Asian cuisine

Asian cuisine refers to any of several major regional cuisines, including East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern. A cuisine is a characteristic style of cooking practices and traditions, usually associated with a specific culture. Asia, being the largest and most populous continent, is home to many cultures, many of which have their own characteristic cuisine.

Ingredients common to many cultures in the East and Southeast regions of the continent include rice, ginger, garlic, sesame seeds, chilies, dried onions, soy, and tofu. Stir frying, steaming, and deep frying are common cooking methods.

While rice is common to most Asian cuisines, different varieties are popular in the various regions. Basmati rice is popular in the subcontinent, Jasmine rice is often found across the southeast, while long-grain rice is popular in China and short-grain in Japan and Korea.

Curry is a common dish in southern ,western and southeastern Asia, however it is not as common in East Asian cuisines. Curry dishes with origins in India and other South Asian countries usually have a yogurt base while Southeastern and Eastern curries generally use coconut milk as their foundation.

Street food

Street food is ready-to-eat food or drink sold by a hawker, or vendor, in a street or other public place, such as at a market or fair. It is often sold from a portable food booth,food cart, or food truck and meant for immediate consumption. Some street foods are regional, but many have spread beyond their region of origin. Most street foods are classed as both finger food and fast food, and are cheaper on average than restaurant meals. According to a 2007 study from the Food and Agriculture Organization, 2.5 billion people eat street food every day.

Today, people may purchase street food for a number of reasons, such as to get flavorful food for a reasonable price in a sociable setting, to experience ethnic cuisines, or for nostalgia.

History

Small fried fish were a street food in ancient Greece, however, Theophrastus held the custom of street food in low regard. Evidence of a large number of street food vendors were discovered during the excavation of Pompeii. Street food was widely consumed by poor urban residents of ancient Rome whose tenement homes did not have ovens or hearths. Here, chickpea soup with bread and grain paste were common meals. In ancient China, street food generally catered to the poor, however, wealthy residents would send servants to buy street food and bring it back for them to eat in their homes.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is an online repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all Wikimedia projects in all languages, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use. The repository contains over 30 million media files. In July 2013, the number of edits on Commons reached 100,000,000.

History

The project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7, 2004. A key motivation behind the setup of a central repository was the desire to reduce duplication of effort across the Wikimedia projects and languages, as the same file had to be uploaded to many different wikis separately before Commons was created.

Several sister projects (e.g. Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Spanish, Basque, Polish, Czech and Slovak Wikipedias) moved all their media content to Commons and stopped allowing local uploading. Some projects, such as the English Wikipedia, have more compliant copyright policy and allow to upload and keep files which are not acceptable at Commons, e.g. fair use images.

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth.

Historically, people secured food through two methods: hunting and gathering and agriculture. Today, the majority of the food energy required by the ever increasing population of the world is supplied by the food industry.

Food safety and food security are monitored by agencies like the International Association for Food Protection, World Resources Institute, World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Food Information Council. They address issues such as sustainability, biological diversity, climate change, nutritional economics, population growth, water supply, and access to food.

The right to food is a human right derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), recognizing the "right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food," as well as the "fundamental right to be free from hunger."

Asian

Asian refers to anything related to the continent of Asia, especially Asian people.

Asian may also refer to: