Foodin' With Lawblog: Flavor!: Addendum

So, after I wrote all that shit last night I got inspired. #humblebrag. I put together this really awesome salad by using the rules of flavor balancing. This is the base:

2 cups pineapple, diced (approx. 1 small)
1 cup mango, diced (approx. 1 medium)
1 medium avocado, diced
1/3 lb. grape tomatoes, cut in half
2 Tbl lime juice
2 Tbl. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)

The neat thing is that it is technically a fruit salad, but is eaten as a savory component. So you can totally be that douchebag who's all, "Here's my play on fruit salad." and your guests/significant others go "Oh. Because tomatoes and avocados are technically fruits. Total lol, I'm sure."

You generally think of fruit salads as sweet, since they contain fruit, which is generally sweet (duh). By adding the lime juice and tomato an additional acidic component is introduced that cuts some of the sweetness. The addition of the salt also further cuts the sweetness and brings out the other flavors inherent in the fruits. Likewise the avocado adds a very slight sourness and, of course, the delicious unctuousness that avocado brings to everything.

I was having tacos last night, so to go with more of a mexican flavor profile I added 2 Tbl. chopped cilantro and 1 seeded and chopped jalapeño.

What's cool about this is that these flavors can work really well with other types of cuisines. For a more Vietnamese take, add the Mexican ingredients, but substitute fish sauce for the salt and add some chopped fresh mint as well. For an Indian take, substitute lemon for lime juice, cayenne for jalapeño, and maybe add a dash of garam masala. The possibilities are limitless! Not really. But generally, if you see overlap in ingredients between cuisines, you can usually be relatively successful by altering the external "flavoring" components to make a dish fit a particular type of ethnic flavor profile. As always, feel free to experiment and please let me know if you have any questions!

Foodin' With Lawblog: Flavor!

For this column we will be getting a little more “sciencey,” as we deal with flavor. More specifically: What is flavor? This guy knows what I’m talking about:



Nothing like some sweet-ass turntabling to get you pumped from some dry writing about food science! Before we continue, let me just give a brief shoutout to Cooking for Geeks, by Jeff Potter. It’s an awesome book that delves into the science of cooking, from basic concepts of taste and cooking methods to the super advanced molecular gastronomy (ugh) of places like wd-50, Alinea, El Bulli, and Richard Blais’ brain. Most of the science in this article comes from that book, so if that type of stuff intrigues you, I strongly recommend it. Moving on.org