”

           A “stove” or even just a fire, containers to serve as pots, 

      pans, and woks, a knife, three pieces of wood, and there you have 

      it, all the equipment necessary to produce La Cuisine Humaine!

      

                                  The Palette

      

           But not all you need to create a working human kitchen!

           A painter needs more than a canvas and a brush, he needs a 

      palette of colors, and no human kitchen can be worthy of the name 

      without a palette of herbs and spices.  

           Since there are hundreds of human spices and herbs presently 

      flooding the galactic market, the task of assembling a coherent 

      palette may seem impossibly daunting.  How to pick and choose from 

      this over-rich chaos?

           First assemble a basic assortment of universal primaries:

           At least one hot pepper, and preferably several, whole and 

      dried, ground into powder (chilies, cayenne, poivre), or infused 

      into a paste like sambal or hot garlic sauce.

           Garlic too is a universal primary, either as a minced fresh 

      clove, or dried and ground.  And so is a comparatively bland ground 

      red pepper called paprika, often used as a neutral browning agent.

           Tumeric, a seed ground into a bright yellow powder, is used in 

      diverse “national” cuisines, as is a ground bark called “cinnamon,”

      a root called “ginger,” “mustard” seed, and the cumin seed, whole or 

      powdered.

           Many, many herbs are used, fresh or powdered, but your range 

      will be adequate if you have oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, 

      cilentra and dill.

           That is a sufficient universal palette for the beginner.  As 

      you proceed through the specific styles in this book, you will 

      naturally begin to add to it, as you begin to understand how certain 

      combinations may be given a twist by other additions, or substituted 

      for to provide new nuances.  Every painter too must start out with 

      an assortment of primary colors, and allow his palette to mature 

      along with his own personal style.

           Similarly, one should keep on hand an assortment of oils and 

      fats.  A light oil, such as peanut, soy or corn.  One or two 

      flavored oils like walnut or ideally dark sesame, and of course a 

      bottle of virgin olive oil, the all-but-universal solvent that falls 

      neatly between.  Some butter, and bacon fat or lard completes the 

      ensemble.

           The only other things you need to begin cooking like a human 

      are bottles of vinegar, liquid pepper such as tabasco, and soy 

      sauce, a few cans of tomato paste and cornstarch for thickener.  

      And, of course, plenty of salt and some sugar!

           With these basics kept always at hand, you are ready to bring 

      home any fresh produce and actually cook it like a human!

      

                               THE BASIC BEANPOT

      

           Boil any dried beans in liquid long enough and you'll get 

      something you can eat.  Boil rice or wheat or corn into an edible 

      mash, serve the beans over it, and you will have a diet a human can 

      survive on indefinitely.

           That's as basic as La Cuisine Humaine gets.  The result will 

      taste much better, of course, if the beans are boiled in a liquid 

      containing a well-conceived mixture of herbs and spices.  Garlic and 

      pepper form a reliable base, and of course, salt.  Tomato paste fits 

      many combinations in modest quantities, and some wine or beer mixed 

      in the boiling water never hurts.

           Oil or fat is needed to give roundness to the flavor.  Use 

      something with a strong flavor, like sesame oil, olive oil, or bacon 

      fat.  Fry something in it before you put the beans and water in the 

      pot, if only some onions and fresh sweet peppers.  If you have some 

      meat to fry in it too, all the better; fresh meat, smoked meat, sausage 

      meat, anything will do as long as it isn't seafood, fowl or fish. 

      Ideally, there should be a bone or two, preferably with some marrow, 

      which you leave in with the meat to boil when you add the water, 

      beans, and flavorings.

           Boil it all together until it reaches a nice thick richness, 

      serve it over a grain, and there you have it, the basic human 

      beanpot which has sustained survival all over Earth down through the 

      centuries.

           But ah, the variations!

           With kidney beans and smoked pork fried in bacon fat, add  

      basil, oregano, bay leaf, a little tomato paste, a double-dose of 

      red pepper, and perhaps cumin to the standard boiling liquid to make 

      New Orleans Red Beans.

           Substitute ground or diced beef, add more tomato paste and yet 

      more pepper, fry with olive oil, and boil up into Texas chili.

           Use black beans, pork, pork sausages, onions and sweet peppers 

      fried in a mixture of sesame oil and bacon fat, add to the basic 

      boiling liquid cumin and a bit of tumeric, and you have a Cuban 

      variant.  Serve much the same thing with rice, shredded toasted 

      coconut, and orange slices, and it's Brazilian.

         Lamb fried in butter or light oil, lentils, much more tumeric, 

      plenty of ground red pepper, some coriander, leaves or seeds, cumin, 

      and perhaps mustard seeds and thyme and certainly some sliced 

      carrots will give you a nice Indian currypot.

           Do what humans do.  After you've sampled a few of the 

      traditional styles, experiment with combinations and invent your 

      own!  Start with the basic recipe and add herbs, spices, and 

      flavorings one by one, tasting the result before you commit to the 

      next, bearing in mind that lamb goes well with thyme, lentils and 

      tumeric, beef with tomato and green herbs, and pork not very well 

      with olive oil.

           Masses of humans have not only survived on such fare for 

      millennia, but turned it into culinary art.  It's easy!  With a 

      little courage to experiment you can do it too!

      

                           Roasts, Grills, and Stews 

      

           In certain areas, notably parts of Europe and North America, 

      meats and seafoods have long been sufficiently abundant to serve as 

      primary food sources for the population at large, and of course rich 

      humans everywhere have usually been able to afford to make such 

      viands the mainstays of their diet.

           In these happy circumstances, grains, tubers, beans and 

      vegetables need only serve as flavorful garnishes, side-dishes, and 

      complements to meats and seafood, which is to say that the cuisinary 

      arts have been freed thereby to evolve under less constraint from 

      the brute biochemical necessities.

           The most basic human methods for cooking meats and fishes are 

      to simply place them in a hot oven and roast them, grill them in 

      same, or cook them over an open fire.  They are then served with 

      baked, fried, or grilled potatoes, boiled rice, or some other starch 

      source, and perhaps a simple vegetable, or a melange thereof.

           If this sounds rather dull, alas, it too often is.  But it 

      doesn't have to be.  Humans have developed methods for turning even 

      such seemingly simple fare into works of true cuisine.

           The basic strategy is to marinate the meat or fish beforehand, 

      that is, soak it in a liquid which imparts flavor and also gives the 

      surface of the cooked result a delectable crisp and fragrant crust.

           To crisp the roast or grill, an oil is required, as well as a 

      so-called “browning agent,”most typically soy sauce, sugar, ground 

      paprika, or ground tumeric.  The second liquid ingredient forms the 

      bulk of the marinade, and could be simply water.  Of course, a wine, 

      vinegar, or alcoholic essence (such as sake, cognac, or whiskey) 

      mixed with the water makes things much more interesting.

           Soak your meat or fish in a marinade of oil, water, flavoring 

      liquid, and browning agent, drain it, roast or grill it, laving with 

      more marinade occasionally until it is done to taste, and there you 

      have it.

           What you have will be determined by the oil, flavoring liquid, 

      and browning agent employed.  And of course by the spices and herbs 

      you add to them.

           Use sesame oil, soy sauce, and sake or sherry wine, grate in 

      some ginger root, add garlic and a bit of sugar, marinate fish or 

      meat in it, grill, and voila, teriyaki.  Add chopped scallions, 

      coriander leaf, and pepper (paste, liquid, or powder), and give it a 

      Korean accent.  More sugar and lots of paprika instead of soy sauce, 

      chopped onions, pepper, garlic, tomato paste, perhaps some basil and 

      oregano, whiskey or wine instead of sake, and it's a Texas barbecue.

          A light oil, plain water, tumeric and paprika, ground cumin, 

      powdered red pepper, and a choice or two from a palette of 

      coriander, cardomon, and mustard seeds, and you have a tandoori.

           Olive oil, wine or vinegar, paprika, garlic, black pepper, and 

      some robust green herbs (thyme and rosemary for lamb or fish , sage 

      or coriander leaf for pork, basil or oregano for beef), and you have 

      the marinade for a range of kebabs, in which chunks of meat are 

      marinated, then skewered with vegetables to be grilled ensemble.

           Once you understand the basic principle, it's easy.  By 

      altering the ingredients of the marinade artfully, human chefs are 

      able to create infinite variations on what at first seems like an 

      unpromising theme.  If you can think like a human, you can do it 

      too.

           A stew is simply the peasant's old friend the beanpot, supplied 

      with a sufficient amount of meat to supply all ten essential amino 

      acids for the meal, so that beans are happily rendered merely 

      optional.

           Brown your meat in an oil or fat, add a bone or two, cover with 

      a spiced, herbed, and flavored liquid, and boil till the meat is 

      tender and the “pot-likker” thick and savory.  At an intermediary 

      stage, add your choice of vegetables, which take less cooking time, 

      and enjoy an authentic human stew.

           Humans have created many variations by simply varying the meat, 

      vegetables, oil, and flavoring liquid, and so can you.

           Beef browned in bacon fat or butter, stewed with carrots, 

      onions, potatoes, and frequently mushrooms, is a widespread variant.  

      The liquid usually contains garlic, pepper, and a few appropriately 

      chosen herbs.  If it's mostly water or beer, you have Irish stew.  

      Omit the carrots, add more onions, boil in red wine, and make Beef 

      Bourguignon.  Dilute the wine with more water, add it bit of nutmeg, 

      reduce the pot-likker way down, thicken it with sour cream stirred 

      in at the end, and you've made Beef Stroganoff.

