Refusing the “Stir-fry”, Rejecting Chemical Household Products | Kouzi’s Foodie Observations No. 4
Readers who know me well may have noticed by now: I don’t stir-fry.
Indeed, Villains’ Valley doesn’t even have a wok. Of course my one-square-metre kitchen is stocked with a full suite of electrical appliances — a saucepan, a steamer, a food processor, an air fryer, an electric griddle — just no electric stir-fry pan. And when it comes to cooking, my principle is low oil, low salt, minimal seasonings, and I refuse the “stir-fry” — the foodie in me simply will not cook by “stir-frying”.
I feel more and more that refusing the “stir-fry” suits me. These natural ingredients, zero miles from soil to table, need only the simplest preparation to reveal the true flavour of the food, and my palate and sense of texture grow ever more attuned and discerning. A simple pot of soup — one mouthful and I can clearly distinguish each ingredient and its texture. The subtle differences in flavour and feel between pumpkin and taro, the interplay when they are paired together, and though all are soft, starchy and silky, hibiscus flower, roselle and okra flower each shine in their own way… Eating like this is already the pinnacle of gustatory pleasure — no stir-frying needed.
I. A Naturally Occurring Living System
Here, I place complete trust in my surroundings. Every ingredient is absolutely safe — I often pick and eat straight into my mouth, give things a quick, cursory rinse under the tap and toss them into the pot. No worrying about harm, residues or any such concerns.
No guilt either, about polluting the environment. I discharge no wastewater externally. The banana circles right beside the kitchen collect and purify our kitchen greywater — a greywater purification system consisting of three ponds. Water first flows into the first banana circle; when it fills, it spills into the second; when that fills too, it passes into the larger half-moon pond, and finally into the kitchen garden.
The first banana circle is planted with water hyacinth, an invasive plant reputed to spread with alarming speed, yet confined within its small enclosure, it has become a formidable ally in purifying the water. The hornwort in the second banana circle plays the same role. The third — the half-moon pond, fringed with water lilies — is home to fish: red koi. All my household water passes through layer upon layer of purification, fully absorbed on-site, turning to fertiliser — none of that enriched water ever flows to anyone else’s field.
The banana plants’ powerful root systems, together with the water hyacinth and hornwort, give the purification capacity extraordinary strength. Not only are the koi in the water-lily pond thriving — they even swim upstream along the current to pitch camp in the second circle, utterly content. The foodie’s palate, the soil at hand, and the creatures that inhabit it — each finds what it needs, all living well.
And yet this seemingly perfect system is also fragile, all too prone to sudden failure.
II. A Pool of Spring Water, Pitch Black
I traced it to two causes. The first was oil. I don’t stir-fry, so there is no grease in my washing-up water and naturally no need for washing-up liquid. And the washing-up liquid leads on to the second cause: phosphorus-containing detergents. I haven’t used shampoo, shower gel or hand wash in more than a decade. I have always substituted natural soap powder or liquid soap for laundry detergent, and even those are used sparingly, because working in the fields leaves nothing worse than a smudge of mud on my clothes — a quick spin in the washing machine with plain water and they’re clean. So my everyday greywater is entirely phosphorus-free. The environmental impact of phosphorus-containing domestic wastewater is widely documented online; I won’t rehash it here.
My friend, who had come for a short stay, was an environmentally conscious vegetarian, yet she stir-fried her food. That brought in not only grease but also washing-up liquid, not to mention other phosphorus-containing chemicals in everyday use — and so the banana circles turned into a pool of thick, dark ink…
I hesitated over mentioning all of this in a piece meant for publication. But I simply cannot lay out the problem without the concrete example, and after a great deal of agonising, I still feel I must begin here. This is not aimed at my friend personally, nor is it an entry into the environmental debate around phosphorus-containing chemicals. Rather, after two years of living in Villains’ Valley, I want to look back and reflect on the question of “modern lifestyle.”
