Kung-Fu Cooking Andy Haynes

Whilst training the other day, a partner happened to mention that he wanted to have a go at making his own bread, and knowing that I used to work as a chef, asked me if I had a good recipe. He had very little culinary experience, and as the conversation went on I began to liken the process to the methods that we follow when learning Taiji, through this I became acutely aware of the parallels between cooking, and training in the martial arts… (and to take this further, as an abstract reflection of learning many skills in life, but for the purpose of the article, we’ll stick to Kung Fu and Cooking!)

In both cases, right at the beginning, we have little to no skills, no experience, and no frame of reference. All we can do is follow the instructions that we’re given… be that either a ‘recipe’ or our ‘form’. Anyone who has tried to learn cooking from scratch, will know that when following a recipe for the first time, the end result can often look and taste nothing like it’s intended to! The subtlety and nuance isn’t yet present as we follow the instructions to the letter. So it is with our form… but the process of following the recipe introduces us to key skills and principles of cooking… skills that require practice and refinement. The more you practice the recipe, the greater understanding you gain of the cooking methods involved.

Once familiar with the basic recipe, we begin to experiment… making slight adjustments, a change in quantity, cooking time, adding a little extra here and there... and at this point, there is a tendency to under or over season the recipe, to cook it for too long or too little, to misunderstand a cooking method, and so on. It can be frustrating! We don’t always understand why it didn’t work as it should, or why it doesn’t look the photo in the recipe book!

At some point though, through practice and experience, we begin to understand the interaction and nuance of the ingredients and flavours, and the methods begin to make sense. The ingredients, the timing, the skills and the flavours all become integrated into your knowledge base. So we move on to the next recipe, and the process begins again! Although this time, you have transferred some of your skills and experience to the new dish, and it makes more sense… you have a greater understanding of how to handle the ingredients and balance the recipe, and the cooking methods are becoming more familiar... whilst at the same time learning a whole new set of skills and principles, all of which are equally transferable back to your original recipe!

As the chef’s palette improves through experience, so does their understanding of the interaction of different flavours. Eventually, through constant practice, the recipes change from a rigid set of instructions to a simple point of reference, the experienced chef will adapt the given recipe based on their own personal skill level and understanding of the methods contained within. It’s still the ‘original’ recipe, and it still produces the required ‘dish’, but its flavour and nuance is individual to the chef who created it… ask two different chefs to prepare a soup, and you can end up with two very different looking and tasting dishes, but they’re both still a soup!

And so it is with our Taiji… the many drills and methods we are given all teach us skills and fundamental principles which will eventually form the basis of our very own recipe book, entirely unique to us, which over the years we practice and refine to constantly improve. Although our recipe book is uniquely our own, the principles behind it are fundamentally sound, and could easily serve as a starting point for a beginner.

Were a beginner to read our recipe book, the process would begin again, from their own level of experience. They would follow the recipe, with little to no understanding of the subtleties and skills present within, or the painstaking work which was needed to learn those skills… but the recipe book itself is sound. With practice, they too begin to grasp the underlying skillset, and their own understanding will begin to blossom, until eventually the recipe becomes their own… both unique to them and yet still representative of the original dish.

In conclusion, It seems that any expression of art would follow this process… the beginning of learning any skill begins with mimicry, and many do not progress past this level. Anyone can follow a recipe, but if that’s all you do, then that does not make you a chef. Once you learn the underlying skills behind the recipe, and take the time to study them as a method within themselves, only then can you begin to create!

The accomplished chef can look at a dish and deconstruct it, appreciative of the methods and skills used in its creation – Likewise, the proficient martial artist can see a technique, and deconstruct it to its fundamental principles, appreciative of ‘how’ it works, rather than just being content that it ‘does’ work.