           Fry an interesting mixture of pungent seed-spices like cumin, 

      coriander, cardomon, and mustard, usually no more than two to a 

      stew, in peanut oil or clarified butter with a generous amount of 

      red pepper, add tumeric and salt, brown your meat in it, cover with 

      water, simmer until the meat is tender and the sauce somewhat 

      thickened, and you have a curry to serve over plain rice or a 

      complex rice pilaf. 

           Many curries are as simple as that, but you can cook some 

      ground lentils (dahl)with the meat in the curry sauce or add 

      spinach, okra, peas, eggplant, potatoes, cauliflower, and so forth 

      for a more complex effect and a better nutritional balance.  Or you 

      can cook up a vegetable curry that works quite well without any meat 

      at all!

           Do not surrender to the impulse to stock up on the so-called 

      “curry powder” that is being foistered off on the innocent gourmet 

      as a foolproof way of reproducing “perfect human curry.” Curry is 

      not a single dish but a whole family of stews created by a large 

      palette of possible spices, and only the tumeric, salt, and pepper 

      are common to all of them.  A proper human cook will choose his own 

      combination of curry spices according to what is being attempted, 

      and so should you.

           Another major variation is the Borscht.  Use smoked porks and 

      sausages browned in bacon fat, sesame oil, or a mixture of both.  

      Use beer and water as the boiling liquid.  Add sugar and vinegar to 

      achieve the desired sweet-sour balance, pepper, salt, garlic, a 

      pungent seed-spice like caraway, mustard, cumin, or coriander.  For 

     vegetables, some onions, perhaps an apple or two, and a large 

      quantity of chopped or shredded cabbage.

           “Red Cooking” is even easier.  Simply fill a big pot with a 

      mixture of water, sake, a bit of sesame oil, chopped garlic and 

      ginger-root, and soy sauce.  Bring it to a boil, and simply drop in 

      a big piece of meat, a round of beef, a ham, even a whole fowl.  

      Boil it gently for as long as it takes to make the meat tender, 

      dropping in some vegetables towards the end, or serve them as a 

      separate side-dish.

           Experiment with your own variations and train your taste-organs 

      to be your guide to creating stews fit for humans.  All you have to 

      remember is to boil the meat longer than the vegetables, and try to 

      conceive harmonious combinations.  Start with one of the basic human 

      boiling liquids, adding flavors one at a time, tasting the result, 

      and stopping before they start clashing with each other.

           Don't be afraid to trust your own judgment.  Think like a 

      human!

      

                                Fried Everything

      

           What if a human doesn't want to wait around for hours while a 

      beatpot or stew simmers?  What if he wants something tasty on the 

      table toute suite?

           No problem!

           Fry it!

           Learn the basic Chinese method and you can fry up anything 

      into true cuisine humaine.

           Cut up meat or seafood and your choice of vegetables in bite-

      size pieces.  Marinate the meat in a mixture of soy sauce, sake, a 

      little cornstarch, and a bit of sugar for a while, then drain off 

      the liquid and reserve.

           Heat up a bit of light oil until it is hot as you can get it.  

      The Chinese favor the hemispherical wok for this, since it presents 

      a large surface area and nicely contains the hot oil spatters, but 

      if you stand way back and use a long pair of chopsticks, any big 

      enough pan will do.

           Drop some chopped ginger and garlic into the smoking oil.  Add 

      the meat.  Stir vigorously until it is nicely browned and tender.  

      It won't take long.  Remove the meat, heat up a little more oil, add 

      more chopped garlic and ginger, then the vegetables, stir-fry until 

      done.  Put the meat back in, along with the marinade you have 

      reserved, mix it all together.  The cornstarch will thicken the 

      marinade into a sauce that enrobes the finished product.

           At this point, you can add dashes of additional liquid 

      flavorings--oyster sauce, various fermented bean pastes, liquid 

      pepper or hot garlic paste, for examples--and perhaps coriander 

      leaves and beansprouts which require only a moment's cooking.

           That's all there is to it, and it takes perhaps twenty minutes!

           The Chinese alone have elaborated this basic stir-fry into 

      thousands of subtle dishes, and the Thais, Cambodians, Indonesians, 

      and Vietnamese have added some Indian spices and French herbs to 

      create even more.  By now you should be cooking enough like a human 

      to immediately grasp the possibilities.

           Any harmonious combination of meats and vegetables may be 

      cooked in this manner.  Several vegetables may be used in the same 

      dish; just cut the ones that take longer to cook into smaller pieces.

     

                                  Salads

         

           That's what humans call assemblages of raw fruits and 

      vegetables lightly covered in a kind of cold sauce called a “salad 

      dressing.”  They can be simple little side dishes, or whole 

      elaborate meals.

           The starting point for most salads is some succulent leafy 

      green.  To this is usually added some sort of sliced onion, and, as 

      often as not, pieces of tomato.  The simplest salad dressing is a 

      mixture of oil, vinegar, garlic and salt.   Coat the basic salad 

      with the dressing, and you have a modest little side dish, the so-

      called “dinner salad.”  

           Of course you can add fresh herbs and spices to the dressing.  

      Crumbled bits of pungent cheese.  Capers.  Mustard. Anchovies.  A 

      raw egg.  Whatever strikes your fancy.  And of course, the oil could 

      be olive, sesame, walnut, corn, safflower, and the vinegar an acetic 

      essence of herbs, wine, or spices.  A salad dressing is, after all, 

      a cold sauce, with all the room for improvisation that implies.

           As for the salad itself, the basic dinner salad need only be 

      the background, indeed in the end it can be pushed back into 

      oblivion by the other ingredients.  Humans will add almost anything 

      to their salads, and not all of it need be raw by any means, though 

      usually it will all be cold.

           Still there are some general esthetic principles.

           Start with the basic dinner salad as your foundation.  Almost 

      any soft enough raw vegetable can be added--carrots, turnips, 

      celery, sweet pepper, cabbage, mushrooms, even flowerets of broccoli 

      or cauliflower--thinner slices for the harder ones.

           Next, feel free to add cooked, pickled, and preserved 

      vegetables--olives, haricots, chick peas, pickled cucumber, radish, 

      mushroom, corn grains, artichoke hearts in oil, preserved ginger, 

      pickled peppers.

           If you're going in the direction of smoked meats or 

      charcuterie, or playing it vegetarian, throw in chunks of an 

      interesting cheese.  With a fish salad, better not, for most cheeses 

      will clash with the fishy flavor

           The tasty exception to this is the so-called “Greek Salad,” in 

      which olives, capers, pickled peppers, cucumbers, anchovies and tuna 

      preserved in oil are added to the basic dinner salad, the whole 

      nevertheless being perfected by the addition of chunks of a musky 

      cheese called feta which actually goes well in this configuration, 

      when dressed with olive oil, wine vinegar, garlic, pepper, salt, 

      lemon, and a bit of some herb.

           If you've added cheese, try some smoked meats, sliced salami, 

      smoked duck, chicken, or turkey, or even a combination.  If this is 

      to be a fish salad, you might use freshly cooked shrimp, raw fish 

      pickled in vinegar or citrus juice, sardines, tuna, salmon, herring, 

      sprats, and so forth, smoked, pickled, or preserved in oil.

           Finally, you must create an appropriate dressing to coat your 

      salad.  This is a matter of subjective esthetic judgment, but a few 

      guidelines may be suggested.

           You can never go wrong with a simple dressing of olive oil, 

      wine vinegar, pepper, salt, and garlic, with a bit of fresh herb 

      like dill or basil.  You don't want cheese in the dressing for a 

      fish salad and you certainly don't want anchovies with smoked meat 

      or charcuterie except in the so-called “antipasto.”  Sweet pickles 

      will probably be quite disgusting with smoked fish.  Heavy oils like 

      sesame drown out green herbs and most seed spices add little to 

      dressings if they are not ground.  Some humans add sugar, but the 

      enlightened among them rightly deem this a barbarism.

           Other than that, just about anything goes.  Fruits can be added 

      to salads with a little judicious judgment, and of course salads can 

      be composed of fruits alone, though of course you would hardly dress 

      a fruit salad with anything containing garlic, capers, or anchovies, 

      or combine it with most fish.

           To widen the parameters of the salad even further, the so-

      called tostada is a fried tortilla smeared with a hot savory 

      bean paste to which may be added a cooked sausage called chorizo, 

      which is then smothered with a cold salad of greens, tomatoes, 

      cheese, onions, scallions, and peppers, which in turn is dressed 

      with a mixture of oil, vinegar, and a spicy tomato sauce, and 

      sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese.  Fold the tortilla up, fry it 

      into a pocket, stuff it with the other ingredients, and you have a 

      taco.  Roll it all in a soft steamed tortilla, and it's a burrito.

      

                                Pass the Pasta!

           

            Grind any grain into flour, add water, perhaps eggs or a little 

      butter or oil, kneed the mash into a dough, squeeze it through an 

      extrusion mold or roll and cut it by hand, and you have noodles, 

      spaghetti, lo mein, chow mei fon, linguini, in short, some form of 

      pasta, as ubiquitous a form of preparing grain for eating on Earth 

      as bread, and culinarily much more interesting.

           Some pastas are flavored with spices or vegetables, but most of 

      them are rather bland and tasteless.  They are commonly simply 

      boiled to the point of edibility, though some may be fried or 

      steamed.  Is this as deadly-dull as it seems?

