Miscellaneous Food-Related Musings

I wish that I could spend a couple of days in the kitchen with your mother. Or your Father, or uncle, or grandmother, or whoever it is in your family that holds the keys to the culinary v.i.p in your family. I was recently reminded of a great television show that unfortunately bit the dust long ago called Loving Spoonfuls. It was a cooking show in which the host spent each episode cooking with a Canadian immigrant grandmother, learning about her experience coming to Canada, her history and about cooking in her cultural tradition. Dabbling in recipes from different culinary traditions in the past few years has given me an appreciation for some of the basic and complex flavour combinations in different types of cooking.
The biggest obstacle to being the multi-culti foodie that I dream of being is the pantry. Many of the most delicious international* dishes require a shelf's worth of ingredients. Just dabbling in Indian, Korean and Japanese cooking has almost completely filled the storage space I have in the
kitchen.
I know that if I had a better handle on the basic flavour combinations and chemical reactions involved in creating the unique tastes of different world* dishes, I could rule the kitchen and unleash the dominant cookbeast within. If I had a week to spend in the kitchen of an Ethiopian restaurant, of a Danish cruise ship, of a big Iranian family...
I yearn for an ease with ingredients and combinations, a flair for substitutions, that magical ability to make something delicious out of almost nothing, consistently. For now, trial and error will have to do. My rats appreciate all of the leftovers.

*I'm trying very hard to avoid calling it 'Ethnic' food. Can you feel me strain for more apt, less loaded words? Phew!