STELLA’S CULINARY BOOTCAMP &

F-STEP™ CURRICULUM

SECOND EDITION, NOVEMBER 2013COPYRIGHT © JACOB BURTON, 2013,

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHAT IS F-STEP?! 7

F IS FOR FLAVOR! 9

UNDERSTANDING FLAVOR STRUCTURE! 10

What is flavor?! 10

Salty! 11

Salty Options! 12

Sweet! 16

Sour! 17

Bitter! 18

Umami! 19

Piquancy! 22

Flavor And Aroma! 23

The Importance Of Fat And Flavor! 23

Texture! 24

Tannins! 25

Flavor’s X Factor! 25

Preventing Palate Fatigue! 26

Delivering A “Flavor Punch”! 27

Using “Flavor Interruptions”! 27

CHOOSING PRIMARY AND SECONDARY FLAVORS! 28

SELECTING NON SEASONAL INGREDIENTS! 29

Buying Spices! 29

Herbs! 30

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Poultry! 31

Other things to consider when purchasing poultry:! 31

Seafood! 31

Beef! 33

Pork! 34

GUIDE TO SEASONAL PRODUCE! 35

Winter! 36

December! 36

January! 38

February! 39

Spring! 40

March! 40

April! 41

May! 43

Summer! 43

June! 44

July! 44

August! 45

Fall! 47

September! 48

October! 49

November! 51

S IS FOR SAUCE! 53

CULINARY STOCKS! 54

Basic Recipe for Protein-Based Stocks! 56

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SAUCE THICKENERS! 56

Roux! 56

Liaison! 58

Other Sauce Thickeners At A Glance! 59

REDUCTION SAUCES! 60

Reduction Sauce Process! 62

Pan Sauces! 65

PURÉES! 66

EMULSIONS! 69

T IS FOR TECHNIQUE! 76

Choosing a Cooking Technique! 76

FAST AND DRY! 79

ROASTING AND BAKING! 79

SAUTÉING! 81

STIR FRYING! 81

SEARING! 82

GRILLING! 83

BROILING! 85

FRYING! 85

FAST AND WET! 86

BOILING! 87

SIMMERING! 88

POACHING! 88

STEAMING! 89

SLOW AND DRY! 90

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SLOW ROASTING! 90

CONFIT (OIL POACHING)! 91

SLOW AND WET! 92

BRAISING AND STEWING! 93

SOUS VIDE & LOW TEMP COOKING! 96

SOUS VIDE CHARTS! 100

Beef! 100

Lamb! 100

Pork! 101

Poultry! 101

Force Meats (Meatballs, Sausage)! 102

Eggs! 102

Fish & Shellfish! 103

E IS FOR EXECUTION! 104

PRE-SHIFTING & THE PICKUP! 106

PLATING AND PRESENTATION! 108

Supplies For Your Plating & Finishing Arsenal! 109

P IS FOR PREPARATION! 112

BLANCHING! 112

Green Vegetables! 113

Blanching Root Vegetables! 113

BRINES AND MARINADES! 115

Dry Rub Brining! 116

Gradient Brining (Traditional Approach)! 116

Creating an Equilibrium Brine! 118

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How to Calculate a Gradient Brine! 118

How To Calculate An Equilibrium Brine! 120

Secondary Brining Ingredients! 121

FINALE MISE EN PLACE! 124

Finale Note! 125

Acknowledgments! 126

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WHAT IS F-STEP?The F-STEP curriculum is more than an acronym that stands for Flavor, Sauce, Technique, Execution and Preparation. F-STEP is a mindset, a creative process, and the best method for teaching someone how to cook and think like a chef, all rolled into one. The F-STEP curriculum is the information I wish was available when I first started learning how to cook; especially when I made my jump to the professional kitchen.

When learning how to cook, it's important to put flavor first. If a cook doesn't have a basic understanding of how to create, balance, and structure flavors, than technique is useless.

Once flavor is understood, the next logical progression is to teach sauce making, including the fundamentals of stocks and broths, without which, important techniques such as braising, poaching, stewing, and pan roasting + pan reduction could not be understood or mastered. Even in modern culinary schools today, sauce making is taught using 120 year old fundamentals, and is so redundant, students focus on memorizing individual sauces instead of seeing the big picture. In the F-STEP curriculum, sauce is nothing more than flavor structure plus technique, and every sauce you'd ever want to make falls into one of three technical categories; reduction, emulsion, or puree. Once the science behind these techniques is understood, flavor structure is simply painted over the top, allowing the chef to create any number of unique sauces.

Only after the basics of flavor structure and sauce making are understood, should the student then focus on the scientific principles that make up cooking technique. This is a culinary minefield of dogmatic ideas, a lot of which are unfortunately still perpetuated in culinary schools today. In the F-STEP curriculum, we explore the science behind cooking technique, and more importantly, how to choose and apply the appropriate cooking technique to the product at hand.

But technique will only take you so far. Remember the F-STEP formula from above; you can have the best ingredients available and understand how to apply appropriate technique, but if you can't execute, then your food will always be mediocre at best. Unfortunately, execution is commonly overlooked by cook books and professional culinary curriculums alike. That is why once you understand flavor structure, sauce making, and technique, the F-STEP curriculum teaches you how to execute those three components at the highest level, planning your success before you even step into the kitchen.

However, F-STEP isn't just a curriculum, it's also a creative process, a road map for creating and executing a dish. That's why preparation is left for last. In the "F-STEP Process," the first four steps, flavor, sauce, technique, and execution, are all planned out in advanced, using the F-STEP Worksheet or just envisioning each step before the cooking process even begins. Only when you have your flavor structure in place, your

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sauce selected, the appropriate technique chosen, and execution planned to a "T," do you actually step into the kitchen and start cooking or "preparing" a menu or dish.

As the F-STEP process and mindset gets ingrained into you over the course of this curriculum, the principles discussed above will become second nature, ultimately unleashing your inner creativity, and helping you develop your unique culinary style.

(Flavor + Technique) X Execution: this is the F-STEP formula, and the process used to create any dish, whether good or bad. First, flavors are constructed by selecting a combination of ingredients. Next, the appropriate techniques are applied to these ingredients in an effort to elevate them to the next level.

But notice how the sum of flavor and technique is then multiplied by execution? This is because no matter how great your flavor structure and ingredients are, or how flawless the technique applied is, if the dish isn’t executed properly, nothing else matters.

The F-STEP curriculum’s purpose is to give cooks, both beginning and advanced, a step by step process for creating great food, ultimately releasing the culinary creativity of anyone who works their way through these pages.

This text is not meant to be an epic “end-all-be-all” of how to cook, but instead, was created to influence your mind set when approaching the cooking process. Whether you lack understanding of how to construct complex flavors, create complimentary sauces, how to choose and utilize the appropriate cooking technique, or need a confidence boost in preparing and executing amazing meals, the F-STEP curriculum forces you to mentally evaluate your approach to cooking. This curriculum is in essence a step-by-step approach, giving you a formula to follow so you can replicate your successes (and learn from your mistakes) every time.

Like any other skill, cooking is learned; but because there is so much dogma and intuition surrounding the culinary arts, it’s easy for people to become overwhelmed, thinking they lack the skill, intuition or creativity to become a great cook. In fact, becoming a great cook is a lifetime pursuit that takes patience and a lot of learned knowledge.

If you diligently work your way through the F-STEP curriculum, focusing on the overall process and mindset, you’ll have an understanding in the culinary arts, and a strong foundation in fundamentals, few cooks truly posses.