           Hardly!

           Pastas may have been developed as a basic universal metabolic 

      fuel for impoverished mass populations, but the culinary ingenuity 

      of the humans has long since made an artistic virtue of economic 

      necessity by transforming this industrial fodder into the raw 

      material for haute cuisine.

           True, once you have boiled your pasta to tenderness, what you 

      have is a soft, pallid, bland pot of noodles or dumplings, a pure 

      starch, good only for keeping the metabolic furnace stoked up.

           But that's not the way humans look at it.  Humans see a 

      neutral blank canvas upon which to paint a culinary masterpiece.

           You can serve a stew over a pasta--Irish Stew, Beef Stroganoff, 

      a curry.  Certain pastas can be stir-fried in the Chinese manner 

      with vegetables, meats, and the standard marinade and its variations 

      to make lo meins, chow mei fons, and other noodle dishes that 

      combine fried noodles with crisp savories.  Just treat the pasta as 

      another vegetable!

           Just as commonly, pastas are served with a variety of rich, 

      thick sauces, or sauced ingredients that turn them into 

      nutritionally and esthetically satisfying meals.

           One can, for example, simply saute a melange of fresh 

      vegetables in olive oil, with garlic, salt, pepper, and an herb or 

      two, smother the cooked pasta with it, and sprinkle the result with 

      grated cheese.  Or fry sausage, pepper, and onions in the same 

      manner, add basil, a little tomato paste, and a splash of red wine, 

      and serve it on a bed of spagetti.  

           Fry some diced bacon in olive oil, garlic, and black pepper, 

      throw in your cooked pasta when it is done and still hot, mixing in 

      a beaten egg, some fresh butter, sour cream, and grated parmesan 

      cheese to make a carbonara.

           Or saute onions and garlic in olive oil, add capers, liquid 

      pepper, sliced smoked salmon and vodka.  Simmer until the alcohol 

      has evaporated, the salmon has pinkened, and the smoky flavor 

      thereof infused into the liquid.  Pour over hot pasta, mix in a 

      little butter and sour cream, then garnish with black caviar.

           Humans in Italy, where pasta has long been a universal staple,  

      have developed a basic pasta sauce that may be altered to 

      successfully encompass ingredients as diverse as spicy sausage, 

      seafood, and fish.  Fry garlic, onions, pepper and garlic in olive 

      oil.  Add water, red wine, and enough tomato paste to make the 

      result thick and flavorful, along with basil and salt.  Simmer until 

      the alcohol has long since evaporated and the sauce tastes round and 

      mellow.

           The basic version may be a bit boring, but it is infinitely 

      adaptable.  Fry balls of chopped meat, sausages, or even ribs of 

      pork, along with the basics in your olive oil, add mushrooms perhaps 

      while you are at it, and complement the basil with oregano, for a 

      hearty meat sauces for your pasta.  Grated parmesan cheese is de

      rigueur, except with the pork.

           For seafood or fish, make a marinara sauce.  Add capers, 

      anchovies, and black olives when you put in the tomato paste.  

      Remove the sauce from the pot, saute your fish or seafood quickly in 

      olive oil, pour the sauce over it, and serve it all on a bed of most 

      any pasta.  No cheese with this!

           You can spice up any version of the basic pasta sauce with 

      fiery pepper, lace it with an abundance of mushrooms, add diced 

      eggplant, clams, or even certain hams; the basic theme is powerful 

      enough to stand up to a wide range of variations.  

           And, to quite close the circle, in the end, you can make good 

      use of your universal Italian pasta sauce without even eating pasta!

           Spoon some of the meaty version over fried eggplant slices, 

      cover with slices of mozzarella cheese, sprinkle on parmesan, and 

      grill yourself Eggplant Parmigiana.  Steam shellfish in a diluted 

      version of marinar sauce, or simmer shellfish, squid, and fish in 

      same to make a cioppino, which, by de-emphasizing the tomato paste, 

      emphasizing the garlic, and adding saffron, becomes a passable 

      French Bouillabaisse.  You can even bake a “spaghetti squash”in the 

      oven, scoop out the strands, and serve your pasta sauce over a 

      pasta-like vegetable!

      

                               La Cuisine Humaine

           

           To pretend that this modest treatise has now exhausted the 

      possibilities of La Cuisine Humaine would of course be ludicrous.  

           We have hardly touched, for example, on the possible variants 

      of the burrito, tostada, and taco, which may be filled with 

      virtually anything.  Peanut butter (or other nut-pastes) may be 

      simmered with sesame oil and hot pepper to make a “satay sauce” 

      which goes well over kebabs and grills of meat and fowl, though not 

      very well with most fish, and which may also be served over certain 

      pastas with slivers of roasted pork and fresh coriander leaf.  In 

      America, a “hamburger” may be simply a fried patty of chopped beef 

      slapped between two pieces of palidd bread slathered with an odious 

      sweetened tomato sauce called “ketchup,” or it may be covered with 

      melted cheese, bacon, mushrooms, green chilies, satay sauce, taco 

      sauce and entire salads to reach the status of culinary art. 

           And the simple boiled rice or wheat that accompanies many 

      stews, beatpots, and stir-frys may be turned into a complex and 

      tasty pilaf.  Fry some onions and garlic in oil or butter in the 

      boiling pot as you begin(you can fry the rice with it too!), then 

      add spices such as tumeric, cumin, cardamon, and so forth to the 

      boiling water, cover, and steam in the pot till done.  Nutmeats, 

      dried fruit, diced vegetables, and even cubes of cooked meat, 

      sausage, seafood or fowl tossed in near the end of the process can 

      turn your pilaf into a complete meal, a biriani or jambalaya.  Or 

      try a “paella”in which tomato paste, saffron, pepper, olive

      pimento, chicken, and sausage are added to the rice boil, which is 

      then placed in an open pan somewhat underdone, and larded with 

      shellfish to be bake-steamed open in the oven.

           Then too, you may hollow out most any sturdy vegetable of a 

      sufficient size--eggplant, zucchini, sweet pepper, tomatoes, 

      potatoes, even cucumber--stuff it with a savory mixture of ground 

      meat and spices, put it in a pan, pour over basic Italian pasta 

      sauce, or something of your own invention, and bake it in the oven.  

      Raw ground beef is even quite palatable when mixed with raw egg, 

      pepper, raw onion, garlic, anchovies, and a bit of olive oil, to

      make “Steak Tartare.”  

           La Cuisine Humaine contains so many possibitiles for variation 

      on its basic themes that thousands of voluminous recipe books have 

      been quite unable to exhaustively preserve it for posterity, let 

      alone this modest little volume.

           Nevertheless, once you have assembled your human kitchen 

      equipment, laid out your basic palette of herbs, spices, oils, and 

      flavorings, and added to it stepwise by experimenting with beat pots, 

      stews, roasts, grills, frys, salads, and pastas, you will be cooking 

      like a human. 

           For the purpose of this cookbook has not been to present an 

      exhaustive or even truly representative collection of human recipes, 

      which would be quite impossible, but to enable an adventurous cook 

      on any planet to think like a human, at least in the kitchen.

           This is not the same thing as slavishly reproducing a detailed 

      recipe.  Any halfway-decent kitchen robot can do that better than 

      you can.  But that same robot will become quite perplexed when faced 

      with the need to improvise on a human recipe to fit available local 

      ingredients.

           But you won't be.  Not if you think like a human instead of 

      like a robot.  Recipes are useful in learning your way around the 

      methods and palette, but once you have grasped the essentials, your 

      own educated sense organs are your best guide.  They may not care to 

      broadcast the fact to their audiences, but human cooks taste what 

      they are preparing constantly.

           Humans also have a music form called “jazz”; in which groups of 

      musicians spontaneously improvise upon a previously composed score, 

      and if you think of the recipe as the score, and the chef as a 

      performing artist improvising upon it, you will indeed have grasped 

      the ultimate secret of La Cuisine Humaine.

           And if this concept seems illusive, well, perhaps it is, for it 

      took the humans themselves centuries of culinary evolution to 

      conceive it.

           Up until a century or two ago, neither travel nor the 

      importations of produce from distant shores was rapid or easy, 

      meaning that even the best human chefs had to make do with that of 

      the local ecosystem.  As a result, “national styles”evolved.  The 

      ordinary cooks followed recipes handed down by long national and 

      family tradition, and the culinary artists developed sophisticated 

      but conservatively classical styles, with, in many areas, schools 

      and textbooks to teach them.

           Of course there had always been some transnational influences.  

      The cuisines of Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and so forth combined 

      elements of Chinese and Indian styles.  Pilafs were to be found in a 

      long broad belt from Eastern Europe and the Middle East clear 

      through India and into the South Pacific, simpler and blander at the 

      western end, picking up fruits, nuts, meats, pepper, and curry 

      spices as they marched eastward.

           When the more technologically advanced peoples of the Eastern 

      Hemisphere “discovered”the Americas, they found the “primitives” 

      enjoying chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and chili peppers, 

      which is to say that the so-called national cuisines of Italy, 

      Spain, Germany, Ireland, Austria, and so forth were actually based 

      upon products imported from foreign ecospheres.

           Still, humans were not quite yet ready for the great conceptual 

      leap forward.  Chefs incorporated the new ingredients into their 

      national styles, indeed transforming many of them beyond 

      recognition, but the resulting culinary golden age was still classical

      in spirit, with perfected recipes enshrined in print, a 

      canon of dishes, and clear-cut culinary boundaries at the cultural 

      borders.

