Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Samin Nosrat
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Название: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Автор: Samin Nosrat
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Кулинария
isbn: 9781782112310
isbn:
Sometimes you’ll need to use multiple fats to achieve different textures within a single dish. Deep-fry crisp pieces of fish in grapeseed oil, and then use olive oil to make a creamy Aïoli to serve alongside it. Use oil to make a supremely moist Chocolate Midnight Cake, then slather it in buttercream frosting or softly whipped cream.
Balancing Fat
As with salt, the best way to correct overly fatty food is to rebalance the dish, so the solutions are similar to when you oversalt: add more food to increase total volume, add more acid, water it down, or add starchy or dense ingredients. If possible, chill the dish, let the fat come to the surface and solidify, then skim it off. Alternatively, lift food out of a very greasy pan and dab it on a clean towel, leaving the fat behind.
Foods that are too dry, or need just a bump of richness, can always be corrected with a little olive oil (or other appropriate oil), or another creamy ingredient such as sour cream, crème fraîche, egg yolk, or goat’s cheese to improve the texture and get the flavour right. Use vinaigrette, mayonnaise, a soft, spreadable cheese, or creamy avocado to balance out dryness in a sandwich piled high with lean ingredients or built atop thick, crusty bread.
Improvising with Salt and Fat
Follow the tenets I outline in How Fat Works to achieve whichever texture you’re after, then refer to The World of Fat (here) to guide you in evoking the flavours of wildly different places. Choose to pan-fry Finger-Lickin’ Pan-Fried Chicken, for instance, in clarified butter for a classic French flavour. If you’re craving an Indian-inspired meal and want to dig into that jar of mango chutney in the refrigerator door, change the cooking fat to ghee. If it’s a Japanese chicken cutlet you’re craving, use a neutral oil studded with a few drops of toasted sesame oil. In all of these cases, the fat must be sufficiently hot to swiftly lead to browning and deliver a crisp exterior.
Before you bake a birthday cake for your sweetie pie, do a little reconnaissance. Is it the moist, tender crumb of an oil cake she prefers, or the dense, velvety one of a butter cake? Since even I won’t recommend improvising when you bake, let this information guide you to a recipe using the right fat to make your honey happy.
With what you know about fat and what you know about salt, you’ll find that you’re closer to riffing than you might think. Fat has a remarkable capacity to affect texture, while salt and fat can both enhance flavour. Practise using salt and fat to improve flavour and texture every single time you cook. If you intend to finish a salad with a shower of creamy ricotta salata, hold back on some of the salt until after you taste a bite of it with its salty garnish. Similarly, when you’re dicing pancetta to add richness to Pasta all’Amatriciana, wait to season the sauce until after it’s absorbed all the salt from the pork. And if a recipe for pizza dough instructs you to add salt after kneading in olive oil, think twice about following it word for word. Start to use what you know to be true to guide you through the vast forests of myth and misinformation that poorly written recipes comprise.
Improvising begins with notes, and now you have two with which to compose a Salt-Fat melody. Master a third note, and you’ll experience the transcendent harmony of Salt, Fat, and Acid.
In contrast to the revelations I experienced with Salt and Fat, I’ve learned the value of Acid gradually. It started at home, with the food my mom, grandmothers, and aunts cooked each night.
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