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F IS FOR FLAVORTo become a great cook and best understand the F-STEP process, we need to start at the beginning, striping away preconceived notions while taking nothing for granted. The first and most elemental step in the cooking process is deciding what to actually cook. While this may seem an excruciatingly obvious point, this simple question of “what will I cook” has many implications, most of which are commonly overlooked. Visualize for a moment the importance this decision carriers. If you say to yourself “I’m going to cook chicken,” then you are not only defining what you will be making, but what your primary flavor will be. With this decision comes many important questions.

First, is the ingredient in season? It may be the the middle of fall and you find yourself craving a roasted asparagus salad, but does that mean you should serve it at an upcoming dinner party? Asparagus is a spring crop; if it’s purchased and served outside of the spring season, it will be of inherent low quality, predisposing my cooking efforts to mediocre results before I even step into the kitchen.

Second, can you get a high quality version of this ingredient at a cost you find reasonable? In the of case of poultry, pork, beef or fish, commonly found year round in your local supermarket, quality isn’t guaranteed by availability. A common advantage that professional chef’s have is the knowledge and connected resources to purchase the best ingredients possible. With the modern food system and a little knowledge on how to spot quality, this advantage can now be extended to the home cook who is able to acquire many high end ingredients once impossible to come by in a standard supermarket.

Finally, can you execute the primary ingredient you’ve chosen? Part of being a great chef is understanding your limitations. So much bad food isn’t caused by poor technique or lackluster ingredients, it’s caused by a flawed execution. This concept is so important that it gets its own section in the F-STEP formula and curriculum (see ‘E is For Execution).

Most important of all, what you choose as your primary ingredient will influence every other decision you make throughout the cooking process, including applied techniques, execution, preparation, and of course, flavor structure. In the first step of the F-STEP process, your primary and secondary flavors are chosen and analyzed. The combinations of these flavors on your plate, or “Flavor Structure,” is the core starting point of the F-STEP process.

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For more information on how to find and select seasonal ingredients, please see our “Guide to Seasonal Produce” starting on page 34.

UNDERSTANDING FLAVOR STRUCTURE

While conceptualizing or cooking a new dish, try to keep in mind how ingredients will balance, enhance, and interact with one-another, a concept commonly referred to as flavor structure. Once a primary ingredient is selected, secondary flavors and textures are chosen for their soul ability to elevate and enhance the dish’s main component.

The golden rule of dish conceptualization is any ingredient which doesn’t elevate the primary flavor (a.k.a., money ingredient) does not belong. Now the question is, how dose one choose complimentary flavors, especially when creating their own, unique dish?

In reality, building complex yet cohesive flavor structures while creating a new dish is an ongoing pursuit for any chef. There is no endpoint to the creation of flavors. This is part of the magic and mystery that drives chefs to continually create new dishes.

The first step all cooks must take when walking down the path of their own culinary creativity is understanding basic tastes, textures, and sensations. Like the notes available to a composer, the various nuanced components that make up flavor can be combined in infinite patterns, creating a symphony of blissful flavors, or something much less enjoyable.

What is flavor? Flavor, in its simplest sense, is the amalgamation of tastes, textures, sensations, and aromas, which as a whole, resonate on the palate as one cohesive experience. Think of flavor as a piece of music, with the basic building blocks like taste and texture being the notes and percussion instruments making flavor possible.

For years, the concept of flavor, especially taste, has been oversimplified and miss-understood. As recently as two decades ago, grade school biology classes were still using out-dated diagrams splitting the tongue into 4 distinct zones, each responsible for tasting one of the four major flavors (salty, sweet, sour & bitter).

In fact, flavor is the complex sum of taste receptors, volatile aroma molecules, and tactile sensations. The human tongue is covered with thousands of small bumps called papillae, which are easily visible by the human eye. Each papilla is made up of hundreds of taste buds, and each taste bud is made

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Out of date tongue diagram.

Taste is a primary element, such as sal ty or sweet , registered by taste receptors. Flavor is the sum of taste r e c e p t o r s , a r o m a s , a n d physical sensations.

up of 50 to 100 taste receptors. Although the majority of taste buds are concentrated on our tongues, they’re also found on the roof of the mouth, back of the throat, and the inside of cheeks.

The actual sensation of taste can be placed into five major categories; salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami (savory). Combining these five basic tastes in varying degrees will creates a “core flavor structure,” with complex aromas and tactile sensations adding depth and complexity.

Grasping the five basic flavors and how they interact with one another is to understand flavor structure at its most basic level. It’s the combining and balancing of these five flavors that can create a harmonious dish, or an unbalanced flavor profile that just seems to be “missing something.”

Salty

Salt is the most important elemental flavor in cooking because with out it, food just doesn’t taste right, not to mention our bodies require it to properly function. Sodium and chloride ions, which together make up common table salt, are used by the body for auto-regulation of water and electrical signaling in the nervous system. Because our bodies retain a base line of salinity for healthy functions, the saliva on our palate contains a small amount of salt, about 0.4% by weight, causing food items that contain less sodium by weight to taste bland or even off.

A great illustration of this effect is baking bread without adding any salt to the dough. Even though the bread is hot and fresh from the oven, it tastes like stale cardboard, as if the bread has gone bad. Yet when salt is added to bread dough, no one ever stops and says “hey, I can taste the salt!”

This is why even a small amount of salt added to food can heighten flavor without contributing a perceptible saltiness. Salt is so important to the cooking process, that without it, great tasting food wouldn’t exist.

One of the most rudimentary mistakes made by beginning cooks is under-seasoning food. Most of the time when a dish tastes flat and bland, salt will be the answer.

How much salt should be used? It really depends a lot on what’s being made, how it’s served, and personal preference. Individuals on low sodium diets are usually more sensitive to salt content than those who are not.

Besides personal sensitivity and preference, a good baseline to follow is about .75% to 1% salt content by weight. This means, if you’re making a large batch of soup, you can go through the entire process without adding a single pinch of salt. Once the soup is complete, simply weigh, multiply by .75% (.0075), adding the resulting amount of salt. While I can’t guarantee this will yield a perfectly seasoned soup every time (after all, personal preference and other factors such as temperature and fat content will have an

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effect on seasoning), it will at least get close, giving you a mathematical formula to check your seasoning.

Consider also the temperature at which food is served. Because aroma molecules are more volatile when hot (resulting strong flavor perception), you’ll need to add less overall seasoning than the same dish served cold. If you’re tasting something hot that you later plan on serving cold, it’s always a good idea to slightly over season, as the cold serving temperature will deaden some of the overall flavors. This is why cold items are often enhanced with the addition of a finishing salt, which leads us to a very common question: what type of salt should I use?

Salty Options

Salt is by far the most important ingredient you can have in your kitchen; serving a well-seasoned dish without the addition of salt is impossible. Yet there are so many different types of salt on the market, it’s critical to understand which types should be stocked in your kitchen and why.

Technically speaking, salt is salt. While there are various types of sodium based compounds used in cooking (which a chemistry teacher will remind you is still technically salt), the stuff used for seasoning food has the same chemical composition no matter the brand. Made up of 39.3% sodium and 60.7% chloride, there is no chemical difference between any number of specialty salts on the market.

If sodium chloride is sodium chloride, then why does some salt cost $30 a pound while others are sold for pennies? In short, size and shape. Salt crystals can come in many different shapes including dense cubes, delicate flakes, and fragile pyramids. It’s salt’s physical structure makes it special or ordinary, pricey or inexpensive. Let’s walk through salts commonly available and discuss their best uses and applications.

Iodized Salt

Iodized salt (usually referred to as table salt), is commonly found on dining room tables in the ever present salt shaker. It’s made up of compact, dense crystals which dissolve slowly on the palate.

To make iodized salt, 1/100th of 1% of potassium iodide is added to common table salt to guard against goiter, a disease caused by an iodide deficiency. However, with the well rounded diets and diverse food sources available to anyone who lives in a first world country, salt as an iodide supplement is no longer necessary.

What’s more, iodide will easily oxidize and break down over time. To counter this, sodium ferrocyanide is added along with dextrose to help stabilize the iodide.

Yet in high heat cooking applications such as searing, grilling, roasting, and baking, some of the iodide will still oxidize, breaking down into iodine, which gives off an acrid

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smell and flavor. If you’ve ever eaten something that gave a metallic tinge in the back of your throat, chances are, its from oxidized iodide caused by high heat.

Since iodized salt isn’t good for cooking, the only other option is using it for “finishing” a dish, meaning it’s sprinkled on food right before serving. Yet as we discussed above, iodized salt has a tight, compact crystal structure; its dense, cube-like shape causes it to bounce off food instead of adhering, an important structural trait needed for any finishing salt.

If iodized salt isn’t good for most cooking applications and shouldn’t be used to finish a dish, then what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. This is why you’ll never find iodized salt in my kitchen. If you have some on hand you need to get rid of, it will do fine for seasoning soups or salting water for pasta and blanching vegetables. But once it’s gone, I would recommend making the switch to the work horse seasoner of all professional kitchens, kosher salt.

Kosher Salt

Kosher salt would be more accurately named “koshering salt,” since its jagged-crystal structure is produced specifically to stick to the surface of meat during the koshering process. Kosher salt can come from sea or land based salt mines, but it must have coarse, irregularly shaped crystals allowing it to adhere to meat.

Because of its “jagged” crystal structure, kosher salt is predominately what chefs use for all-purpose cooking applications. The large crystals are easy to pick up in the fingertips, and allow you to see how much salt you’re putting on the product. It’s this same crystal structure and omission of iodide which makes kosher salt ideal for seasoning meat before applying a high heat cooking method.

There are many different brands of kosher salt available, and one isn’t better than the other. My only advice is once you find a brand, stick to it, because different companies make kosher salt with various crystal sizes. Switching brands after you’ve become accustom to another can throw off your feel for seasoning. I’ve always used Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, and even measured how much my pinch is, which equates to one gram per finger. This means, a three finger pinch equals three grams of salt, a two finger pinch, two grams, etc. This “feel for seasoning” is especially important in the fast paced environment of a professional kitchen, allowing cooks to add a consistent amount of salt to every single dish.

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The Koshering Process

Kosher foods comply with Jewish dietary law (kashrut), one of which states that no blood shal l be consumed. Salt by it’s very nature is kosher, but kosher salt is specifically milled for the koshering process in which meat is thoroughly washed, soaked in water, salted for a given period of time, and thoroughly rinsed three times.

Sea Salt

Sea salt and kosher salt are commonly mixed up because their look, shape, and feel are so similar. In fact, sometimes kosher salt and sea salt can come from the same batch of salt, their only difference being the label.

The FDA has no set standard to labeling sea salt, so quite frankly, it can come from the sea or from a salt mine without any legal repercussions. Technically speaking, all salt is sea salt. Salt mines exist due to ancient seas that have since receded or completely evaporated.

With that said, there are some good “sea salts” to be found on the market, and their quality comes from the crystal’s size and shape. One of the most common “finishing” sea salts used in higher end kitchens is Fleur de Sel.

Fleur de Sel (Flower of Salt)

Traditionally, French fleur de sel is collected off the coast of Brittany, hand harvested by skimming a delicate salt layer off the top of sea water before it sinks to the bottom of large salt pans. It has a fragile, pyramid-like shape that burst with a wonderful salty-sweetness when it hits the tongue or is crushed between the teeth while chewing. Because it’s production is labor intensive, fleur de sel is one of the most expensive forms of salt available.

Since fleur de sel’s characteristics come from its size and shape, it’s pointless to use it for cooking. Once Fleur de Sel is dissolved in simmering water (or any other moisture commonly present during the cooking process), its chemical make-up is no different than table salt (minus the iodine and $30 a pound price tag).

For this reason, fleur de del should always be used as a finishing salt, sprinkled on fresh fruits, vegetables, salads, meats, and fish, right before serving. The salty-sweetness inherent in this special French salt helps to coax the natural flavors of whatever it’s sprinkled on. If a fine dining chef would never work in a kitchen that didn’t stock fleur de sel or an equivalent quality finishing salt, then why should you?

Colored Salts

While perusing the “specialty” or “gourmet” aisles of your local supermarket, you may have come across specialty salts ranging in color from pink, grey, red and black. Most of the salt’s flavor and color are caused by the algae or clay in the salt ponds or minds from which they are harvested.

For example, Korea and France are known for their gray and pinkish sea salts, while India is known for its black salts. Hawaii is also known for their black and red colored salts, which are made by the addition of powdered black lava and red baked clay respectively.

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You can also buy other specialty flavored salts such as smoked sea salt and truffle salt. The overall quality of these flavored salts can range from “gimmicky” to sublime. Figuring out which is which will take a little trial and error, while at the same time figuring out your personal preference as a cook.

A good example is the smoked sea salt we sprinkle on a ramekin of whipped butter at Stella, and serve alongside our wood fire artisan bread. The smoked sea salt is a great compliment to the fatty butter, and coaxes out the nuanced flavors created by the sourdough starter and wood fire.

Himalayan Pink Salt

Himalayan Salt is a marketing term created for halite, the mineral form of sodium chloride commonly known as rock salt. It’s sold by various companies contracting salt production at the Khewra Salt Mine in Pakistan, the second largest in the world. The pink color is caused by iron oxide, and for years it’s been sold in gourmet markets because frankly it looks cool.

Recently a new trend has emerged among a handful of health food evangelists claiming Himalayan Pink Salt is more healthy to use for cooking and seasoning due to it’s high mineral content. While it’s true it contains quite a few trace minerals our body needs for healthy functioning, the amount of Himalayan salt one would have to consume to achieve modest recommended daily values of said minerals is literally impossible.

Let’s start our argument with the recommend daily salt intake put forth by the Mayo Clinic of 2.3 grams per person, per day. It’s also recommend that we consume 3500 milligrams of potassium daily, and Himalayan Salt contains about 3.5g per kilo. Since 1000 grams equals a Kilo, here’s how the math plays out:

3.5 divided by 1000 equals .0035 grams (or 3.5 mill igrams) of potassium per 1 gram of Himalayan Salt, meaning one would have to consume 1000g of Himalayan Salt a d a y j u s t t o r e a c h t h e recommended daily intake. If you do the math with similar minerals found in Himalayan Salt, it comes out just as ludicrous. This isn’t to say using Himalayan Salt is bad, but if the sole purpose is for health benefits offered by it’s trace amounts of minerals, then you might want to talk to a doctor about other, more effective ways to increase you mineral consumption.

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Don’t Confuse Your Pink Salts

There are other forms of pink salt on the market, most notably sodium nitrate and nitrite. These powerful salts are used for curing meats such as sausage, pates, and terrines. In they’re pure form, they appear white, but curing salt manufacturers will usually cut the nitrate or nitrite with sodium chloride and then color with a pink additive. This is to keep you from mixing it up with common table salt, since four grams of sodium nitrite is considered a lethal dose.

