[P]erhaps the two best examples of how [religion-based food] bans have resulted in delicious and fascinating food are Jain cooking, with its ban on anything that remotely involves taking life, like root vegetables (little critters might get killed while you dig them up) or yoghurt left overnight (too alive), and Jewish cooking, with its complex set of Torah derived rules including bans on pork, on fish without scales (shark, shellfish) and on cooking milk and meat together. I’m not concerned at the moment with the logic of these bans, just their results.

That’s from a fascinating article in India’s Economic Times. As much reverence as there is in American culture for “thinking outside the box”, I’m always fascinated by the things people cook up by rooting around inside the box.