My culinary education has helped changed my palate.....a lot. When I use to cook before I thought I knew what 'flavor' was. To me flavor was acheived by dumping mounds of seasoning on whatever poor piece of food you were preparing. I would make dishes that were covered in season salt, garlic powder, onion powder, crushed red pepper, and believe this was cooking at its finest.
When I actually began culinary school, there wasn't any season salt on the spice rack, or garlic and onion powder. If you wanted to add onion or garlic flavor to a dish, you added garlic cloves and sauteed onions.
With my palate being handicapped by years of artificial flavorings and seasonings, at the beginning of schooling my dishes would suffer when it was time for grading. I could always pick up the techniques, and I could easily follow directions, but it seemed every time that I would present a dish the chef instructor would say "more salt".
I didn't really understand at the time what the Chef instructor meant. Visually taking a palm full of kosher salt seemed like enough to cause hypertension(upon measuring later on it only amounted to about a table spoon). Visually I couldn't see it, and at the time I couldn't even taste it.
When I actually began culinary school, there wasn't any season salt on the spice rack, or garlic and onion powder. If you wanted to add onion or garlic flavor to a dish, you added garlic cloves and sauteed onions.
With my palate being handicapped by years of artificial flavorings and seasonings, at the beginning of schooling my dishes would suffer when it was time for grading. I could always pick up the techniques, and I could easily follow directions, but it seemed every time that I would present a dish the chef instructor would say "more salt".
I didn't really understand at the time what the Chef instructor meant. Visually taking a palm full of kosher salt seemed like enough to cause hypertension(upon measuring later on it only amounted to about a table spoon). Visually I couldn't see it, and at the time I couldn't even taste it.
One day we made shrimp bisque in class. Frustrated I decided that I was going to take my dish, cook according to the directions, and finish with salt at the end, bit by bit while trying the dish. As added a hint more and more of salt I could taste the flavors improving. By the time I finished adding salt, I hadn't added a lot but I reached a point where the salt allowed me to taste EVERYTHING in the dish, the vegetables, bay leaf, tomato, butter, brandy, cream, stock..all of the flavors were accentuated by the salt. It actually got me to the threshold where I could to taste teh benefits of the different components in the dish.
When I presented it to my chef instructor he told me the shrimp bisque was "spot on", and told me to leave the dish so he could finish it.
Now I enjoy the simplicity of cooking. Kosher, sea salt, and crushed black pepper are my 'go to ingredients' with more of a focus of buying the top quality ingredients I can find, and cooking them properly. These components accentuate what you are cooking, not masking it.......