Long Story Short

• Iodized table salt is useless.

• Use kosher salt for general seasoning and cooking.

• Use sea salt, especially fleur de sel, strictly for finishing a dish.

• Colored salts look cool, but they don’t offer much flavor.

• Himalayan Pink Salt may look nice, but isn’t an effective mineral supplement.

One last note before moving on: finishing food with a small sprinkling of fleur de sel or other high-end sea salt can be all that’s necessary to elevate your dish from good to great. Make sure to stock your kitchen with fleur de sel and try finishing various dishes with a small pinch just before serving. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what just a little finishing salt can add to almost any dish you serve.

Other Salty Ingredients

Sodium chloride isn’t you’re only option for adding salt to a dish. Other effective ingredients include soy sauce, miso paste, fish sauce, parmesan cheese, anchovies, botargo and other salt cured products like pork belly and back fat. The addition of these ingredients will not only add salt and seasoning two a dish, but also bring into play complex, supporting flavors sodium chloride can’t achieve alone.

Sweet

Sugar and sweeteners can be utilized as an imperceptible seasoning that transcends its traditional, confining role as a dessert only ingredient. In general, sweetness can play an important role in many savory applications. The human palate needs more sweet molecules to register than any of the other five basic flavors. Because of this, a small amount of sugar or other sweet ingredients can be added to savory dishes, helping make the overall flavor structure seem more “round” without a perceptible sweetness.

In fact, a common practice in certain styles of Asian cuisine is to add just a small pinch of sugar, along with salt, to stir-fried vegetables. This imperceptible amount of sugar doesn’t necessarily make the vegetables taste sweet, but instead rounds out their flavors, making them taste better.

Sweet can also play a good “Yin” to another flavor’s “Yang,” bringing an otherwise unbalanced dish into harmony. Sauces such as sweet-and-spicy, sugar added to an acidic pickling liquid, or the combination of sweet ingredients with piquant (spicy) food, are all examples of how a sweet taste can balance an otherwise intense flavor profile.

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Sweet can also balance salt, which is why you’ll commonly see it listed as an ingredient in brines, dry rubs, and cures. Meat marinated or brined without the addition of a sweetener can cause an undesirable “burning” sensation when it hits the palate.

As with any other flavor, sugar is more perceptible to the palate when a dish is served hot versus cold. This is why many high-end restaurants have separate freezers specifically for their frozen desserts, which are held at a precise temperature. If the ice cream is too cold, the guest won’t be able to fully appreciate the subtle nuances of its flavor.

Sour

Besides adding enough salt to ensure proper seasoning, the addition of sour ingredients can have a large impact on many dishes, elevating its flavor structure from mediocre to masterfu l . Some of the major sour ingredients used in cooking are vinegars, citrus fruit, wine (especially white), and verjus.

Just like salt and sugar can add seasoning and roundness to a dish without being perceptible, small amounts of acid can, and should, be added to almost every dish, whether or not a sour flavor is desired. Just a couple drops of an acidic ingredient can go a long way to brightening and balancing a dish’s flavor structure.

Acid is especially important in heavy dishes. Even though fats can add richness and enhance mouth feel, they also coat the palate, which in turn deadens flavors. The addition of acid cuts through fat, allowing the subtle flavors of a dish to shine through.

Some common acids used to brighten dishes are champagne vinegar, lemon juice, and lime juice. Although there are many more acids one could use to elevate a dish, these three can be added to a recipe much like one would add salt, as an imperceptible flavor enhancer, that elevates the overall taste perception and seasoning.

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Verjus is a sour juice pressed from unripe grapes and other fruits. Since verjus was never alcohol, it adds a different element of sour and complex flavor than the traditional vinegars and citrus juice found in the typical cook’s arsenal.

When getting use to using vinegar or other acids as a seasoning, I recommend keeping a small glass vial and dropper next to the stove, filled with either champagne, sherry or rice wine vinegar. Experiment with adding a couple drops to every dish you cook, until you get a sense of how sour can elevate certain dishes, even when added in imperceptible amounts.

Bitter

The human palate is extremely sensitive to bitter taste sensations since it’s commonly associated with poisonous compounds found in nature. Never the less, bitter is an important “cleansing” flavor which can add balance, depth, and complexity to any number of preparations. It is commonly used to “re-set” the palate (as in an intermezzo), balance sweetness, and cut through fat.

A common example of bitter balancing sweetness is the addition of hops to beer. Anyone who’s ever gone through the beer brewing process and tasted the “wort” before hops were added, understands beer alone is cloyingly sweet and could quickly “fatigue” the palate. Hops are added to balance the sweetness of malted grains, resulting in a more complex and enjoyable flavor structure.

Another common example is the pairings of rich foods and bitter greens, (mainly chicories, a family of greens including endive, escarole, and frisée). As mentioned previously, coats the palate and deadens flavors. The addition of bitter greens not only adds a pleasant, crunchy texture, but it also cuts the fat, keeping a dish from becoming overwhelmingly rich.

Some foods that pair nicely with bitter elements, especially greens, include:

• Charcuterie, specifically pâtés and terrines.• Dishes with fat-based sauces such as cream, butter, or egg yolks.• Braised dishes, which normally have heavy, meaty flavors, can be enhanced with

the addition of a chicory as a last minute garnish, right before serving.

Since bitter does a great job of balancing sweet, salty, and fatty ingredients, you will often see chicory salads utilizing sweet dressings, fatty cheese, and salty meats.

If a dish seems dull or heavy, a last minute garnish of bitter greens could be the answer you’re looking for (assuming you’ve already seasoned with salt and acid).

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Umami

In 1901, German scientist Dieter Hanig published an influential paper in the journal Philosophische Studien, mapping the human tongue into four distinct regions, each responsible for sensing one of the four basic flavors (salty, sour, bitter, sweet). His paper was translated by Harvard psychologist Edwin G. Boring, and Hanig’s “tongue map” quickly become the western world’s recognized explanation for how humans perceive taste. But Japanese physics professor, Kidunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University, thought something was missing from this explanation, and soon had an epiphany that changed the scientific world’s understanding of taste and flavor.

While sipping a bowl of his wife’s soup, Ikeda realized there was a deeply satisfying, delicious element which tasted neither salty, sweet, sour or bitter. Asking her secret, Ikeda’s wife revealed a tin of dried brown algae called kombu, an ingredient traditionally simmered in water or fish stock to create “dashi,” the basis of many Japanese soups. It was later found what truly enhanced the “delicious” sensation of so many Japanese soups was the free glutamates kombu naturally produced; so much so it crystalized like salt on the surface of the dried, brown algae.

In 1909, after extensive testing and research, Ikeda’s work on kombu was complete. He discovered that glutamic acid was responsible for savory, meaty flavors, and called this fifth taste sensation “umami,” which roughly translated from Japanese to “delicious.” Ikeda found glutamic acid naturally occurs in the proteins of many diverse food products, and when transformed through cooking, fermentation, or ripening, the protein containing glutamic acid brakes down into glutamate, responsible for savory or umami flavors. Glutamate is also an amino acid produced by the body, working as a neurotransmitter vitally important to learning and memory.

Ikeda stabilized the pure glutamate with the addition of sodium (the same stuff found in table salt), giving birth to one of the world’s supreme flavor enhancers, monosodium glutamate, or MSG.

