on taste and texture
Last October I did one of my “eating the town” missions in NYC with Chef Annette Tomei. (You can read about our adventures in my blog, The Aphrodisiac Queen.)
I was inspired from this trip by the forward thinking of one particular chef, Brad Farmerie. No, his cuisine wasn’t “molecular” in its modern interpretation but it was equally detailed and sensory invigorating as the latest craze of chemistry in the kitchen. Every dish, be it a plate of food or morsel-sized amuse, offered a variety of textures and temperatures. There were things like a fresh out of the fryer croquette topped with a cool, slippery anchovy fillet all topped by crunchy, cold pickled onions.
Eating Brad’s food was an experience, not an act. His cuisine forced you to be present in the moment with new sensations constantly dancing across your tongue. THIS is an aphrodisiac, (even without oysters or chocolate or any other innuendo.)
That food and the experience stuck with me long after I returned home from the city that never sleeps. And when JC and I started working on The Love Diet, I realized that this was the key. Our book of romance-related recipes were not only going to offer the health benefits of libido-boosting foods. We needed to make a book of recipes that wake up the senses and afford home cooks the fun of food that speaks in more than flavor.
As we develop our recipes, we’ve made our goal to try to incorporate at least two textures and two temperatures into every recipe. Sometimes we succeed in blending four or more, (like the highly experimental sous vide salmon with cold fennel and dried apricot slaw topped with salmon roe – 4 textures, 2 temperatures.)
I believe that varied sensory pleasure is a part of the future of home cooking. As our senses become more and more bombarded by variety of experience – ipod in one ear, phone in the other as we surf the web, drink vitamin-enhanced water and work our abs sitting on a stability ball all at the same time, I believe that home cooking will have to evolve to serve our sensation-craving society. But, unlike the overload we experience the second we leave the house, I believe that sensory-focused cooking will help to bring us into the moment, forcing us to pay attention to what is on the plate and enjoy the rainbow of sensations we can experience by just tasting. This is really what the haute cuisine craze of molecular cooking is all about. I just think we can do it at home in a much simpler but equally delicious guise. And I hope that our book will be on the forefront of a delicious, dine-at-home trend.