For this month's Stella Culinary Cooking Challenge, I wanted to get back to basics, focusing on a couple simple techniques, and reinforcing the skill set of separating flavor structure from technique.
A common limiting factor in a cooks growth is their view of recipes being magic spells; they don't know exactly how recipes work, are superstitious as to changing anything up, and will go into full panic mode if they're missing a single ingredient out of 20, convinced the recipe is impossible without it. As a cook's knowledge progresses, they intuitively begin to separate technique from flavor structure, and start dabbling with their own riffs on dishes they already know.
In celebration of the fact that I will be releasing the remaining videos from my Culinary Boot Camp FOR FREE to all in the coming weeks, I wanted to revisit this concept of Flavor Structure + Technique, starting with flavor first. This is why, this month's cooking challenge will be centered around ...
... Potatoes a la Burton!
If you haven't seen the video yet, it's under five minutes long, and you can watch it here: https://stellaculinary.com/cooking-videos/cooking-techniques/how-to-cook...
What I love about this approach to cooking potatoes is, it's not only delicious and streamlined, but it's also highly customizable. This is why the debut video of this technique was purposefully straight forward and simple. I didn't want you to get side tracked by a long, complex ingredient list. I wanted you to see the technique for what it was, something I started to call "glaze roasting." Just remember... you heard it here first! ;-)
There are lots of different ways to form a glaze, which when broken down to basics, falls under the "Reduction" category of The Three Modern Mother Sauces. The glaze is thickened by the concentration of sugars and starches pulled from either the root vegetable, or added during the cooking process.
Now let your mind wonder for a little bit and imagine all the different ways you can build and flavor a glaze, before reducing your potatoes in that glaze and roasting. This is what I want you to focus on for this month's SC Community Cooking Challenge.
One more concept I want to introduce before we get into the actual requirements of the challenge is ...
... The Flavor Spectrum
To understand flavor spectrum, first, think of the color blue. What are you visualizing?
Is it teal, navy, yale, sapphire? Or maybe sky, royal, baby ... or any other number of shades in existence.
Now imagine you're designing a room for someone who loves the color blue. If you used the same exact shade of blue for the chair, walls, carpet, and ceiling, it would be completely boring. The color palette of the room would be one dimensional.
To be successful, you would need various different shades of blue accenting each other, as well as a pop of non-blue here and there to offer some contrast.
The same thing is true when creating complex and interesting flavor structures in a dish. If you were to make a roasted beet and put it on a plate as is, it would be pretty boring right?
So you intuitively add accompanying ingredients to enhance the beet's flavor such as honey, goat cheese, candied walnuts, arugula, and boom, you have a beet salad that's vastly more interesting than just a plain beet, even though the beet still remains the focal point of the dish.
Now we take it a bit further with applying a "flavor spectrum" to at least one of the ingredients in this dish, whether it be your primary ingredient (beet), or one of your secondary ingredients (honey, goat cheese, etc.). Maybe our humble red beet is roasted, and a separate golden beet is poached in apple cider. The beet tops are blended into a pesto; chunks of beets are charred on a grill for a smoky, earthy flavor ... maybe some of the cooked gold beets are blended into an emulsified sauce.
Your end result is various expressions, or 'shades,' of the same ingredient.
A spectrum of flavor if you will.
When various preparations of a single ingredient are incorporated in a single dish, you get a broad sense of that ingredient; it's almost as if your seasoning an ingredient with itself, to make it taste more like itself.
This is why your will often see chefs do dishes incorporating a "trio of this" or a "duo of that." By applying different preparations to the same ingredient, and then artfully combining them on the same plate, you create a spectrum of flavor, adding a new dimension to a common ingredient, and ultimately, wowing the people you're cooking for.
Keep in mind that while a room tastefully designed with multiple shades of blue can be fascinating and unique, if it's not well executed, it can look disastrous. What's more, if every single room in your house is blue, then your well executed blue room is no longer special.
The same is true when applying the "Flavor Spectrum" concept to the dishes you're cooking or the menus you're creating. Pops of flavor spectrum here and there can make for a memorable dish, but when over done, will result in a muddy taste experience.
The Challenge, If You Wish To Accept It
Create a dish around your play on "Potatoes a la Burton." The dish can be a stand alone side, an appetizer, or an accompaniment to a primary ingredient, such as a pan roasted or braised protein.
Create a flavor spectrum using one of the ingredients in your dish. This can be something like a trio of garlic added to the potatoes (roasted, blanched, minced), or to a primary ingredient, such as a duo of duck or a trio of beef.
Take a photo of your creation and post it in the comment section below. When submitting your entry, please distinguish yourself as either a pro (you cook for a living) or an amateur. Top submissions in each category will be voted on, and winners will receive community bragging rights.
Remember, the purpose of this cooking challenge is to actually challenge yourself, not to play it safe! You will always learn more by failing in the kitchen, then repeating the same thing that works over and over. Please post your failures as well as your success so we can learn and grow together as a community.
Happy Cooking!