Ikeda patented his process and started selling MSG under the name Aji-no-moto (essence of taste), going down in history as one of Japan’s ten greatest inventors, and an extremely wealthy man. Aji-no-moto later become a food additive corporation (now owned by General Mills), and an industry leader. They produce one third of the world’s MSG and most recently commercialized the enzyme transglutaminase (aka “meat glue”) that is utilized by world class chefs and food

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Other Umami Substances

A few years after Ikeda’s isolation of MSG, one of his colleagues discovered inosine monophosphate (IMP) in Skip Jack Tuna, smoked, dried and shaved to make katsuobushi, another common ingredient in Japanese dashi.

In 1960, Akira Kuninaka discovered guanosine monophosphate (GMP) in shiitake mushrooms. Kuninaka also discovered GMP, IMP and MSG have a synergistic relationship, meaning when combined, they are more powerful then alone.

manufacturers alike to bind pieces of proteins together.

MSG spread quickly through Asia, used extensively in sauces, soups, and sometimes just sprinkled like salt on food to achieve delicious, umami flavors.

In the April 1968 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok’s letter to the editor detailed strange “symptoms” he would experience shortly after eating chinese food.

According to Ho Man Kwok:

“I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant, especially one that served northern Chinese food. The syndrome, which usually begins 15 to 20 minutes after I have eaten the first dish, lasts for about two hours, without hangover effect. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitations...”

Through his anecdotal observations, “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” (or CRS) was born. One year after Ho Man Kwok’s letter to the editor, Science Magazine came out with an article blaming monosodium glutamate for the ills caused by CRS. Immediately after the article was published, a handful of doctors started asking patients if they recently ate any Chinese food after they described various symptoms including migraines, nausea, numbness and asthma. And that quickly the most paranoid hysteria in the history of food was born; a pervasive fear of MSG, which is quite literally as harmless as the sodium in your salt shaker and the 40 grams of natural glutamate your body produces each day.

Although the safety of MSG has been proven time and time again, many people still claim an extreme sensitivity. The fact is, no double-blind scientific study has ever been able to find any adverse effects linked to the consumption of MSG. According to one study conducted in 1970, 11 people were fed up to 147 grams of MSG a day for six weeks, and no adverse reactions were produced. Numerous studies have been performed on people claiming to suffer from MSG sensitivities and none have shown any evidence to support these claims.

It’s fascinating to follow the discovery of umami down the rabbit whole, starting with a simple sip of soup, and culminating in the creation of a misunderstood product while at the same time radically changing our understanding of taste.

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A double blind study is conducted with the subject and the tester not knowing the product being given. This is considered the most valid process for conducting accurate, scientific experiments, since both the subject and tester can be influenced by bias, whether conscious or subconscious.

So how can a cook use this knowledge advantageously? First, you should be stocking your fridge and pantry with foods containing free-form glutamates such as mushrooms, soy sauce, fish sauce, grapes, walnuts and tomatoes. The next time a dish needs a bit of a “flavor boost,” consider adding one or more of these ingredients. Also, don’t be afraid or ashamed to stock your pantry with MSG, which in US supermarkets is sold under the brand name Ac’cent, or can be found in Asian markets worldwide with the original Aji-no-moto label. Just a little sprinkle in soups and salad dressings may be that extra flavor boost you’re looking for.

One commonly misunderstood umami ingredient in Western cuisine is fish sauce. Many Western cooks assume the strong flavor is only applicable when making assertive dishes common to Southeast Asia. This thinking, however, does fish sauce, and you as a cook, a great disservice. A few dashes in a soup, sauce, or marinade can add an unrivaled amount of savoriness without adding a perceptible “fishy” taste.

In fact, my version of Neapolitan Tomato Sauce includes four simple ingredients; fresh San Marzano tomatoes, salt, pepper, and fish sauce. Fish sauce and tomatoes have a synergistic relationship; when combined, they create an explosive, umami flavor.

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Experimenting With Fish Sauce

Fish sauce isn’t just for exotic, South-East Asian Cuisine. Here are a few suggestion for incorporating the umami boosting qualities of fish sauce into your everyday cooking:

• Use a dash or two of fish sauce in conjunction with any recipe that calls for tomatoes (tomato salad, salsa, sauce, etc).

• Add fish sauce to meat marinades and brines.• Finish soups and sauces, especially meat-based, with a couple drops of fish

sauce.• Be experimental! You’d be surprised what types of ingredients fish sauce can

enhance.

MSG by a Different Name

Because of the stigma attached to MSG, food manufacturers commonly use other names in their ingredient lists including:

• Monopotassium Glutamate• Glutavene• Glutacyl• Glutamic Acid• Aytolyzed Yeast Extract• Calcium Caseinate• Sodium Caseinate• Anjinomoto• Ac’cent• Gourmet Powder

Piquancy

Although technically a tactile sensation, not a flavor, piquancy (commonly described as “spicy heat”), can have a large effect on overall flavor structure, adding balance and interest to any number of dishes. The “burning” sensation of spicy ingredients can add depth of flavor by balancing sweetness, cutting through fat, and triggering pleasure endorphins in the brain.

Spicy ingredients such as cayenne pepper are commonly used in small amounts to season classic, high fat preparations including mayonnaise and hollandaise. When used sparingly as a seasoning, piquancy should be imperceptible in the same way a pinch of salt or a drop of vinegar will heighten a dish.

When combining a piquant ingredient with fat (i.e. habenero mayonnaise), take into account there will be a “delayed” burn, as the fat first coats the palate, masking the “kick” to come. Once the fat clears the palate, the spicy ingredient will shine through, giving you the sensation of a delayed, slowly intensifying burn.

Just like piquancy can cut through fat and balance sweetness, spicy ingredients are subdued by the addition of fats and sugars. In fact, the scale on which an ingredients’ piquancy is measured (the Scoville Scale), is directly related to how much sugar water is needed before the burn of a specific ingredient is no longer noticeable.

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Flavor And Aroma

While the five major flavors register basic taste sensations on the tongue, aroma is what conveys the nuanced complexity of a masterfully crafted dish. It’s estimated that 75-90% of our total flavor perception comes from our ol factory system, which is responsible for our sense of smell. The mouth can only detect a handful of tastes, textures and sensations, but food contains hundreds of volatile aroma molecules responsible for the complexity of flavors we’re able to enjoy.

Aroma is also responsible for for “flavor affinities,” food that just taste really good together. This occurs when the ingredients combined share one or more aromatic compounds, building a “flavor bridge” between the two ingredients. Cherries and bananas contain elements of clove, while coriander shares aromatic compounds with citrus fruits. Carrots can have a pine note that is enhanced by Mediterranean herbs, and field ripened tomatoes have grassy notes that pair perfectly with extra virgin olive oil and basil.

When creating a dish to pair with a specific wine, a common approach is to identify various aromatic compounds contained in the wine, and then make them components on the plate. Does the Chardonnay smell like butterscotch, corn, or have subtle notes of grass? Or maybe your Merlot has hints of baking spice and dark fruit. By identifying aromatic compounds in the wine and pairing those components on the plate, you create a complimentary flavor pairing that connects the food and wine on an ethereal level.

The Importance Of Fat And Flavor

The presence of fat (or lack thereof) plays an important role in the flavor structure of every dish. Whether or not fat is a flavor is still being debated among the science community, with the most recent consensus leaning towards people having the ability to taste some fatty acids. But even though it may not be named the “sixth basic flavor” anytime soon, fat is flavor.

This is because fat has the ability to absorb complex aroma molecules, most of which are only fat soluble. To test this concept, place an unwrapped stick of butter and a glass of water side by side in your refrigerator and leave it for a couple of days. Over a period of time, any aromas present in the fridge will influence how the butter tastes, whereas the water’s flavor will stay relatively the same (albeit a little more stale).

