| In Ayurvedic Cooking, the cook
should not taste the indian food before it is served.
In the West I doubt if many people
could relate to not tasting the food while it's still
on the stove. Typically one might think, "How will
I know if it is done or properly cooked without tasting
it first?"
Once the cooking starts, one cannot taste the
food, nor should one try to enjoy the food being prepared
even by smelling it. If it is enjoyed first by ourselves,
it is no longer fit to offer to God.
I cook every day and never taste it before it
is finished and offered and everyone tells me it tastes very
good. One should have confidence in what he or she is doing
to begin with.
Those who cannot see, hear better; and those
who cannot hear, see better. At the loss of one faculty, nature
gives more power to other faculties. If we refrain from tasting
the food beforehand, then our ability to subtly experience
what it will taste like will increase. One must learn to cook
by feeling, not by tasting.
Cooking improves one's sense of smell, sight
and touch respectively. The sense of taste is deliberately
not used. The energy that would have been centered there may
then flow into other sense organs, thus making them more receptive.
By willfully abstaining from tasting, a cook improves his
or her other senses such that they become more sensitive and
efficient. I know a blind man who used to cook bread simply
by listening to the sounds it made during the process of cooking.
|