III. The Paradox of Modern Life
But in Villains’ Valley it is different. Here there is no vast, distant system behind which one can play “out of sight, out of mind.” These oils and chemical household products, right under one’s eyes, turn into a pool so black and thick. The polluted water pollutes the soil, the polluted soil grows polluted plants, which are then picked to become ingredients, stir-fried in heavy oil and rich sauces, entering yet another cycle of mutual harm between people and the natural world… This is no scaremongering; it is a plain, visible fact.
What I practise at Villains’ Valley is a relationship of mutual nourishment between people and the natural world — within a limited space, and within the scope of my own labour.
My efforts seem to have succeeded, or at least been effective. This lifestyle has also won praise of the Lord Ye variety — friends arrive brimming with beautiful expectations to experience it in person. And then — the result is as described above.
IV. What Kind of Life Do We Need?
I adore the emptiness of all six sides here, and love most of all sitting in stillness after dark with the lights off, sharing solitude with nothing but starlight and the murmur of the stream — the self dissolving into oneness with the world. Yet since coming back last year, something has felt off. I am here, the moon, the stars and the stream are here too, but something seems to stand between us — something strange.
For two years I have been trying to dissolve the boundary between people and nature, and yet during the two months my friend stayed here, she was working just as hard to make the place look like a “normal room”. I have already taken down the bamboo screens she put up, and pulled up the assorted synthetic-fibre floor tiles she laid over the pig-net grating. And still — why isn’t it working? It was not until I found a fragrance product tucked beneath the shelf of my tea table.
All around us, ginger lilies, roses and tulips are fragrant and lovely; beneath the pig-net floor is my herb patch — masses of mint, Korean mint, Thai basil, fragrant marigolds, four fragrant-leaved pistacia trees, and two star jasmine plants. Surely that is enough fragrance? A synthetically manufactured chemical fragrance in this place is a pollutant.
Much of the way modern people take for granted is toxic, harmful and unnecessary — it damages not only the environment but in fact harms us in return (Foodthink touched on this in an earlier piece, “Is Toilet Paper Really Hygienic?”). Whether it is ever-expanding cities belching more and more pollution, or countryside ravaged by chemical fertilisers and pesticides where everyone lives in fear, or agritourism venues bursting with modern demands yet leaving their scars on nature — all of it is a harmful interaction between people and the natural world, a self-consuming cycle of mutual harm between modern life and the environment.
Those chemically synthesised fragrances were designed for enclosed, cramped urban life choked with smog and exhaust fumes. The tragedy is that even in an open countryside planted with fragrant herbs, people still feel the need to enclose themselves first and then reach for these products — modern people have forgotten how to simply be at peace with nature.
V. Learning to Refuse, and Learning to Compromise
A few friends who follow food and farming issues have visited; they have toured plenty of eco-farms, yet rarely encountered anything as “unfriendly-to-visitors” as Villains’ Valley. It was not just the warning notice, or the “No Visitors” sign by the gate. After experiencing this tiny ecosystem for themselves, they marvelled that I had indeed built a closed system between myself and this patch of soil at my doorstep.
They are right — a system that closes its door and answers only to the sky, that is the life I want. This life was not designed for visitors; it offers no openness for sharing. It is a personal life, tailor-made for myself alone.
Villains’ Valley was hard-won, and so is my life here, and this way of living in harmless dialogue with the natural world. I cannot simply be the builder; I must learn to be the guardian as well.
That said — and this is my last word — as a foodie, I understand the human need for a good stir-fry. The Maillard reaction truly delivers flavours nothing else can match. The compromise is this: if you absolutely must have a stir-fry, then build your own fire over a wood-fired stove.
I have a rocket stove, fitted with cast-iron pans of various sizes, capable of fierce, high-heat stir-frying. I have tried it myself twice. Each time I raise the fire, I stir-fry an enormous batch of sauces of every kind, freeze them in the freezer, and they last half a year. These are the stuff of my next entry: The Sauce Craftsman.
All illustrations in this article are courtesy of the author
Editor: Tianle