As we discussed in our previous section on aroma, much of the flavor complexities we perceive don’t originate on the tongue, but come from our sense of smell. Since fat is a

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How Aroma Creates Flavor

The human olfactory system can detect hundreds of fat soluble, volatile aroma molecules which are repelled by water on the palate, causing them to “fly off” into the air in our mouth, producing a vast complexity of flavor.

better solvent for most aromatic molecules, even a small amount of fat added to a dish can greatly enhance it’s flavor structure.

Fat also plays an important role in texture and richness. Mounting a sauce with butter or adding a splash of cream to coffee can give a pleasing, velvety mouthfeel we’er evolutionarily wired to enjoy. But the richness and texture fat brings to the flavor party can be a double edged sword.

Fat is important for conveying complex aromas and giving a pleasing mouth feel, but it also coats the palate, deadening flavors and seasonings. This is why high fat dishes require extra seasoning in the form of salt, and also benefit from the addition of piquant, bitter, and acidic ingredients, all of which can cut through fat and elevate the dish’s flavor structure.

Just like salt, there is a major difference between finishing fats and cooking fats. As we just discussed, fat works as a solvent for aroma molecules, which makes it perfect for infusing, and allows it to take on the flavor of it’s source. Extra virgin olive oil, nut oils, and citrus infused oils all work great as “finishing fats,” due to the dissolved aromatic molecules these oils contain. It’s also for this reason these oils aren’t the appropriate choice for high heat cooking applications like sautéing, searing, and roasting, unless they are first refined.

When oils and fats are refined, you’re left with a more neutral flavored oil with the added benefit of a higher smoke point (the purer the fat, the hotter it’s able to get before breaking down and smoking). This is why if you try and sear a steak with whole butter, the butter will quickly brown and burn. But when butter is slowly heated and the milk solids are skimmed away, your left with a mostly pure fat (a.k.a. clarified butter or ghee), with a much higher smoke point.

In general, fats that contain a lot of color, like green olive oils or opaque to dark nut oils, contain lots of flavor, making them perfect for finishing a dish. If the oil or fat is fairly clear with only a light golden hue in it’s liquid state, it contains less dissolved solids, which means the flavor is fairly neutral and the smoke point high, making it ideal for cooking.

Texture

The combination of basic tastes and complex aromas is the base to any great flavor structure, but without the addition of texture, even the most ingenious flavor composition will quickly become boring. Just as sweet and spicy or hot and cold both contrast and compliment each-other, almost all dishes need to contain an array of textures, from smooth and creamy, to crisp and crunchy.

When composing a dish, ask yourself “does it have a crunch? Does it need something soft or smooth?”

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An apple is just an apple, crisp and juicy, but add the chewy-sweetness of carmel or the smooth-richness of peanut butter and you can quickly see it isn’t just the elementary combination of flavors at play; the textural contrast is equally delightful.

Tannins

The same cells in our mouth that allow us to register texture, are also responsible for the pucker sensation caused by tannins. Tannins work by binding the proteins present in our saliva, causing them to clump together and cause friction across the palate, tongue, and the inside of our cheeks. This is why red wine can give the perception of having texture, even though visually it looks just like any other liquid.

Salt and acid will increase the perceived astringency of tannins, and sugar will reduce it. Fats and oils will slow a tannin molecule’s ability to bind to the saliva, and ingredients such as milk, meat, and gelatin will provide more free proteins for binding, sedating the drying effect tannins can have. This is why rich, meaty dishes are commonly paired with big red wines (cabernets, merlots, etc.), and why an overly acidic dish will need a wine with little to no tannins, and often residual sugar (RS) to help balance the sour flavor profile.

Tannins are most commonly found in unripe fruit, grape skins (especially red), wood (used for smoking meat or barrel aging wine), nut skins, and plants with red colors. This is makes sense when you consider that red grapes and red leaf lettuce contain much more tannins than their green counterparts.

If you’re cooking a fatty, meaty dish, consider adding some tannic components for balance, whether it be red wine, red leaf lettuce, or stone fruit with the skin still intact.

Flavor’s X Factor

“Flavor X Factor” is a concept that’s been around for quite some time, but was coined by the authors of The Flavor Bible, an encyclopedia style reference book I consistently recommend for anyone attempting to create new dishes or understand complimentary flavors on a more intimate level. In it’s most basic sense, the “X factor” describes the

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How Tannins Got Their Name

According to Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, tannins are “phenolic compounds consisting of 3-5 carbon rings, which are just the right size to span two or more normally separate protein molecules, bond to them, and hold them together. These phenolics are called tannins because they have been used since prehistory to tan animal hides into tough leather by bonding with the skin proteins.”

intangible human element of emotion and nostalgia certain flavor combinations or dishes can trigger. Why do you think every adult remembers a childhood dish that could never be made better than their mother’s, grandmother’s, and/or father’s version? Is it because we are genetically predisposed to prefer our parent’s cooking? Or is it because a childhood favorite becomes more than just food; it becomes a fond memory?

Homemade chicken soup on a rainy day. Grandma’s tomato gravy. Mom’s simple meat loaf or casserole.

What makes this even more interesting is our olfactory system, (responsible for our sense of smell), is closely linked to the portion of our brain which stores long term memories. This is why a single smell can trigger a rush of emotions and memories, slingshotting us back to a happy, simple time, where food was more than food, it was an experience, a perfect moment.

Some creative chefs attempt to leverage this connection of flavor, smell, and memory by creating modern takes on childhood classics. When executed properly, these reworked “classics” don’t only serve up a tasty dish with strong flavor structure, but bring back a flood of emotions, making the dining experience, and the corresponding dish, unforgettable.

Preventing Palate Fatigue

As we eat a dish, it sometimes become less appetizing as our palate acclimates to its flavor. This can be especially true when consuming large portions of a given ingredient, or a dish that is predominately made up of a singular flavor type such as bitter, sweet, sour, savory, or fatty, without another complementary element to break up the monotony.

Think for a second what it’s like to eat a massive, 20 ounce steak with a large side of mashed potatoes. When the steak is first delivered, it looks delicious, smells fantastic, and tastes great. When you take the first bite, you’re not disappointed, so you dig in for a second, third, and fourth. But after a while, as your appetite subsides and your palate is exposed to the same monotone flavors bite after bite, the steak doesn’t taste nearly as good as it did when you began eating.

This is what chefs refer to as palate fatigue, our common enemy when creating a memorable dish. It’s not enough to create a great tasting meal, but it must hold up bite after bite. Besides combining the four major flavors in varying degrees (like we discussed earlier), here are some tips to help prevent palate fatigue:

• Serve small portions of food, ideally incorporating two or more courses into a given meal. The idea being you want your guest to finish their entire plate, and once done, wish that they had just one more bite. Your guest is then progressed to the next course, until full. The moment someone leaves a bite of food on their

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plate, the memory of that dish is degraded because the guest is now satiated, and their last impression of the dish was a bite they didn’t want to take.

• Use salt, sugar, acid, and piquancy in small amounts to help round out flavors and add depth to a given dish. Remember, just because you season with cayenne or sugar doesn’t mean your dish must be perceptibly spicy or sweet. This approach can only be mastered with practice and constantly tasting your food as you season.

• Finish a dish with a few drops of acid, whether it be lemon juice, champagne vinegar, or a similar “sour” ingredient. Just a few drops can brighten the plate, elevating its flavor structure from good to great.

