Do you remember hearing this Chinese proverb…
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Well, this sums up my philosophy when it comes to cooking. I have never published my recipes because I believe it is better to teach a person how to develop his own recipes than simply give him something that I enjoy (which he may not). When you get a recipe from someone do you know the why behind the ingredients used?
This belief within has brought me to the point of writing “From Giving to Feeding” an eBook on how to truly be an outstanding grill master in your own right. Unlike most other books I will have pictures showing and explaining techniques so you to will have the knowledge of the “WHY”. And sharing the many tools that are available to you, the why and when, you would use them.
My goal is to pick a new topic whenever I can and write about it here. And at some point I will have written enough to produce the book. Your comments and feedback will be very much appreciated.
Here’s your first installment
PALATE
pal·ate/ˈpalət/noun
1.
the roof of the mouth, separating the cavities of the nose and the mouth in vertebrates.
synonyms: roof of the mouth, hard/soft palate. “the tea burned her palate”
2.
a person’s appreciation of taste and flavor, especially when sophisticated and discriminating.
“a fine range of drink for sophisticated palates”
synonyms: (sense of) taste, appetite, stomach. “menus to suit the tourist palate”
Today we’re going to talk about why it is important to develop your own palate, especially if you want to develop your own recipes. What is a palate? Well first of all I’m not talking about those little wooden things that are in warehouses that you store heavy objects on. Also, I want to really emphasize that the palate we are talking about is a person’s deep appreciation of taste and flavor and you need to have that if you’re going to want to develop your own great recipes.
So how do you do it?
You slow down. What I mean by that is don’t just pick up food and eat it. You want to observe it, you want to smell it, you want to taste it, then you want to listen to it. You want to visualize and isolate those sensations and envelop them, bring them into your being. Identify the tastes and sounds as much as you can and then move on. Most of that will come from just the smelling, tasting and the looking. Pay attention to the texture and body, of the food. You don’t want to develop a recipe that creates a texture that is not pleasing to the mouth.
Build a library, this is one of the most important things. In your mind build your own flavor encyclopedia by seeing, smelling and by tasting…even listening to the sound that the food makes as you chew What will happen if you do that every single time you eat something, over a period of time you will train yourself to know what those flavors, sounds and smells are from. Then you’ll be able to smell two different items whether it be herbs, seasonings, the product itself, and know if this herb goes with that flavor.
I really like walnuts and I thought, you know what, I’m going to grill some salmon and also some halibut and I thought, you know what I want to see what that would taste like and if that would work. So what I did is I actually looked at the halibut, recalled that flavor and then I took a small bite of walnuts and realized right away that’s neither a good flavor or sound combination for me. So you want to be able to do that so you can develop your own recipes.
Please, start developing your palate which will lead to you to be able to develop recipes that not only you like but also then developing something that your friends like or if you’re in a restaurant that your customers like. But start developing that
palate. It’s the most important thing you can do. Instead of going out and buying some off-the-shelf sugar-sweetened like barbecue sauce and then say oh I’m going to put in a little bit of extra steak seasoning and then say that’s my recipe. No,
because anything that has that much sugar in it, you can you can put it with anything. You can smear it and lather it on a piece of leather and it’d taste good. So develop your own and don’t rely on the addictions of the American people, i.e., sugars, to make something taste good because you can do a lot better than that.
In a future Article I’ll get into Umami, which is the fifth taste.
Once you get the palate down, you will start to understand umami. You’ll start developing recipes and products that your friends and family will just go heads over tails. Their tongue will slap the inside of their mouth with happiness and want to know your secrets. So if you like this, go ahead and visit TurboGrill.us.
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Thank you for your time and enjoy your food adventures.
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