           It took the easy travel, rapid cheap transport of produce, and 

      food storage and media technology of the human's so-called 

      “Twentieth Century” to create the culinary jazz that is the 

      crowning glory of today's Cuisine Humaine.

           With hordes of humans traveling everywhere and produce from all 

      over the planet more or less available anywhere, the cultural 

      boundaries and arbitrary combination taboos began to seem, well, 

      rather silly.

           Why couldn't you put Caribbean mango and Chinese roast duck in 

      a Mexican taco?  Was there a law against it?  Why couldn't you add a 

      curry spice or two to a Chinese stir-fry or tumeric to an Italian 

      pasta sauce or ginger to a bouillabaisse or sesame oil to a Borscht 

      or wasabi radish to a salad dressing?

           If it tastes good why not, you've made a culinary discovery, 

      and if it doesn't, well, culinary evolution is a matter of trial and 

      error too.  As the humans have it, you can't have a culinary 

      revolution by inventing omelets unless someone is willing to try 

      cracking the first egg!

           And once having freed oneself from the artistic constraints of 

      cultural chauvinisms to this extent, why not go all the way to the 

      true culinary revolution?  

           Why not an entirely free-form cuisine where the stylistic 

      variants are completely individual and personal rather than bounded 

      by anything but the entire ecosphere of the planet itself? 

           Instead of just importing a few variations into a classical 

      style, why not create dishes with no discernible national origin, 

      why not take all the Earth's produce as the theoretical range of 

      your palette, and, as the humans have it, rock and roll? 

           Human musicians have done just this when it comes to their art, 

      assembling elements from all over the world into a cross-cultural 

      montage called “World Music”and so have human chefs liberated 

      themselves from cultural restraints and classical canons to create a 

      cuisine that spans their entire planet, a cuisine both universal and 

      quite personal, the cuisinary jazz of La Grand Cuisine Humaine.

          Of course there are still rules and guidelines, but they are 

      those of practical esthetics, not classical cultural tradition, to 

      be followed by the educated sense-organ, not the scholarly 

      intellect.  You certainly wouldn't pour American chocolate sauce all 

      over an Indian tandoori or dip sushi into an Italian tomato sauce or 

      serve kebabs swimming in thousand island dressing!

           Then again, who knows, how can anyone really be sure unless 

      someone has tried it?

           Take something as unlikely as so-called Duck and Corn salad.  

      Take some cooked America corn, roasted sweet peppers, crumbled 

      walnuts, onions, and perhaps Chinese chili garlic paste, mix in a 

      salad bowl with Chinese sesame and Italian olive oils, and let stand 

      an hour.  Put in some French wine vinegar, mix it all up.  Spoon it 

      out over a green and some sliced tomatoes, and put strips of French 

      smoked migrate de canard atop it.

           Is it French?  Italian?  Chinese?  American?

           Who cares?  It's delicious!

           Caribbean bananas go well in a sandwich with American peanut 

      butter.  So does English bacon.  Excellent sushis can be made with 

      Mexican chili powder or French mustard.  Or slices of sashimi can be 

      added raw to a Chinese stir-fry of rice noodles and vegetables. Oriental shiitaki

    mushrooms are a nice addition to Russian Beef Stroganoff.   

           You can fry up some Chinese mai-fon noodles in sesame oil and 

      Indian curry spices, form them into baskets for raw French oysters, 

      and sprinkle on some English malt vinegar.  Spread creamcheese on a 

      warm baked crust, put some preserved fish eggs on it, and have 

      yourself a nice caviar pizza!

           Consider the mathematics of the situation.  On the planet 

      Earth, there must be several tens of thousands of available food 

      ingredients, and just as many spices and herbs to flavor them with.  

      Then too, the same natural raw material may be processed in any 

      number of ways--pickled, dried, salted, rotted, chemically-

      preserved, smoked, turned into a paste or essence.  

           A dozen or more of these ingredients may be combined in the 

      same dish, and then be boiled, fried, baked, steamed, grilled, 

      roasted, or eaten raw.

           Mathematically speaking, the theoretical possibilities are 

      almost literally unlimited, even without considering the fact that 

      the proportions of the ingredients in any dish may be varied 

      infinitely.

           True, this means that an infinite number of truly loathsome 

      concoctions lurk out there in theory to be invented and imposed upon 

      the unwary experimental subject.  

           But true too that an infinite number of new culinary 

      masterpieces will also always be out there for you to discover!

            Don't knock it till you've tried it, as the humans put it.  

      Good advice to the galactic sophisticate from this relatively 

      primitive race of backplanet anthropoids!

           When it comes to politics, economics, science, philosophy, or 

      how to manage a planetary ecosystem, this immature civilization may 

      indeed have nothing to teach us, but when it comes to the culinary 

      arts, we could all certainly enhance our galactic kitchen-culture 

      and interstellar dining-room civilization by learning to cook like 

      human beings.

      

       

                                     

                         LA CUISINE HUMAINE
                           How to cook like a human being

                                       by Norman Spinrad



                                  Introduction
   
           Most beings, sapient or otherwise, must eat.  What they eat, in
      terms of raw materials, is determined by the requirements of their
      evolved biochemistry.  Most species intelligent enough to have
      developed even the rudiments of a fire and tool using culture
      prepare, preserve, and combine these ingredients in a self-conscious
      manner.
           It may be as rude and simple as charring animal parts over an
      open fire, allowing vegetables to ferment under controlled
      conditions, smoking, pickling, or drying victuals in order to
      preserve them for future use, or rotting them with bacteria or
      fungus, but the preparation of food, implying as it does at least
      the mastery of fire and the use of tools, has long been regarded as
      a universal criterion of sapience.
           The point at which such food preparation attains the status of
      cuisine, like the point at which a species may be said to have
      evolved a true civilization, is more elusive of definition, and
      indeed the argument has often been made that they are one and the
      same.
           While some strictly carnivorous or entirely vegetarian species
      have evolved both cuisine and civilization, it is generally fair to
      say that cuisine begins with the combination of ingredients.  Meat
      and vegetable matter(if only for flavoring)or different species of
      vegetation are combined in the same dish, melded via heat,
      decomposition, or chemical processes to produce a whole which tastes
      different than the sum of its parts, and voila, cuisine, civilized
      dining, and with it civilization, are invented.
           The point at which rudimentary cuisine attains the status of a
      true artform is a matter of critical judgment on the part of the
      diner, or, as the inhabitants of Earth themselves have it, “one
      man's meat is another man's poison.”
           Nevertheless, all civilized beings, given a sufficient degree
      of biochemical congruence, can recognize artful cuisine when they
      taste it, and within the fraternity of galactic gourmets, the
      cuisine of the planet Earth has certainly attained this status.
           Indeed a certain mania for La Cuisine Humaine has been sweeping
      the galaxy ever since the recent discovery of the humans' otherwise
      not-terribly-noteworthy civilization, resulting in many pleasurable
      new dining experiences, but also, alas, the prevalence of all too
      many misconceived and loathsome concoctions that the humans
      themselves would rightly consider vile desecrations.
           This cookbook, prepared after several months on Earth sampling
      its fare and discussing culinary matters with both master chefs and
      a sampling of ordinary humans is a modest attempt to remedy this
      unfortunate situation.
           Since the humans have published thousands upon thousands of
      vast volumes of recipe books down through the centuries, the present
      work can hardly pretend to be definitive.  What is instead presented
      here is an introductory work designed to initiate the neophyte into
      the philosophy, principles, and working methods of La Cuisine
      Humaine, rather than a definitive compilation of recipes.
           It may not produce chefs to match the human masters, but
      hopefully it will at least allow its readers to more or less cook
      like human beings.
   
                                The Planet Earth         
           Earth is the third planet of an unpresupposing yellow star.
      About three-quarters of its surface is ocean, the rest being seven
      large continents and numerous islands.  The planet is still
      geologically active, and many ecospheres have therefore evolved and
      continue to evolve, resulting in a rich profusion of plants and
      animals, most of which are eaten, in one form or another, by one or
      more of the many human tribal subcultures, though, alas, the
      planetary mismanagement by the still rather primitive humans is
      presently resulting in a certain narrowing of this wonderful
      biological diversity.
           Life on Earth is entirely based on the carbon-biochemistry
      quite prevalent galaxy-wide, so its cuisine is nourishing and
      palatable to the majority of sapient species.  The humans themselves
      are omnivores, and have therefore evolved cuisines incorporating
      both flesh and vegetation.
           I say “cuisines” rather than “cuisine” to point to the fact
      that human civilization has reached that delectable stage when the
      local cuisines which have evolved in isolation over the centuries
      have begun to merge, thanks to easy transportation and mass
      communication, but have not yet ossified into a single standardized
      planetary style.
           In the major human cities, one may still find a profusion of
      restaurants dedicated to most of the folkloric “ethnic” styles, side
      by side with emporiums devoted to the free-form merging of same
      which has created the glories of the emerging cuisine humaine.
           Which is to say that we are fortunate indeed to have discovered
      this planet at the very peak of its culinary Golden Age, hence the
      mania for La Cuisine Humaine presently titillating the jaded taste
      organs of more “advanced” civilizations.  To judge by general
      galactic cuisinary evolution, such a Golden Age is usually fleeting,
      soon to be overwhelmed by contact with the so-called advanced
      cuisine of interstellar society.
           Enjoy it while it lasts!
   
