The difference between good food and great food is in the details. We hear chefs say it time and time again that the key to cooking great dishes is using the freshest ingredients. This could not be truer. But that, as they say, is the cost of doing business. There are a few other things in addition to using fresh ingredients that will help take our recipes to the next level and create some big wow moments in the kitchen.
1. Find Out Your Recipes Past. Finding out about the recipe’s past could lead to information worth considering for new iterations. Looking back at early versions of recipes can help bring a totally new perspective to your dish. Sometimes a wow moment lies in where the dish has been – what has been added or removed over time – instead of where it is going. Find old cookbooks with similar recipes or check out web sites with old-fashioned recipes to see how the recipe has changed.
2. Transform the Norm. Ask yourself a silly question – would my dish be better in a different form? Maybe to perfect the dish it needs to be made into a different kind of dish. Should that stew be transformed into a sandwich or vice versa? Should those spicy chicken wings be transformed into a potpie? Could that chicken teriyaki be transformed into a type of lasagna? Should that guacamole be turned into a chowder? The best form for a recipe may not be its original.
3. Build Flavors. Don’t think of your recipe as just a list of ingredients with instructions. Think about it as a pathway to building flavors with every ingredient representing a vehicle to bring something new to the dish. If a recipe calls for garlic, use a mix of fresh, roasted and powdered. Tomatoes? Fresh, canned, paste and sundried, etc. Each ingredient variation can brings a new dimension that can help bring your recipes to the next level. Get a flavor pairing list to help with this.
4. Rethink Herbs and Spices. Herbs and spices are a great way to build flavors and bring zing to your dish. Be open to using what me might think of as sweet flavors (vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom or clove) in savory dishes and vice versa – that is flavors like basil, fennel, Chinese 5 spice, chili pepper, saffron – in sweeter dishes.
5. Sauce, Sauce, Sauce. Don’t forget the sauce. Sauces build and complement flavors, but they also do much more – they can moisten, enrich and bring smoothness to a dish. Traditional sauces are great, but thinking broadly and liberally about what a sauce is can be helpful. A sauce could be sour cream, Greek yogurt, thinned preserves, thinned mustard – you get the idea. Keep it simple – a piece of fish with unsweetened lime whipped cream (cucumbers would work , too!) or spicy pork with Greek yogurt and peach preserve or green peppercorn!
6. The power of Umami! Umami is all the rage -that taste bud tingler that enhances flavors and brings out the best in foods. Great sources of Umami include bouillon, green tea, parmesan cheese, shitake mushrooms, tomato paste and cured meats. To enhance the flavors of your dish, strategically add one of the above ingredients to the mix so other flavors are emboldened without the enhancer ingredients becoming overpowering or recognizable. You may need to use more than one, creating a secret Umami cocktail of sorts.
7. Food + Experience = WOW moment. Food can shape an experience but even more so, the experience shapes the enjoyment of the food. Food and experience are attached at the culinary hip. To bring perfection to your recipe you must look beyond the food and plan the experience that will go with it. It does not have to be fancy. Serving an Italian feast? Don’t forget the sombreros and red, white and green table setting plus the English to Italian Dictionaries just for fun. Seafood Night? Break out the mix tape of boardwalk songs and ocean sounds.
8. Choose the accompanying drink wisely! Beverages enhance the foods with which they are served. Sure, wine and beer pairing is the first thing that comes to mind. But also consider artisanal or homemade soft drinks. Use the same thinking as you would with wine. Is the dish enhanced by something acidic, dry, fruity or sweet then consider the beverage choice. A tart and fruity cherry lemonade? A ginger beer? Iced (or even hot) black coffee? A tart yogurt drink?
9. The Utensils? New research shows that the utensils have a large affect on how the food is perceived. Mix it up if you can. Serve your dish with utensils that vary in shape, size and weight. How might that soup be perceived if eaten with a spoon that is slightly too large? Or the salad with a fork that is very long?
10. Tweak, re-do, cook it again, get feedback. Truth be told, perfection is in the eye of those to whom the dish is served. The most important thing to remember is to cook that recipe often, serve the recipe often, eat the dish often and get lots of feedback from those to whom you serve it. Feedback will get you on the track to creating the best dish possible.
These are just a few of the ways to bring something extra to your dishes. Check the past, think about new forms, build and enhance flavors, make the dish an experience and cook, eat, tweak, repeat! Don’t forget – have fun!
Keep Eating! Keep Innovating!
What is your favorite way to create wow moments in the kitchen? Let us know in the comments! Let us know all about it in the comments or on Facebook.
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