Have you noticed how the cold days bring food cravings along? Finding yet another excuse to bake. Ditching meals for a cake. Curling up on the sofa with a treat. Tell me about it. Or do you know the feeling after a meal when you had quite a bit to eat but still don’t feel satisfied? A few years ago I often considered a sweet bite and espresso after lunch or dinner. I could pass on the dessert, but no meal was complete without a cup of espresso. Now with my growing awareness about how we eat I can see that I was intuitively looking for the astringent taste to finish a meal, only that I did not know better than coffee. This espresso incident still reminds me that the meals I was eating back then were not balanced enough leaving me to crave even after I ate sufficient quantities of food.
In my pursuits to create nourishing satisfying meals I have turned to Ayurveda, a body of knowledge on traditional healing that has been around for thousands of years. Ayurveda pays significant attention to what we eat (you can read more in the interview with Ayurveda practitioner and my friend Ulli Allmendinger) as our ancestors had already known the truth we have only recently discovered: food has direct impact on our well-being.
Ayurveda does not view foods not as fats, carbohydrates, and proteins but rather studies how certain properties of a particular food affect ur bodies. Those properties are defined as tastes and Ayurveda considers six of them: sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter and astringent. Each taste has got a direct impact on our digestion and then as the nutrients are absorbed in the tissues - on the whole body. For instance, sweet taste (potato, wheat bread, milk) brings satisfaction and also builds the body mass, while bitter taste (green leafy vegetables or beets) helps our body detoxify. I am not delving into the healing qualities of each taste leaving it to the specialists who can tell which taste you should emphasize in your diet based in your constitution and your current needs. My aspiration here is to explain the six tastes theory, show how you can apply it in your kitchen and hopefully get you thinking about the tastes you have been neglecting up till now.
In a nutshell, you should try to include all the six tastes in each meal. This idea is as powerful as simple it is. I notice the difference when I thoughtfully apply it and feel satisfied after the meal or I just quickly throw something together and then scan the fridge in a search of a post-meal fix. I hear our restaurant guests comment on the balanced flavors in our dishes; in fact many guests report feeling content after a few small meze plates because they got all the six tastes. Not the best strategy for a restaurant if you think, but this is how I cook. I have also discovered that if you consistently balance the six tastes in your meals, you also get your nutrients right: my blood work shows no major vitamin deficiency even though I follow a rather strict diet. Finally, back to the cravings we talked about earlier.. Once you learn to include all the six tastes in your every single meal you will feel more satisfied and significantly reduce your cravings. Craving is a only signal your body gives you; it does not urge you to grab that chocolate, but rather invites you to consider which taste you did not receive this time. Here I have compiled a table (based on this, this and this) for you to better understand each of the six tastes.
| Taste | Basis of Taste | Products | Spices and Flavorings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweet | Fats, proteins, carbohydrates and water | Grains (rice, wheat, corn), pasta, bread, vegetables (beets, carrots, potato, cucumber), milk, beef, pork, fish, sugar, honey, sweet fruit - fresh and dried, nuts (almonds, cashes, pumpkin seeds) | Cinnamon, anise seeds, licorice root, basil, bay leaf, caraway, cardamom, coriander, fennel, mint, nutmeg, saffron, tarragon, vanilla |
| Salty | Mineral salts | Sea weeds, cured foods (e.g. black olives), celery, cheese, tuna | Sea salt, soy sauce |
| Sour | Organic acids: ascorbic acid, citric acid, acetic acid | Citrus fruits, berries, tomatoes, pickled foods, sour milk products (e.g yogurt), pickled and fermented foods | Lemon juice, lime juice, vinegars, garlic, sumac, |
| Pungent | Essential oils | Peppers, chilies, onions, garlic, leeks, kohlrabi, mustard greens, radishes, turnips, raw spinach | Cayenne, black pepper, cloves, ginger, cardamom, hing, mustard seeds, paprika |
| Bitter | Alkaloids or glycosides | Green leafy vegetables, celery, broccoli, beets, eggplant, jerusalem artichokes, sprouts, sesame seeds, coffee, dark chocolate | Fenugreek, cumin, dill, saffron, turmeric |
| Astringent | Tannins | Lentils, dried beans, grains (rye, buckwheat, and quinoa), most raw vegetables, cauliflower, green beans, avocado, peas, green apples, grape skins, pomegranates, quince, tea, chicken | Basil, bay leaf, caraway, coriander, dill, fennel, marjoram, nutmeg, oregano, parsley, poppy seeds, rosemary, saffron, turmeric, vanilla |
A small note. It is rather attractive to include all the tastes in your meal by simply adding the needed spices. In fact, Ayurveda practitioners or specialized stores can even offer you a churna, a spice mix that combines all the six tastes and suits your constitution. It is a brilliant shortcut when you dine out or don’t have enough time to cook a proper meal. However ideally you want to include more products that carry those tastes: you’d imagine the nutrition that raw spinach provides exceeds that of the black pepper even though they both represent pungent taste.