                                Basic Principles
   
           Human biochemistry requires the consumption of ten basic amino
      acids, which may be obtained entirely from the flesh of terrestrial
      animals, or from various combinations of plant material.  Human
      metabolism runs on the oxidation of sugars, which may be eaten
      directly as such, or which the human digestive mechanism may produce
      from carbohydrates.
           As a result, while it is possible for humans to subsist on a
      sufficiently varied vegetarian diet, it is all but impossible for
      them to survive on meat alone, especially since their metabolism
      also requires traces of many elements not available to strict
      carnivores, and is unable to synthesize many necessary complex
      molecules.
           In some human cultures, meat is cheap and easy to obtain, and
      forms the basis of the local cuisine, with vegetables and fruits
      serving as garnishes or “side-dishes.”  But, at least throughout
      most of human history, meat has been a comparatively scarce and
      expensive item in the majority of local cultures, serving in smaller
      quantities as a supplement to more vegetarian diets.
           Indeed, historically speaking, meat has not been readily
      available to great masses of poorer humans at all, leading to the
      evolution of “peasant cuisines” cunningly based on the
       combination of vegetables which, eaten together, supply both
      metabolic fuel and all ten essential amino acids.
           On Earth, there are, generally speaking, two main groups of
      such plants; carbohydrate-rich plants called “grains” or “tubers,”
      and legumatious plants which produce “beans” or “haricots” or
      “frijoles,” seeds rich in the essential amino acids not obtainable
      from grain plants.
           Thus basic human cuisine characteristically combines a “starch”
      ingredient (corn, wheat, potatoes, rice, etc.) combined with either
      some meat or a bean (of which there are a vast profusion) or
      frequently both, flavored with other vegetable products called
      “herbs” (leaves and stems) or “spices”(usually seeds or dried
      fruits or seed pods).  In addition, humans tend to add sodium
      chloride to most foods which do not contain significant amounts of
      sugars, the only mineral they consume directly, and which, indeed,
      is taken to excess.
           That is the alimentary basis of La Cuisine Humaine, the
      underlying biological necessities, but the art of it resides in the
      profusion of styles and methods humans have evolved to transform
      these basic nutritional combinations into esthetic delights.
           Whole grains may be boiled into simple filler dishes or complex
      pilafs containing nuts, fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, or even
      bits of meat, seafood and vegetables.  Or they are ground into
      flour, combined with various liquids and fats, and baked into
      breads, or extruded into noodles and pastas (sometimes stuffed)
      which are then gently boiled, steamed, or fried.
           Beans, depending upon type, are sauted, steamed or fried if
      they are tender, or boiled and baked in liquids for long periods if
      they are not.  The soybean, which supplies all ten essential amino
      acids, is eaten as raw or cooked sprouts, or processed into “tofu”
      or “beancurd,” a kind of vegetable cheese which may then be sautéed,
      stir-fried, or steamed.
           Vegetables, depending upon type, are eaten raw in so-called
      “salads” or baked, fried, steamed, boiled, sauted, roasted, or
      baked.
           Meats are sometimes taken raw (particularly fish and certain
      coquillages), but are more characteristically cooked, using all of
      the possibilities utilized to process vegetables, as well as grilled
      and barbecued.
           Sometimes meats, starches, beans, and vegetables are prepared
      separately, to be served sequentially or ensemble on a single plate,
      but they are frequently complexly combined in the same dish, boiled
      into a stew or beatpot, baked into a pilaf or paella, stir-fried
      into a delightful melange which sometimes includes a pasta as well,
      and fowls and fish are frequently stuffed with a complex mixture of
      vegetable ingredients to be roasted and served whole.
           The genius of it all lies not only in the combination of the
      major ingredients but in the lavish and artful addition of herbs and
      spices which are used as a painter uses a palette and which
      magically transform meat, grains, beans, pasta and vegetables into
      masterpieces of the cuisinary art in a profusion of characteristic
      and interpenetrating “national styles.”
           And then of course there are the “sauces,” liquid infusions of
      almost any combination of ingredients.  Sometimes human food is
      cooked in these sauces (which is to say that the sauce is in part
      formed out of the food essences), sometimes the sauces are prepared
      separately and applied to grills, roasts, or even breads and pilafs,
      to bathe them in pure flavor, turning simple pasta into a whole
      meal, a piece of meat into a complex gustatory experience, or
      vegetables into a subtle delight.
           You name it, and some human somewhere has turned it into haute
      cuisine, even certain organisms which in their raw form would be
      quite poisonous!
   
                                   Equipment
   
           Humans have developed a bewildering complexity of implements to
      cook their food, but it fortunately all boils down to a few basics
      obtainable in one form or another on any even marginally civilized
      planet.
           First, of course, you need a heat source.  This can be as
      simple as an open fire or as complex as a computerized stove.  To
      reproduce the full range of La Cuisine Humaine, you will need
      something that provides a hot cavity in which to bake or roast, with
      an internal source of intense heat for grilling, and hot surfaces on
      which to set “pots,” “pans,” and “woks.”
           Pots are containers (usually metal) in which to heat volumes of
      liquid for boiling or steaming.  Pans are flatter metal plates with
      low sides in which to fry or sauté drier dishes in oils or fats.
      Woks are hemispherical compromises, ideal for stir-frying at
      extremely high temperature.
           The only other equipment you need is something to cut the
      ingredients into the desired shapes and sizes and implements to stir
      and handle the hot contents of your pots and pans.  The humans have
      evolved hundreds of specialized tools for these purposes, but these
      are a matter of ease, artfulness, and a certain mania for gadgets.
      You can easily enough make do with any sharp knife, a flat piece of
      wood for a spatula, and two long straight dowels held together in
      one hand as a pincer to form a set of “chopsticks.”
           A “stove” or even just a fire, containers to serve as pots,
      pans, and woks, a knife, three pieces of wood, and there you have
      it, all the equipment necessary to produce La Cuisine Humaine!
   
                                  The Palette
   
           But not all you need to create a working human kitchen!
           A painter needs more than a canvas and a brush, he needs a
      palette of colors, and no human kitchen can be worthy of the name
      without a palette of herbs and spices.
           Since there are hundreds of human spices and herbs presently
      flooding the galactic market, the task of assembling a coherent
      palette may seem impossibly daunting.  How to pick and choose from
      this over-rich chaos?
           First assemble a basic assortment of universal primaries:
           At least one hot pepper, and preferably several, whole and
      dried, ground into powder (chilies, cayenne, poivre), or infused
      into a paste like sambal or hot garlic sauce.
           Garlic too is a universal primary, either as a minced fresh
      clove, or dried and ground.  And so is a comparatively bland ground
      red pepper called paprika, often used as a neutral browning agent.
           Tumeric, a seed ground into a bright yellow powder, is used in
      diverse “national” cuisines, as is a ground bark called “cinnamon,”
      a root called “ginger,” “mustard” seed, and the cumin seed, whole or
      powdered.
           Many, many herbs are used, fresh or powdered, but your range
      will be adequate if you have oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, sage,
      cilentra and dill.
           That is a sufficient universal palette for the beginner.  As
      you proceed through the specific styles in this book, you will
      naturally begin to add to it, as you begin to understand how certain
      combinations may be given a twist by other additions, or substituted
      for to provide new nuances.  Every painter too must start out with
      an assortment of primary colors, and allow his palette to mature
      along with his own personal style.
           Similarly, one should keep on hand an assortment of oils and
      fats.  A light oil, such as peanut, soy or corn.  One or two
      flavored oils like walnut or ideally dark sesame, and of course a
      bottle of virgin olive oil, the all-but-universal solvent that falls
      neatly between.  Some butter, and bacon fat or lard completes the
      ensemble.
           The only other things you need to begin cooking like a human
      are bottles of vinegar, liquid pepper such as tabasco, and soy
      sauce, a few cans of tomato paste and cornstarch for thickener.
      And, of course, plenty of salt and some sugar!
           With these basics kept always at hand, you are ready to bring
      home any fresh produce and actually cook it like a human!
   
                               THE BASIC BEANPOT
   
           Boil any dried beans in liquid long enough and you'll get
      something you can eat.  Boil rice or wheat or corn into an edible
      mash, serve the beans over it, and you will have a diet a human can
      survive on indefinitely.
           That's as basic as La Cuisine Humaine gets.  The result will
      taste much better, of course, if the beans are boiled in a liquid
      containing a well-conceived mixture of herbs and spices.  Garlic and
      pepper form a reliable base, and of course, salt.  Tomato paste fits
      many combinations in modest quantities, and some wine or beer mixed
      in the boiling water never hurts.
           Oil or fat is needed to give roundness to the flavor.  Use
      something with a strong flavor, like sesame oil, olive oil, or bacon
      fat.  Fry something in it before you put the beans and water in the
      pot, if only some onions and fresh sweet peppers.  If you have some
      meat to fry in it too, all the better; fresh meat, smoked meat, sausage
      meat, anything will do as long as it isn't seafood, fowl or fish.
      Ideally, there should be a bone or two, preferably with some marrow,
      which you leave in with the meat to boil when you add the water,
      beans, and flavorings.
           Boil it all together until it reaches a nice thick richness,
      serve it over a grain, and there you have it, the basic human
      beanpot which has sustained survival all over Earth down through the
      centuries.
           But ah, the variations!
           With kidney beans and smoked pork fried in bacon fat, add
      basil, oregano, bay leaf, a little tomato paste, a double-dose of
      red pepper, and perhaps cumin to the standard boiling liquid to make
      New Orleans Red Beans.
           Substitute ground or diced beef, add more tomato paste and yet
      more pepper, fry with olive oil, and boil up into Texas chili.
           Use black beans, pork, pork sausages, onions and sweet peppers
      fried in a mixture of sesame oil and bacon fat, add to the basic
      boiling liquid cumin and a bit of tumeric, and you have a Cuban
      variant.  Serve much the same thing with rice, shredded toasted
      coconut, and orange slices, and it's Brazilian.
         Lamb fried in butter or light oil, lentils, much more tumeric,
      plenty of ground red pepper, some coriander, leaves or seeds, cumin,
      and perhaps mustard seeds and thyme and certainly some sliced
      carrots will give you a nice Indian currypot.
           Do what humans do.  After you've sampled a few of the
      traditional styles, experiment with combinations and invent your
      own!  Start with the basic recipe and add herbs, spices, and
      flavorings one by one, tasting the result before you commit to the
      next, bearing in mind that lamb goes well with thyme, lentils and
      tumeric, beef with tomato and green herbs, and pork not very well
      with olive oil.
           Masses of humans have not only survived on such fare for
      millennia, but turned it into culinary art.  It's easy!  With a
      little courage to experiment you can do it too!
   
