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 sauted, 
      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 saute 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 
      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 
     of human culinary artist is 
      that of  the "sushi-chef," who garnishes little roles of spiced rice 
      with elegant slivers of raw fish and seafood sliced in an artfully 
      choreographed manner before the patron's eyes, and with a few pieces 
      of dried seaweed and green sprig or two, turns each piece of "sushi" 
      into a perfect little sculpture of visual and gustatory art.
           And then there are the "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 mein 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 putanesca 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 putanesca 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 palled 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, cardomon, 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, olives, 
      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 beatpots, 
      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 minced Chinese pickled garlic, 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 and 
grilled German sausages go well with Indian curried 
      cabbage.   
           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

human