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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
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Why cook? Isn't it easier to eat out?
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Rotten strawberries, sour milk and a DVD player
Sell the sizzle *and* the steak
How to add flavor to a dish
5 S's of wine tasting
Wine basics: Can't tell Cabernet from Cranberry?
Recipes are like contemporary furniture
Quick n' easy Shrimp appetizer for any party
How to kill monotony in the kitchen
Summer relief: Mango lassi & Mango milk shake
What is comfort food?
Secret to a really flavorful dish: Mop it up!
Crepes: versatile, yummy, impressive and painfully easy
Simple dessert with 3 ingredients
Low-fat option for your Super Bowl party
Fresh fruit salad - sweet, crunchy, creamy and delicious
Breakfast is served!
A mop is probably the last image you want to think about when you're cooking, but it works as an effective simile to consider for making a dish flavorful. In my book, I talk about a modular method of cooking (in layers) which is an effective way to switch between cuisines or styles of cooking with the same main ingredients. This method of cooking works well in deciding how to flavor a dish, but it pays to keep an additional technique in mind for making a dish really flavorful. The 'mop' idea is to use a background ingredient with the sole purpose of soaking up all the peripheral flavors in the dish. Examples of such 'mops' are spinach with a chicken curry, mushrooms in most sauces, cabbage with ground beef, eggplant with lamb, and on and on. In each case, the background ingredient (e.g., the spinach in the chicken curry) acts as an excellent tool for mopping up all the flavors in the dish and encases the main ingredient (chicken in this case) in every single bite. The examples mentioned above are all excellent 'mops' because they scoop up the flavors of the dish, become an important component of the dish, but never overpower the main ingredient. Other examples are adding day-old cooked rice to a sauce to make fried rice, adding pasta and grated cheese to a sauce, toasted buns that encase burgers, etc. So if you find yourself wondering why some dishes lack flavor in spite of the plethora of spices and herbs used - you might just need to mop 'em all up. Try it!