                           Roasts, Grills, and Stews
   
           In certain areas, notably parts of Europe and North America,
      meats and seafoods have long been sufficiently abundant to serve as
      primary food sources for the population at large, and of course rich
      humans everywhere have usually been able to afford to make such
      viands the mainstays of their diet.
           In these happy circumstances, grains, tubers, beans and
      vegetables need only serve as flavorful garnishes, side-dishes, and
      complements to meats and seafood, which is to say that the cuisinary
      arts have been freed thereby to evolve under less constraint from
      the brute biochemical necessities.
           The most basic human methods for cooking meats and fishes are
      to simply place them in a hot oven and roast them, grill them in
      same, or cook them over an open fire.  They are then served with
      baked, fried, or grilled potatoes, boiled rice, or some other starch
      source, and perhaps a simple vegetable, or a melange thereof.
           If this sounds rather dull, alas, it too often is.  But it
      doesn't have to be.  Humans have developed methods for turning even
      such seemingly simple fare into works of true cuisine.
           The basic strategy is to marinate the meat or fish beforehand,
      that is, soak it in a liquid which imparts flavor and also gives the
      surface of the cooked result a delectable crisp and fragrant crust.
           To crisp the roast or grill, an oil is required, as well as a
      so-called “browning agent,”most typically soy sauce, sugar, ground
      paprika, or ground tumeric.  The second liquid ingredient forms the
      bulk of the marinade, and could be simply water.  Of course, a wine,
      vinegar, or alcoholic essence (such as sake, cognac, or whiskey)
      mixed with the water makes things much more interesting.
           Soak your meat or fish in a marinade of oil, water, flavoring
      liquid, and browning agent, drain it, roast or grill it, laving with
      more marinade occasionally until it is done to taste, and there you
      have it.
           What you have will be determined by the oil, flavoring liquid,
      and browning agent employed.  And of course by the spices and herbs
      you add to them.
           Use sesame oil, soy sauce, and sake or sherry wine, grate in
      some ginger root, add garlic and a bit of sugar, marinate fish or
      meat in it, grill, and voila, teriyaki.  Add chopped scallions,
      coriander leaf, and pepper (paste, liquid, or powder), and give it a
      Korean accent.  More sugar and lots of paprika instead of soy sauce,
      chopped onions, pepper, garlic, tomato paste, perhaps some basil and
      oregano, whiskey or wine instead of sake, and it's a Texas barbecue.
          A light oil, plain water, tumeric and paprika, ground cumin,
      powdered red pepper, and a choice or two from a palette of
      coriander, cardomon, and mustard seeds, and you have a tandoori.
           Olive oil, wine or vinegar, paprika, garlic, black pepper, and
      some robust green herbs (thyme and rosemary for lamb or fish , sage
      or coriander leaf for pork, basil or oregano for beef), and you have
      the marinade for a range of kebabs, in which chunks of meat are
      marinated, then skewered with vegetables to be grilled ensemble.
           Once you understand the basic principle, it's easy.  By
      altering the ingredients of the marinade artfully, human chefs are
      able to create infinite variations on what at first seems like an
      unpromising theme.  If you can think like a human, you can do it
      too.
           A stew is simply the peasant's old friend the beanpot, supplied
      with a sufficient amount of meat to supply all ten essential amino
      acids for the meal, so that beans are happily rendered merely
      optional.
           Brown your meat in an oil or fat, add a bone or two, cover with
      a spiced, herbed, and flavored liquid, and boil till the meat is
      tender and the “pot-likker” thick and savory.  At an intermediary
      stage, add your choice of vegetables, which take less cooking time,
      and enjoy an authentic human stew.
           Humans have created many variations by simply varying the meat,
      vegetables, oil, and flavoring liquid, and so can you.
           Beef browned in bacon fat or butter, stewed with carrots,
      onions, potatoes, and frequently mushrooms, is a widespread variant.
      The liquid usually contains garlic, pepper, and a few appropriately
      chosen herbs.  If it's mostly water or beer, you have Irish stew.
      Omit the carrots, add more onions, boil in red wine, and make Beef
      Bourguignon.  Dilute the wine with more water, add it bit of nutmeg,
      reduce the pot-likker way down, thicken it with sour cream stirred
      in at the end, and you've made Beef Stroganoff.
           Fry an interesting mixture of pungent seed-spices like cumin,
      coriander, cardomon, and mustard, usually no more than two to a
      stew, in peanut oil or clarified butter with a generous amount of
      red pepper, add tumeric and salt, brown your meat in it, cover with
      water, simmer until the meat is tender and the sauce somewhat
      thickened, and you have a curry to serve over plain rice or a
      complex rice pilaf.
           Many curries are as simple as that, but you can cook some
      ground lentils (dahl)with the meat in the curry sauce or add
      spinach, okra, peas, eggplant, potatoes, cauliflower, and so forth
      for a more complex effect and a better nutritional balance.  Or you
      can cook up a vegetable curry that works quite well without any meat
      at all!
           Do not surrender to the impulse to stock up on the so-called
      “curry powder” that is being foistered off on the innocent gourmet
      as a foolproof way of reproducing “perfect human curry.” Curry is
      not a single dish but a whole family of stews created by a large
      palette of possible spices, and only the tumeric, salt, and pepper
      are common to all of them.  A proper human cook will choose his own
      combination of curry spices according to what is being attempted,
      and so should you.
           Another major variation is the Borscht.  Use smoked porks and
      sausages browned in bacon fat, sesame oil, or a mixture of both.
      Use beer and water as the boiling liquid.  Add sugar and vinegar to
      achieve the desired sweet-sour balance, pepper, salt, garlic, a
      pungent seed-spice like caraway, mustard, cumin, or coriander.  For
     vegetables, some onions, perhaps an apple or two, and a large
      quantity of chopped or shredded cabbage.
           “Red Cooking” is even easier.  Simply fill a big pot with a
      mixture of water, sake, a bit of sesame oil, chopped garlic and
      ginger-root, and soy sauce.  Bring it to a boil, and simply drop in
      a big piece of meat, a round of beef, a ham, even a whole fowl.
      Boil it gently for as long as it takes to make the meat tender,
      dropping in some vegetables towards the end, or serve them as a
      separate side-dish.
           Experiment with your own variations and train your taste-organs
      to be your guide to creating stews fit for humans.  All you have to
      remember is to boil the meat longer than the vegetables, and try to
      conceive harmonious combinations.  Start with one of the basic         human boiling liquids, adding flavors one at a time, tasting the result,
      and stopping before they start clashing with each other.
           Don't be afraid to trust your own judgment.  Think like a
      human!
   
                                Fried Everything
   
           What if a human doesn't want to wait around for hours while a
      beatpot or stew simmers?  What if he wants something tasty on the
      table toute suite?
           No problem!
           Fry it!
           Learn the basic Chinese method and you can fry up anything
      into true cuisine humaine.
           Cut up meat or seafood and your choice of vegetables in bite-
      size pieces.  Marinate the meat in a mixture of soy sauce, sake, a
      little cornstarch, and a bit of sugar for a while, then drain off
      the liquid and reserve.
           Heat up a bit of light oil until it is hot as you can get it.
      The Chinese favor the hemispherical wok for this, since it presents
      a large surface area and nicely contains the hot oil spatters, but
      if you stand way back and use a long pair of chopsticks, any big
      enough pan will do.
           Drop some chopped ginger and garlic into the smoking oil.  Add
      the meat.  Stir vigorously until it is nicely browned and tender.
      It won't take long.  Remove the meat, heat up a little more oil, add
      more chopped garlic and ginger, then the vegetables, stir-fry until
      done.  Put the meat back in, along with the marinade you have
      reserved, mix it all together.  The cornstarch will thicken the
      marinade into a sauce that enrobes the finished product.
           At this point, you can add dashes of additional liquid
      flavorings--oyster sauce, various fermented bean pastes, liquid
      pepper or hot garlic paste, for examples--and perhaps coriander
      leaves and beansprouts which require only a moment's cooking.
           That's all there is to it, and it takes perhaps twenty minutes!
           The Chinese alone have elaborated this basic stir-fry into
      thousands of subtle dishes, and the Thais, Cambodians, Indonesians,
      and Vietnamese have added some Indian spices and French herbs to
      create even more.  By now you should be cooking enough like a human
      to immediately grasp the possibilities.
           Any harmonious combination of meats and vegetables may be
      cooked in this manner.  Several vegetables may be used in the same
      dish; just cut the ones that take longer to cook into smaller pieces.
   