• Although it’s important to taste and season a dish while you’re cooking, the constant tasting can lead to you generating palate fatigue before the dish is even served. A few ways to reset your palate is to chew on celery sticks, smell a glass of cold water before sipping, or eat a small salad made of tender and bitter greens.

Delivering A “Flavor Punch”

Now that you understand how flavors are constructed and balanced, let’s briefly discuss a concept that I commonly refer to as the “flavor punch.” This approach is used when you want to serve an extremely flavorful dish, but it should be implemented with caution since it’s easy to overwhelm a person’s palate.

The basic concept of delivering a “flavor punch” is to pick one of the four major flavors, (salty, sweet, bitter, or sour), or a strong, piquant ingredient, and add enough to make it slightly overbearing. Then, use a balancing ingredient to bring the dish back into focus, essentially taming the “overbearing” flavor profile.

This approach is commonly used in Asian flavor profiles, including sweet and spicy, sweet and sour, salty and sour, etc. This contrasts the standard European approach to seasoning food, where commonly small, subtle amounts of salt, acid, and spice are added to a dish until an underlying balance is achieved. In a lot of Asian cuisine, especially that of Southeast Asia, a dish is first made too spicy, sour, or sweet, and is then balanced with additional ingredients.

The “Flavor Punch” approach is especially effective when creating small courses as part of a tasting menu, or single bite hors d’oeuvres (a.k.a. canapés) served before the main meal. It’s important to remember this method of constructing flavors isn’t always appropriate. But if intense, complex flavors are what you’re trying to create, the “Flavor Punch” approach might be just the technique you’re looking for.

Using “Flavor Interruptions”

Another approach for preventing palate fatigue and making a dish more interesting is implementing “flavor interruptions.” Although it’s important to combine the five basic

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tastes in varying degrees to create a well balanced dish, when mixed together, you’re still creating a singular flavor profile.

What’s sometimes useful is placing a contrasting flavor pocket, or “interruption,” as a garnish on various parts of the plate. Every few bites the tastebuds encounter a new, contrasting flavor, helping it to reset the palate mid-course.

For example, let’s envision a rich, braised short rib served with a simple classic; creamy mashed potatoes. Both are rich and delicious, but together can quickly cause palate fatigue. You can try balancing the fat by mixing acid into the potatoes or a piquant element into the short rib sauce, but you may not want to experience those elements bite after bite.

This is where a good “FI” ingredient can come into play; instead of adding balancing components directly to the main ingredients of a dish, add a complimentary/contrasting ingredient as a garnish. In the case of the short rib, a simple garnish of bitter greens, like frisee salad, will add balance and contrast to the short rib every few bites, allowing you to enjoy the richness of perfectly braised beef, while the cleansing, FI component, resets the tastebuds, helping to prevent palate fatigue.

CHOOSING PRIMARY AND SECONDARY FLAVORS

The primary ingredient is the headliner of your dish, and like any good headliner, you need secondary performers to help the star shine. A common pitfall that trips up many inexperienced cooks is creating overly complex dishes with far to many components for any one to shine. When constructing flavors, less is more, and it’s also much more difficult to pull off because there are less components, flavors, and techniques to hide behind. Remember these words: “Complexity hides flaws.”

Usually when a dish has lots of different components and flavors going on at the same time, it reveals (to the trained eye), a lack of confidence. Inexperienced cooks know on a subconscious level they lack the tools and knowledge to make a simple dish shine. They attempt to mask their lack of cooking confidence by introducing complexity, hoping if they add enough flavors, colors, fancy squiggles and “swooshes” of sauce, maybe no-one will notice their fundamentally flawed dish.

While on an advanced level there are complex dishes that are masterful achievements, a bold statement can be made by serving a simple dish flawlessly cooked and executed. This is why every dish you create should have a focused primary ingredient, with two-to-three secondary components added with the sole purpose of making the primary shine. This isn’t to say a dish should only have four ingredients, or even four components; but once your primary ingredient is identified, every other component in the recipe or garnish placed on the plate should be there for the sole purpose of elevating the primary ingredient. If it doesn’t enhance your primary, the ingredient simply doesn’t belong. Understanding this concept is the first step to creating clean and focused flavors.

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Using the F-STEP worksheets included in this curriculum will help you zero in on your primary and secondary ingredients, assisting you in making a well-focused, flavorful dish.

One of the books I constantly use and always recommend is The Flavor Bible. This is an invaluable resource when attempting to create new dishes. Simply look up the primary flavor you wish to make the star of your recipe, and The Flavor Bible will list secondary ingredients known to greatly complement the primary.

Cookbooks written by your favorite chef are another great resource for inspiring flavor structure. Instead of getting tunnel vision and following their recipes to the ‘T’, simply look up your primary flavor in the cookbook’s index and study the two-or-three main secondary components paired with the primary. Write these ingredients down and then quickly close the book (lest you become “overly influenced”), instead, taking chef’s flavor structure and making it your own.

Yet the most important step in creating a great dish is understanding how to select the highest quality ingredients, whether they be the primary or secondaries. Starting with great ingredients will give you a massive advantage over anyone who lacks the knowledge or will to track them down. It doesn’t matter how good your technique, seasoning, or execution is, if you can’t select good ingredients, your food will always be mediocre at best.

SELECTING NON SEASONAL INGREDIENTS

Before we end our discussion on flavor with the seasonal produce buying guide, let’s first talk about non-seasonal ingredients commonly available year-round at large supermarkets or specialty stores. As we previously discussed, having the knowledge to select high quality ingredients will put you a mile ahead of the competition before the race even starts. When great ingredients are combined with the appropriate technique and solid execution, you’re well on your way to cooking and creating amazing food.

Buying Spices

Spices are dried seeds, roots, bark, or flowers used to flavor and color food. Most common spices such as cinnamon, cloves, pepper, cardamom, etc., are grown in the tropical regions of India, Africa, and Asia.

When purchasing spices, always buy whole (not pre-ground) when available. Whole spices will not only stay fresh longer, but will have a superior flavor when ground fresh.

The trick to effectively using spices? Toast them whole in a dry pan over medium heat. The toasting will release essential oils, deepening and intensifying the flavor. When using this technique, let your nose be your guide. Once the spices are fragrant, they can

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be used whole in sauces and soups (later strained our), or ground into a fine powder using a dedicated spice grinder.

Shake the toasted, ground spices through a screen or sieve to separate any larger chunks that would adversely effect the dish’s texture. Freshly ground cinnamon always makes superior cinnamon rolls, until you chomp down on a section of cinnamon stick that wasn’t sifted prior to baking.

Although having a separate grinder for your spices and coffee is preferable, grinding chunks of stale, dry bread in between uses will remove most of the spice’s essential oils. Since plastic is porous and more readily takes on aromas, stainless steel coffee grinders are a better choice for spices.

Herbs

In very broad terms, herbs can be thought of as any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavoring food. The terms “herb” and “spice” are sometimes used interchangeably because some spices are derived from portions of herbs, such as cilantro seeds being called coriander once separated from the rest of the plant and dried.

Herbs used for cooking come in two forms, fresh and dried. Although fresh herbs can be used almost exclusively, dry herbs are only effective during long, drawn out cooking techniques for sauces, soups, or braising. Dry herbs take time to not only re-hydrate and flavor the surrounding liquid, but also can have an off putting texture if consumed in their dry state.

While dry basil can be added to tomato soup or sauce with great results (assuming it’s slowly simmered), you can imagine what would happen if it was sprinkled over fresh tomatoes as part of a summer salad. The texture of the dry basil would be unpleasant to say the least. Yet dried basil’s fresh counterpart is equally at home in a raw tomato salad or a slow cooked tomato soup.

