About the Transcendental Kitchen

Over time, what can be enjoyed changes. Wheat, which used to be a staple of the human diet, has been 'improved' to the point where it is a problem for a significant proportion of the population. We are so used to its predominance in our diet, that it can be hard to imagine life without it.

But it is possible. This site contains recipes which either avoid wheat altogether, or otherwise use varieties of wheat which were part of the human diet in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

I first identified that I had a problem with wheat gluten in 2003, after spending a couple of days travelling, eating salad filled baguettes and other bread products on sale in airports and railway stations. I felt bloated and unwell. In response I cut out all bread products in my diet to see if that made a difference. I felt much better after just three days. The symptoms stopped. 

I'd found the problem. Looking back, I could see that I'd been having difficulties with bread and muesli as far back as 1997, but I was unaware of the cause. Indeed I was scarcely aware of the concept of an intolerance to wheat.

The food here is suitable for people with an intolerance to wheat and gluten, but not all of the recipes are gluten free. Some of them therefore are not suitable for coeliacs, who have an immune response to food containing gluten. A few recipes use Spelt, Emmer wheat, and Khorasan wheat, which are ancient and unimproved forms of wheat. These varieties can be used in soups and in making bread (though I mainly use Spelt and Maize corn for breadmaking).

I developed these recipes partly in response to finding delicious and healthy ways to eat while minimising my exposure to wheat and barley gluten (though I've given up on barley altogether, in favour of oats, which are unproblematic for me). 

The recipes here for the most part, also represent an exercise in invention and adaptation. Some dishes are based on already existing recipes; others are based on an understanding of what may be combined and contrasted, built up over many years of experience in the kitchen. You don't have to do things the way you were taught. And I usually don't. Though you will find roast beef and potatoes here, and other traditional dishes, from a range of cultures. 

Please feel free to comment on the dishes presented here, especially if you use them as inspiration in the kitchen.

Thomas Yaeger, January 13, 2016

The best way to navigate the recipes is using the labels either at the end of an individual recipe, or the complete wordcloud of labels at the foot of a sequence of recipes. 'Beef' will take you to all the labelled beef recipes, and 'garlic' will take you to every recipe using that ingredient. Clicking on 'soup' will collect together all the soup recipes in one sequence. And so on. I will refine the labels as I add more recipes.

Is there something vaguely Husserlian going on here? Yes there is. The number of ways the recipes can be grouped is nearly infinite. So both the presentation of the recipes to the mind of the viewer, and the context of the recipes, are almost infinitely variable. Each grouping tells you something about how recipes work, and suggests other possibilities. At another level, by using the labels for navigation, you will see something of the way I am exploring recipe ideas, in that I add and subtract elements of dishes, which I rarely do in the same way twice: different versions of dishes are here, and are pulled together via the labels. So this blog is not just about individual recipes, it is about cooking, the preparation of dishes, and also (if you allow) thinking about food.


Wikipedia has some useful pages which group together related recipes and cuisines, and I've added these to the external links on the right hand of the pages (unless you are reading this with your smartphone).

Thomas Yaeger, June 12, and December 12, 2016.

Around November and December 2016, after three years,  I realised I was coming to the end of recipes which were a regular part of my repertoire (though I always tried new things from time to time). From February 2017 onwards most of the recipes added to this blog will be interpretations of classic dishes from the cuisines of the world, with a focus on vegetarian and gluten and wheat free food. This will require an expansion of my (already heavily populated) herb and spice shelves, as well as an exploration of some cooking techniques which aren't often used in the west. It will be an adventure. There will also be more baking, which has not been much addressed so far.

Thomas Yaeger, January 15, 2017.