One way to include the six tastes in your meal is a thali approach I wrote about before: making a few small plates instead of one dish. The oh-so-hip these days bowls (such as this gratitude bowl) reflects the same approach. However, often we have time to cook only one dish, and here I want to show you how even one dish meal can include all the six tastes.
Enter pumpkin soup. I have chosen this simple and popular food that people cook and enjoy in many parts of the world this season to show the six tastes approach in action. Too often pumpkin soup is sweet, almost dessert-like, made even sweeter with cream or coconut milk. I bet that after such a bowl you’d want another one and would not mind a sweet something afterwards, all because so many tastes were not included in the soup and you are not satisfied. Here is what I suggest, and I hope you take is as a guideline rather than a recipe and go ahead with creating your combinations given the ingredients available to you.
The base of the soup is pumpkin (sweet) and red lentils (astringent). I also throw a whole garlic head (pungent) and a big lemon (sour) in the mix; don’t be suspicious about the quantities - the flavors mellow as garlic and lemon roast. Onion (pungent) plays a supportive role to emphasize the flavor previously included. I also add bitter and astringent spices, but don’t stop there: I fortify these tastes with generous amounts of parsley (astringent) briefly warmed in olive oil (pungent). All the six tastes are in.
The result? It is kind of a pumpkin soup and not a pumpkin soup at the same time. Familiar texture and color play out completely differently with all the taste interventions I have done. First, strikes the sweet taste of the pumpkin, then you feel the right amount of salt. Soft sourness of the roasted lemon comes in. Next you get the sharp pungent accord of the roasted garlic and onion and a subtle whisper of the ginger, olive oil and sage. However that lasts for only a second or two because after come the bitter notes of cumin and turmeric resolving with the lingering astringency of red lentils and parsley.
I hope you will make this soup, but even more I hope that you will start experimenting with the six tastes approach. Wishing you nourishing meals and no cravings!
Red Lentil and Roasted Pumpkin Soup
Source: Olga Irez of Babushka Table
Prep Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 35 min
Total Time: 45 min
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 1⁄2 cup red lentils soaked overnight and drained
- 2 cups water / vegetable stock
- 0.5 kg peeled pumpkin
- 1 medium onion
- 1 whole garlic head unpeeled
- 1 lemon unsprayed and non-waxed
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- 1⁄2 tsp ground cumin
- 1⁄4 tsp ground ginger
- 1⁄4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tsp fine sea salt and more to taste
- 2 tbsp extra virgin live oil
- 3 springs dry sage
For serving:
- 5 tbsp extra virgin live oil
- 1⁄4 cup finely chopped parsley
- 1⁄2 tsp cumin
- 1⁄2 tsp ground sweet paprika
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 230C/445F.
- In a medium cooking pot combine the soaked drained red lentils with 2 cups of water / vegetable stock, bring to a boil and cook for about 30 min until the lentils completely soften and fall apart.
- Gather the ingredients. Slice pumpkin into 4 cm / 1.5 inch wedges and cut each wedge into more or less equal 4 cm / 1.5 inch thick slices. Quarter the lemon. Halve the onion and cut each half into 8 equal segments. In a large mixing bowl combine the ground turmeric, cumin, ginger, black pepper, sea salt and olive oil. Place the pumpkin and onion chunks in the bowl and thoroughly rub in the spices. Spread the spiced vegetables on a baking tray lined with the parchment paper and place the whole garlic head and lemon quarters in between. Stick the dry sage springs here and there. Bake for 25-30 min, or until the pumpkin is fork-tender. The garlic will take a bit less (15-20 min) so check it you can easily squeeze it and remove.
- Discard the sage. Peel the garlic and scrape the pulp from the lemons removing the seeds (don’t discard the peels). Transfer both along with the roasted vegetables to the lentils and puree with an immersion blender/potato masher. Add more water / stock if you prefer a thinner soup. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if needed.
- Finely chopped the reserved roasted lemon peel. Warm up the olive oil in a small pan, stir in the finely chopped parsley, spices and lemon peel. As the spices release their aroma, remove from the heat. Pour the soup in the serving bowls and garnish with the spiced parsley and lemon peel.
Brilliant. I look to you for interesting food ideas and then I feel like it is cooking school again. Execute then theory. Well done and thanks for sharing your knowledge, wisdom and insight.