                                  Salads
       
           That's what humans call assemblages of raw fruits and
      vegetables lightly covered in a kind of cold sauce called a “salad
      dressing.”  They can be simple little side dishes, or whole
      elaborate meals.
           The starting point for most salads is some succulent leafy
      green.  To this is usually added some sort of sliced onion, and, as
      often as not, pieces of tomato.  The simplest salad dressing is a
      mixture of oil, vinegar, garlic and salt.   Coat the basic salad
      with the dressing, and you have a modest little side dish, the so-
      called “dinner salad.”
           Of course you can add fresh herbs and spices to the dressing.
      Crumbled bits of pungent cheese.  Capers.  Mustard. Anchovies.  A
      raw egg.  Whatever strikes your fancy.  And of course, the oil could
      be olive, sesame, walnut, corn, safflower, and the vinegar an acetic
      essence of herbs, wine, or spices.  A salad dressing is, after all,
      a cold sauce, with all the room for improvisation that implies.
           As for the salad itself, the basic dinner salad need only be
      the background, indeed in the end it can be pushed back into
      oblivion by the other ingredients.  Humans will add almost anything
      to their salads, and not all of it need be raw by any means, though
      usually it will all be cold.
           Still there are some general esthetic principles.
           Start with the basic dinner salad as your foundation.  Almost
      any soft enough raw vegetable can be added--carrots, turnips,
      celery, sweet pepper, cabbage, mushrooms, even flowerets of broccoli
      or cauliflower--thinner slices for the harder ones.
           Next, feel free to add cooked, pickled, and preserved
      vegetables--olives, haricots, chick peas, pickled cucumber, radish,
      mushroom, corn grains, artichoke hearts in oil, preserved ginger,
      pickled peppers.
           If you're going in the direction of smoked meats or
      charcuterie, or playing it vegetarian, throw in chunks of an
      interesting cheese.  With a fish salad, better not, for most cheeses
      will clash with the fishy flavor
           The tasty exception to this is the so-called “Greek Salad,” in
      which olives, capers, pickled peppers, cucumbers, anchovies and tuna
      preserved in oil are added to the basic dinner salad, the whole
      nevertheless being perfected by the addition of chunks of a musky
      cheese called feta which actually goes well in this configuration,
      when dressed with olive oil, wine vinegar, garlic, pepper, salt,
      lemon, and a bit of some herb.
           If you've added cheese, try some smoked meats, sliced salami,
      smoked duck, chicken, or turkey, or even a combination.  If this is
      to be a fish salad, you might use freshly cooked shrimp, raw fish
      pickled in vinegar or citrus juice, sardines, tuna, salmon, herring,
      sprats, and so forth, smoked, pickled, or preserved in oil.
           Finally, you must create an appropriate dressing to coat your
      salad.  This is a matter of subjective esthetic judgment, but a few
      guidelines may be suggested.
           You can never go wrong with a simple dressing of olive oil,
      wine vinegar, pepper, salt, and garlic, with a bit of fresh herb
      like dill or basil.  You don't want cheese in the dressing for a
      fish salad and you certainly don't want anchovies with smoked meat
      or charcuterie except in the so-called “antipasto.”  Sweet pickles
      will probably be quite disgusting with smoked fish.  Heavy oils like
      sesame drown out green herbs and most seed spices add little to
      dressings if they are not ground.  Some humans add sugar, but the
      enlightened among them rightly deem this a barbarism.
           Other than that, just about anything goes.  Fruits can be added
      to salads with a little judicious judgment, and of course salads can
      be composed of fruits alone, though of course you would hardly dress
      a fruit salad with anything containing garlic, capers, or anchovies,
      or combine it with most fish.
           To widen the parameters of the salad even further, the so-
      called tostada is a fried tortilla smeared with a hot savory
      bean paste to which may be added a cooked sausage called chorizo,
      which is then smothered with a cold salad of greens, tomatoes,
      cheese, onions, scallions, and peppers, which in turn is dressed
      with a mixture of oil, vinegar, and a spicy tomato sauce, and
      sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese.  Fold the tortilla up, fry it
      into a pocket, stuff it with the other ingredients, and you have a
      taco.  Roll it all in a soft steamed tortilla, and it's a burrito.
   
                                Pass the Pasta!
         
            Grind any grain into flour, add water, perhaps eggs or a little
      butter or oil, kneed the mash into a dough, squeeze it through an
      extrusion mold or roll and cut it by hand, and you have noodles,
      spaghetti, lo mein, chow mei fon, linguini, in short, some form of
      pasta, as ubiquitous a form of preparing grain for eating on Earth
      as bread, and culinarily much more interesting.
           Some pastas are flavored with spices or vegetables, but most of
      them are rather bland and tasteless.  They are commonly simply
      boiled to the point of edibility, though some may be fried or
      steamed.  Is this as deadly-dull as it seems?
           Hardly!
           Pastas may have been developed as a basic universal metabolic
      fuel for impoverished mass populations, but the culinary ingenuity
      of the humans has long since made an artistic virtue of economic
      necessity by transforming this industrial fodder into the raw
      material for haute cuisine.
           True, once you have boiled your pasta to tenderness, what you
      have is a soft, pallid, bland pot of noodles or dumplings, a pure
      starch, good only for keeping the metabolic furnace stoked up.
           But that's not the way humans look at it.  Humans see a
      neutral blank canvas upon which to paint a culinary masterpiece.
           You can serve a stew over a pasta--Irish Stew, Beef Stroganoff,
      a curry.  Certain pastas can be stir-fried in the Chinese manner
      with vegetables, meats, and the standard marinade and its variations
      to make lo meins, chow mei fons, and other noodle dishes that
      combine fried noodles with crisp savories.  Just treat the pasta as
      another vegetable!
           Just as commonly, pastas are served with a variety of rich,
      thick sauces, or sauced ingredients that turn them into
      nutritionally and esthetically satisfying meals.
           One can, for example, simply saute a melange of fresh
      vegetables in olive oil, with garlic, salt, pepper, and an herb or
      two, smother the cooked pasta with it, and sprinkle the result with
      grated cheese.  Or fry sausage, pepper, and onions in the same
      manner, add basil, a little tomato paste, and a splash of red wine,
      and serve it on a bed of spagetti.
           Fry some diced bacon in olive oil, garlic, and black pepper,
      throw in your cooked pasta when it is done and still hot, mixing in
      a beaten egg, some fresh butter, sour cream, and grated parmesan
      cheese to make a carbonara.
           Or saute onions and garlic in olive oil, add capers, liquid
      pepper, sliced smoked salmon and vodka.  Simmer until the alcohol
      has evaporated, the salmon has pinkened, and the smoky flavor
      thereof infused into the liquid.  Pour over hot pasta, mix in a
      little butter and sour cream, then garnish with black caviar.
           Humans in Italy, where pasta has long been a universal staple,
      have developed a basic pasta sauce that may be altered to
      successfully encompass ingredients as diverse as spicy sausage,
      seafood, and fish.  Fry garlic, onions, pepper and garlic in olive
      oil.  Add water, red wine, and enough tomato paste to make the
      result thick and flavorful, along with basil and salt.  Simmer until
      the alcohol has long since evaporated and the sauce tastes round and
      mellow.
           The basic version may be a bit boring, but it is infinitely
      adaptable.  Fry balls of chopped meat, sausages, or even ribs of
      pork, along with the basics in your olive oil, add mushrooms perhaps
      while you are at it, and complement the basil with oregano, for a
      hearty meat sauces for your pasta.  Grated parmesan cheese is de
      rigueur, except with the pork.
           For seafood or fish, make a marinara sauce.  Add capers,
      anchovies, and black olives when you put in the tomato paste.
      Remove the sauce from the pot, saute your fish or seafood quickly in
      olive oil, pour the sauce over it, and serve it all on a bed of most
      any pasta.  No cheese with this!
           You can spice up any version of the basic pasta sauce with
      fiery pepper, lace it with an abundance of mushrooms, add diced
      eggplant, clams, or even certain hams; the basic theme is powerful
      enough to stand up to a wide range of variations.
           And, to quite close the circle, in the end, you can make good
      use of your universal Italian pasta sauce without even eating pasta!
           Spoon some of the meaty version over fried eggplant slices,
      cover with slices of mozzarella cheese, sprinkle on parmesan, and
      grill yourself Eggplant Parmigiana.  Steam shellfish in a diluted
      version of marinar sauce, or simmer shellfish, squid, and fish in
      same to make a cioppino, which, by de-emphasizing the tomato paste,
      emphasizing the garlic, and adding saffron, becomes a passable
      French Bouillabaisse.  You can even bake a “spaghetti squash”in the
      oven, scoop out the strands, and serve your pasta sauce over a
      pasta-like vegetable!
   
