Not too sure what to write, so I thought I’d write about one of the meals I cooked a while ago. It showed a few things which I think are important to making a dish: how to think up a dish that fits the event; how a chefy trick can save a recipe; and give you an idea about how one can go about making a simple change to a dish.
All of this began months ago when I got invited to a birthday party a couple days before the event. I wasn’t able to find out much about the likes and dislikes of the birthday girl except that she enjoys drinking shots and eating sweets. So in thinking up which dish I should pick, I focused on the three things I knew: it’s a party, she likes drinks, and she likes sweet things. One dish I thought might work was this avocado and mango salad with a roasted garlic & jalapeno dressing. It worked somewhat with the party and sweet themes, and I thought I could add some tequila as well to get the third.
When I went to the market, I ran into a couple common problems. I checked the avocados and they were hard as rocks. I looked at the mangos, none of them looked good. Unperturbed, I knew I could quickly ripen the main component of the dish, the avocados, by placing them in a brown paper bag with a couple bananas the couple days before the party (sometimes a little chefy knowledge can come in handy). I was fine there, but I needed a replacement for the mangos because I knew nothing I could do would get them to ripen in time.
Many of you have probably run into a similar problem at one point or another and during these situations it’s best to think about what an ingredient brings to a dish. For instance, say you’re missing a lemon to a braised chicken thigh dish. Well, what’s the lemon there for? It’s probably to cut the fattiness of the chicken thigh to lighten the dish by bringing in an acidic, high note. So why not try another acidic fruit such as an orange or a lime? Or you could go a little out and try making citrus marinated red onions to add that high note with Mexican flare. What about fennel? There are lots of ways to bring a high note to a dish.
Heck, you could swing the other way entirely and try to bring out the savory aspects of the chicken dish with cinnamon or tomatoes. There are lots of ways to save or change a dish when you know a little bit about different ingredients. Yes, you will make some horrible dishes at times, but that’s part of the learning process. In my case, I chose to heighten the sweetness of the dish and added peaches. With my avocados, peaches, tequila, and a few other ingredients in hand, I went home.
Jump forward a couple days, my avocados are ripe and it’s time to cook. However, while preparing my ingredients, I thought, let’s make this fit the party atmosphere more and change this from a salad to a guacamole dip. Well, how do I do that? Simple. Cut up the ingredients into small chunks instead of wedges and make more dressing to give the dish a creamier texture. These quick and easy changes can completely change a dish.
On the other hand, sometimes what seems like a good idea ends up pretty bad. Before putting the tequila into the dish, I taste tested a small bit with tequila. Yeah, didn’t taste good at all. I really wanted to use it, but not at the cost of the dish. This is an important lesion. Make sure you taste test when you’re cooking. You can’t always do this, but when you can, give it a taste. You can easily avoid some awful combinations that way.
In the end the dish came out alright. I can still see some room for improvements, but people enjoyed it.
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