Back it at again... Consider this a primer on how our kitchen thinking habits evolved over the last decade+
So, it has been over 11 years since we updated this blog. Life happened, we got busy. It was what it was, and is what it is.
In that time, we learned many things about cooking as well as some new thinking frameworks we began applying to cooking.
A quick review:
The Quality vs Quantity Dichotomy:
We have noticed that cooking for quality leads to less need for quantity to feel sated. As a result, we lose weight and need smaller clothes. It started with minimizing how often we eat at restaurants, then we began avoiding the major corporate chains and preferring places small enough that you can smell the food cooking in the client seating area, as it subtly adds to the experience. As we started swinging for the fences at our home cooking game, increasing the quality of our ingredients as well as chasing more interesting tastes and textures, we began going to restaurants mostly just to get ideas to try and modify at home. This is where the other thinking frameworks come in.
The Process-Content Framework:
We picked this one up learning about teaching. Process is the "how" while content is the "what". Sounds simple, right? It gets interesting when applied to cooking and taken meta (not the buzzword for the new consumer internet, but the Greek word meaning comprehensive or transcending). I'll feed you baby birds, but first we need to talk about the dialectical process of innovative thinking and the "Yes, and..." Principle.
The Dialectical Process and "Yes, and..." Principle of Innovative Thinking:
Understanding this came from reflecting on teaching while attending a college class on Organizational Psychology and connecting it to what our youngest learned as a paid improv actor at a very large Renaissance Festival. The dialectical process combined with the "Yes, and..." principle is our mechanism for generating more interesting culinary fare at home. It works by entering an informal brainstorming phase as a recipe genesis to flesh out a direction to take the ingredients on hand, while balancing the taste preferences of the people that will be eating it: a pragmatic and escalating game of catch with an idea, where the only rule is to build on what the last person said until a consensus is met. These discussions can be process-focused, content-focused, or both. Sometimes it fizzles because we cannot come to a consensus as our ideas are too different to reconcile. Other times the limiting factor is our threshold for effort: if it has been a busy or difficult day, we may do something very simple or "quest for fire" (find your own food).
Let's walk the dog on a simple recipe:
Take a typical recipe for Hollandaise Sauce, for example. Here are a couple of snips from one on allrecipes.com:
Content:
Process:
If you are a traditionalist, and against the blender as a result, we don't care: it isn't relevant to the direction this is going. What is happening in this recipe? We are emulsifying butter, eggs, water, lemon juice, salt, and a little spice. Yes, Hollandaise is an egg + oil emulsion just like Mayonnaise (the two are more similar than you might think).
Let's break this down a little, and play with the ingredients conceptually.
What is butter? It's a heavy, animal-based fat. 'Kay. I know of another heavy, animal-based fat: I wonder what would happen if we used bacon fat instead... Everything is better with bacon, right? We tried it. Interesting texture and flavor, but likely horrible for cardiovascular health. We did it with duck fat, once. It was like this ridiculous, decadent gravy over top of our eggs and ham. Amazing, really. We have also tried it with clarified butter, coconut oil, and avocado oil. Subbing the fat/oil for heavier and lighter oils has been an interesting experiment that taught us about flavor and texture in emulsions.
Egg? Well, I know it is often used as a binding agent in baking chemistry, and people put it in homemade burger patties for the same reason. According to this page on thoughtco.com, egg yolk is used in emulsions because it has a mixture of fats (phospholipids) known as lecithin that collectively act as an emulsifying agent by being both hydrophilic and lipophilic, meaning they readily bind with both water and fat. So, the properties of eggs, lecithin in particular, are the linchpin to this recipe as well as providing their own texture and flavor. Hey, guess what else has lecithin... soy. That means "Vollandaise" Sauce could be a possibility with some liquid soy lecithin as the emulsifying agent. Imagine that instead of egg yolk in this recipe, with toasted sesame oil in place of the butter (serve it on an open-faced jack fruit sandwich or something, IDK).
Water? Water, I think, helps keep the emulsion from getting too thick. At the end of the day, it's boring. There are far more interesting things to put in that role than dihydrogen monoxide with trace minerals. We have tried a couple of different things in place of water. White wine was interesting. I imagine red wine would give it a brutal looking color if you manage to play with the consistency a bit. Our favorite has been liquid smoke: it gives the entire dish a whole new dimension and slightly tweaks the color to a darker shade, adding to the experience of it.
Lemon juice is an acid. You could play with this ingredient's role by subbing in all kinds of things if you get granular with tying the ph of what you are adding to the outcome (you know, using the scientific method and all). We have used fresh Myer lemons as well as orange juice before. Thinking back to using wine in place of water as mentioned above, it wouldn't be inconceivable to make Mimosa Hollandaise: clarified butter, (duck?) egg yolks, sparkling white wine, and orange juice (spice as you see fit). I think the bubbly wine could give it a little fluffier texture, and possibly create an interesting experience for the person eating it if it is served immediately. Absolutely POSH. We might have to try that sometime.
A recent little example project:
This morning, for first-meal, we did a twist on an old classic: hash.
The basics of a hash, in our minds anyway, are some kind of meat (usually corned beef) mixed with small chunks of potatoes in a skillet to cook together (plus whatever kind of veggies and spices you prefer, obvi). We had some leftover lamb from a small, bone-in leg of lamb we originally braised in beer (Old Rasputin) for Indian Taco / Greek Gyro Fusion night (IKR, it was on fry bread and the tzatziki sauce was curried with coriander too), so we threw that in with some chunked up russet potatoes until it was cooked a little crispy as we like. When we served it up, we topped it with a fried egg, some black garlic sprinkles for aesthetics and flavor, as well as a small daub of gochujang for a little Korean twist. Amazing really.
Tonight, we are planning on doing seared Ahi with Ponzu over a bed of rice and greens. Until then. (I promise future posts on this blog will be shorter.)