Good food? Great dish? What are they? Why do some restaurants and certain dishes inspire us to drive for miles and miles or stand in line for hours - just for a taste? Are the spicy ones the best or the ones that are the sour? Sweet or the salty? What makes a perfect dish? Oh! and while we are in the subject, can somebody please define "umami"?!!! So many questions have always crowded my mind.
Yes, I write about food - but it mostly comes from my gut reaction to a dish and how it tastes - to me. I have always wanted to further explore this complex and somewhat intangible subject of "balance if flavors". And of course, I wanted explore it with an expert ... a master.
To my delight, chef Matt Storch was scheduled to hold a class on taste and its five key elements: Sweet, Spicy, Salty, Sour (and bitter), and Umami. The class was to be held in my favorite classroom at Clarke Kitchens in Sono, and I am sure I was the first one to sign up.
It was an eye-opening, jaw-dropping evening. I learned the creative thought process that goes into developing the perfect dish. How the balance of four main flavor profiles are married with a dash of umami to create that heavenly bite.
We all know that sweet and sour flavors pair well. Asians have understood this union pretty well since generations. Take sweet and sour sauce in Asian restaurants for instance. It's addictive, isn't it? Just like a perfect glass of Margarita. :-) We also learned how salty and spicy get added to the mix as well as various textures - in order to create perfection on a plate.
Umami is that extra depth and dimension that takes a dish to a whole new level. Chefs and home cooks are on a constant quest to create or re-create it. Few succeed. Did you know that certain ingredients just naturally have that umami quality? That is the reason they feature in a lot of dishes we eat. Chef Matt explained that it is in ingredients like Parmesan cheese, mushrooms and fish sauce. Don't these ingredients tend to elevate the taste of any dish they are in?
Chef Matt talked about how flavors can be built to elevate an ingredient to its ultimate potential. He used a simple ingredient like potato to demonstrate. In four simple and incremental steps he cleverly proved how the ordinary starchy potato can be taken to divine heights.
Step one: we tasted an ordinary boiled potato. It tasted starchy and kind of blah!
Step two: Matt added a dash of olive oil and salt to it. It was remarkable how a little fat and salt can make that "starchy blah" to start tasting more like a potato.
Step three: Matt added some thyme and a dash of Greek yogurt along with the olive oil and salt. Now we were talking. This tasted like something one would love to have as the perfect side dish at a dinner table. At this point, as far as I was concerned, it was mission accomplished.
Step four: to my surprise, I witness an incredible transformation!!! This time, before adding all the above layers of flavors and ingredients, Matt deep fried the potato. OMG! How that extra crunch performs pure magic. Now we have a glorious appetizer, standing proudly on its own instead of settling for a supporting role at a dinner table.
In addition to this phenomenal potato experiment, chef Matt prepared a Caponata dish to illustrate how the sweet, salty, bitter, sour and spicy flavor profiles marry to create a heavenly bite. He also made a delicious Parmesan broth for tortellini. This broth was made with chicken and veal broth boiled together with Parmesan rinds. Amazing how that Parmesan flavor made this so hard to resist.
Perhaps the most astounding and exciting transformation that happened in front our eyes was that of kelp water ( boiling dried kelp and water) turning into a phenomenal broth for any Noodle Bowl or even Pho. I could not believe how many ingredients went into this transformation and how each played a key role in creating that addictive yet perfect balance of flavors...that taste of Umami.
We tasted many other dishes that night. Chef Matt's focus was on the process and the technique of building flavors rather than actual recipes. I left there feeling excited, encouraged, enamored and enthused.
Chef Matt Storch is the genius behind Match in Sono and Chelsea in Fairfieldwww.matchsono.com | http://www.chelseaff.com/
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