                               La Cuisine Humaine
         
           To pretend that this modest treatise has now exhausted the
      possibilities of La Cuisine Humaine would of course be ludicrous.
           We have hardly touched, for example, on the possible variants
      of the burrito, tostada, and taco, which may be filled with
      virtually anything.  Peanut butter (or other nut-pastes) may be
      simmered with sesame oil and hot pepper to make a “satay sauce”
      which goes well over kebabs and grills of meat and fowl, though not
      very well with most fish, and which may also be served over certain
      pastas with slivers of roasted pork and fresh coriander leaf.  In
      America, a “hamburger” may be simply a fried patty of chopped beef
      slapped between two pieces of palidd bread slathered with an odious
      sweetened tomato sauce called “ketchup,” or it may be covered with
      melted cheese, bacon, mushrooms, green chilies, satay sauce, taco
      sauce and entire salads to reach the status of culinary art.
           And the simple boiled rice or wheat that accompanies many
      stews, beatpots, and stir-frys may be turned into a complex and
      tasty pilaf.  Fry some onions and garlic in oil or butter in the
      boiling pot as you begin(you can fry the rice with it too!), then
      add spices such as tumeric, cumin, cardamon, and so forth to the
      boiling water, cover, and steam in the pot till done.  Nutmeats,
      dried fruit, diced vegetables, and even cubes of cooked meat,
      sausage, seafood or fowl tossed in near the end of the process can
      turn your pilaf into a complete meal, a biriani or jambalaya.  Or
      try a “paella”in which tomato paste, saffron, pepper, olive
      pimento, chicken, and sausage are added to the rice boil, which is
      then placed in an open pan somewhat underdone, and larded with
      shellfish to be bake-steamed open in the oven.
           Then too, you may hollow out most any sturdy vegetable of a
      sufficient size--eggplant, zucchini, sweet pepper, tomatoes,
      potatoes, even cucumber--stuff it with a savory mixture of ground
      meat and spices, put it in a pan, pour over basic Italian pasta
      sauce, or something of your own invention, and bake it in the oven.
      Raw ground beef is even quite palatable when mixed with raw egg,
      pepper, raw onion, garlic, anchovies, and a bit of olive oil, to
      make “Steak Tartare.”
           La Cuisine Humaine contains so many possibitiles for variation
      on its basic themes that thousands of voluminous recipe books have
      been quite unable to exhaustively preserve it for posterity, let
      alone this modest little volume.
           Nevertheless, once you have assembled your human kitchen
      equipment, laid out your basic palette of herbs, spices, oils, and
      flavorings, and added to it stepwise by experimenting with beat pots,
      stews, roasts, grills, frys, salads, and pastas, you will be cooking
      like a human.
           For the purpose of this cookbook has not been to present an
      exhaustive or even truly representative collection of human recipes,
      which would be quite impossible, but to enable an adventurous cook
      on any planet to think like a human, at least in the kitchen.
           This is not the same thing as slavishly reproducing a detailed
      recipe.  Any halfway-decent kitchen robot can do that better than
      you can.  But that same robot will become quite perplexed when faced
      with the need to improvise on a human recipe to fit available local
      ingredients.
           But you won't be.  Not if you think like a human instead of
      like a robot.  Recipes are useful in learning your way around the
      methods and palette, but once you have grasped the essentials, your
      own educated sense organs are your best guide.  They may not care to
      broadcast the fact to their audiences, but human cooks taste what
      they are preparing constantly.
           Humans also have a music form called “jazz”; in which groups of
      musicians spontaneously improvise upon a previously composed score,
      and if you think of the recipe as the score, and the chef as a
      performing artist improvising upon it, you will indeed have grasped
      the ultimate secret of La Cuisine Humaine.
           And if this concept seems illusive, well, perhaps it is, for it
      took the humans themselves centuries of culinary evolution to
      conceive it.
           Up until a century or two ago, neither travel nor the
      importations of produce from distant shores was rapid or easy,
      meaning that even the best human chefs had to make do with that of
      the local ecosystem.  As a result, “national styles”evolved.  The
      ordinary cooks followed recipes handed down by long national and
      family tradition, and the culinary artists developed sophisticated
      but conservatively classical styles, with, in many areas, schools
      and textbooks to teach them.
           Of course there had always been some transnational influences.
      The cuisines of Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and so forth combined
      elements of Chinese and Indian styles.  Pilafs were to be found in a
      long broad belt from Eastern Europe and the Middle East clear
      through India and into the South Pacific, simpler and blander at the
      western end, picking up fruits, nuts, meats, pepper, and curry
      spices as they marched eastward.
           When the more technologically advanced peoples of the Eastern
      Hemisphere “discovered”the Americas, they found the “primitives”
      enjoying chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and chili peppers,
      which is to say that the so-called national cuisines of Italy,
      Spain, Germany, Ireland, Austria, and so forth were actually based
      upon products imported from foreign ecospheres.
           Still, humans were not quite yet ready for the great conceptual
      leap forward.  Chefs incorporated the new ingredients into their
      national styles, indeed transforming many of them beyond
      recognition, but the resulting culinary golden age was still classical
      in spirit, with perfected recipes enshrined in print, a
      canon of dishes, and clear-cut culinary boundaries at the cultural
      borders.
           It took the easy travel, rapid cheap transport of produce, and
      food storage and media technology of the human's so-called
      “Twentieth Century” to create the culinary jazz that is the
      crowning glory of today's Cuisine Humaine.
           With hordes of humans traveling everywhere and produce from all
      over the planet more or less available anywhere, the cultural
      boundaries and arbitrary combination taboos began to seem, well,
      rather silly.
           Why couldn't you put Caribbean mango and Chinese roast duck in
      a Mexican taco?  Was there a law against it?  Why couldn't you add a
      curry spice or two to a Chinese stir-fry or tumeric to an Italian
      pasta sauce or ginger to a bouillabaisse or sesame oil to a Borscht
      or wasabi radish to a salad dressing?
           If it tastes good why not, you've made a culinary discovery,
      and if it doesn't, well, culinary evolution is a matter of trial and
      error too.  As the humans have it, you can't have a culinary
      revolution by inventing omelets unless someone is willing to try
      cracking the first egg!
           And once having freed oneself from the artistic constraints of
      cultural chauvinisms to this extent, why not go all the way to the
      true culinary revolution?
           Why not an entirely free-form cuisine where the stylistic
      variants are completely individual and personal rather than bounded
      by anything but the entire ecosphere of the planet itself?
           Instead of just importing a few variations into a classical
      style, why not create dishes with no discernible national origin,
      why not take all the Earth's produce as the theoretical range of
      your palette, and, as the humans have it, rock and roll?
           Human musicians have done just this when it comes to their art,
      assembling elements from all over the world into a cross-cultural
      montage called “World Music”and so have human chefs liberated
      themselves from cultural restraints and classical canons to create a
      cuisine that spans their entire planet, a cuisine both universal and
      quite personal, the cuisinary jazz of La Grand Cuisine Humaine.
          Of course there are still rules and guidelines, but they are
      those of practical esthetics, not classical cultural tradition, to
      be followed by the educated sense-organ, not the scholarly
      intellect.  You certainly wouldn't pour American chocolate sauce all
      over an Indian tandoori or dip sushi into an Italian tomato sauce or
      serve kebabs swimming in thousand island dressing!
           Then again, who knows, how can anyone really be sure unless
      someone has tried it?
           Take something as unlikely as so-called Duck and Corn salad.
      Take some cooked America corn, roasted sweet peppers, crumbled
      walnuts, onions, and perhaps Chinese chili garlic paste, mix in a
      salad bowl with Chinese sesame and Italian olive oils, and let stand
      an hour.  Put in some French wine vinegar, mix it all up.  Spoon it
      out over a green and some sliced tomatoes, and put strips of French
      smoked migrate de canard atop it.
           Is it French?  Italian?  Chinese?  American?
           Who cares?  It's delicious!
           Caribbean bananas go well in a sandwich with American peanut
      butter.  So does English bacon.  Excellent sushis can be made with
      Mexican chili powder or French mustard.  Or slices of sashimi can be
      added raw to a Chinese stir-fry of rice noodles and vegetables. Oriental shiitaki
    mushrooms are a nice addition to Russian Beef Stroganoff. 
           You can fry up some Chinese mai-fon noodles in sesame oil and
      Indian curry spices, form them into baskets for raw French oysters,
      and sprinkle on some English malt vinegar.  Spread creamcheese on a
      warm baked crust, put some preserved fish eggs on it, and have
      yourself a nice caviar pizza!
           Consider the mathematics of the situation.  On the planet
      Earth, there must be several tens of thousands of available food
      ingredients, and just as many spices and herbs to flavor them with.
      Then too, the same natural raw material may be processed in any
      number of ways--pickled, dried, salted, rotted, chemically-
      preserved, smoked, turned into a paste or essence.
           A dozen or more of these ingredients may be combined in the
      same dish, and then be boiled, fried, baked, steamed, grilled,
      roasted, or eaten raw.
           Mathematically speaking, the theoretical possibilities are
      almost literally unlimited, even without considering the fact that
      the proportions of the ingredients in any dish may be varied
      infinitely.
           True, this means that an infinite number of truly loathsome
      concoctions lurk out there in theory to be invented and imposed upon
      the unwary experimental subject.
           But true too that an infinite number of new culinary
      masterpieces will also always be out there for you to discover!
            Don't knock it till you've tried it, as the humans put it.
      Good advice to the galactic sophisticate from this relatively
      primitive race of backplanet anthropoids!
           When it comes to politics, economics, science, philosophy, or
      how to manage a planetary ecosystem, this immature civilization may
      indeed have nothing to teach us, but when it comes to the culinary
      arts, we could all certainly enhance our galactic kitchen-culture
      and interstellar dining-room civilization by learning to cook like
      human beings.
   
           end