In the later example, fresh basil should be added either as a garnish just before serving, or simmered in the soup five to ten minutes before finishing. Any long exposure to heat will break down the basil’s delicate flavor, which is true of any tender, leafy herb.

Woody herbs on the other hand (rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, and mature sprigs of oregano), will hold up better to extended periods of cooking, but this still doesn’t make them indestructible. The trick is to expose fresh herbs to heat just long enough to extract their desired flavor, but not a second longer.

Remember this rule: fresh is for finishing, dried is for cooking. Just like any other cooking rule, this one does have exceptions but will rarely lead you astray

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For a more controlled and subtle approach, make a tea by infusing fresh or dry herbs directly into hot water or stock. Allow to steep until the desired flavor is achieved (about 10 minutes, but let your nose be your guide). Add the fresh herb extraction in small portions to your sauces, soups, or broths.

Poultry

When purchasing poultry, especially chicken, one of the most important factors to consider is how the animal was raised. “Free Range” is a big buzzword these days among chicken producers and marketers, and although in practice produces better poultry, it can easily be used to mislead the consumer. The problem is, in the United States, the USDA’s only requirement for labeling poultry “Free Range” is the animal has been allowed to access the outside.

However, USDA regulations do not specify the quality or size of the outside range nor the duration of time an animal must have access to the outside. So in reality, a chicken can be shoved into a 2’X2’ wire cage, dropped in a muddy pasture for five minutes before slaughter, and because it had “access to the outside,” labeled a “free range” product.

This is why it’s important to know where your chicken and other poultry comes from. A simple internet search for the farm providing the chicken should turn up all the information you need to make an informed purchase.

Other things to consider when purchasing poultry:

• Lesser quality birds are usually injected with brine, which not only makes them juicier, but also increases water weight. Since you’re more than capable of brining a bird yourself (and will usually have better results, not to mention more control), don’t waste your money on extra water weight caused by injection brining.

• A high quality bird will usually have a yellowish-white skin. The skin should also not be torn or bruised.

• Pay attention to how your supermarket stocks the poultry. If they are stacked one-on-top of the other in a high tower, it is likely the additional weight has damaged the flesh and could affect the product’s overall texture.

The most important take away: know where your poultry is coming from and how it is treated, housed, and produced. Although it may take a little extra time to do the research, the end product will be vastly improved while making it safer to consume.

Seafood

Let me be clear; there are full volumes of books that discuss the quality, sustainability, and the world economics influencing the production of fish. But this section would be

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remiss if we didn’t at least tackle the debate of farmed vs. wild, and discuss some reliable methods to determine the quality and freshness of popular forms of seafood.

Although world-wide over fishing is dictates an increasing number of seafood species be produced via aquaculture, no where else is the debate of wild vs. farmed more misunderstood than salmon. It can be argued wild salmon has better color and flavor than most of it’s farmed brethren, but it’s important to make an informed purchasing decision based on the intended application.

Wild salmon (along with any other fresh water fish), commonly contains tape worms which can only be killed through cooking or extended periods of deep freezing. If you intend to cook your salmon on the rare side or are planing to use it for sashimi, farm-raised salmon is the only safe option.

But farm raised salmon usually contain higher levels of mercury than their wild counterparts, and are often fed special food pellets to dye their flesh pink; (in the wild, salmon’s flesh is naturally pink due to it’s preferred diet of crustaceans).

Some farm raised salmon are better than others, and there are “sustainable aquacultures” like Loch Duart and Skuna Bay that allow salmon to thrive in a natural, controlled environment. This can vastly improve quality while helping to prevent over-fishing of wild salmon and other species.

When selecting certain forms of shell fish and crustaceans, it is helpful to understand in the United States, they are commonly classified based upon their size. For example, a “U10 Scallop” means an average size of 10 to a pound, so each individual scallop will weigh a little less than two ounces each. A “16/20 shrimp” means there are 16-20 shrimp per pound. Just like scallops, the higher the number, the smaller the size.

Besides the above, there are some general guidelines you should keep in mind when picking out fish and seafood:

• When purchasing any type of seafood, it should never smell “fishy,” but instead smell like sea water. The flesh should not be slimy.

• When purchasing whole fish, the gills should be dark red in color and the eye clear. When a whole fish is no longer fresh, the gills will become grey and the eyes hazy. A good indication your seafood purveyor is trying to hide something...the head is removed. The exception to this rule is whole, frozen fish, where the head is commonly removed for ease of storage.

• Live bivalves such as oysters, clams, and mussels should have closed shells. Open shells are an indication they’re no longer alive and should not be consumed.

• Shell fish such as lobster and crab are best purchased during the colder months since warm sea waters will often result in mealy flesh and degrade the normally sweet flavor and firm texture.

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Beef

One of the most indelible food memories I have is in 2005, eating Kobe beef sashimi at a little Japanese restaurant in Castro Valley, California. The fat marbling was so intense, the flesh appeared to be just as white as it was red. It tasted of beef, with strong hints of walnuts, parmesan, and umami. It was the intense amount of marbling that allowed this flavor to exist; without the fat, beef has poor quality and little flavor. Although Kobe (and its american cousin, Waygu), routinely scores off the USDA grading charts, far above prime, these extremes exemplify the importance of understanding how beef is graded.

There are eight USDA levels of quality upon which meat is graded, determined by two primary factors; intramuscular fat marbling and the animal’s age. In general, the more fat and the younger an animal is, the more tender it will be. The USDA grades, from highest to lowest are:

• U.S. Prime - Highest in quality and intramuscular fat. Currently, about 2.9% of all carcasses graded will achieve a prime designation.

• U.S. Choice - High quality and widely available. Currently about 53.7% of all carcasses graded receive a choice designation. The biggest difference between prime and choice is the amount of intramuscular marbling.

• U.S. Select - Lowest grade sold in retail or restaurants. Fairly inexpensive but is much less juicy or tender than choice and prime grades.

• U.S. Standard - Lower quality, yet economical. Lacks marbling.• U.S. Commercial - Low quality, lacking tenderness and produced from older

animals.• U.S. Utility• U.S. Cutter• U.S. Canner

Utility, cutter and canner grades are rarely used for retail applications and are instead relegated to animal food and other low end, canned products.

Another major factor to consider when purchasing beef is the diet on which cattle are raised. Within the last decade or two, it has become popular to purchase and serve grass fed beef. And while 100% grass-fed diets do give the beef a different flavor and according to some make it healthier to consume, it usually comes at the price of tenderness and marbling.

Because corn-fed beef produces much more intramuscular fat than cattle raised on a strict 100% grass diet, the flavor and tenderness of the former is almost always preferred in blind taste tests over the latter.

This has led some cattle producers to compromise by first pasture-raising and grass-feeding their cattle, and then finishing them on a high corn diet right before slaughter to increase intramuscular fat.

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To improve overall tenderness and flavor, beef is often aged, allowing endogenous proteolytic enzymes to weaken structural proteins. There are two major approaches to aging beef; wet and dry.

Wet-aging is accomplished using vacuum packaging to reduce spoilage and also maintain a higher yield (as beef dry ages, it looses water weight, thus reducing “yield” and making it more expensive by the pound).

Dry-aging involves storing large, primal cuts of meat (primal cuts being large front or hindquarter sections of the animal), in humidity-controlled coolers. Since the outer surface dries out, dry-aging can support growth of molds (and spoilage bacteria if too humid), resulting in extra loss through trimming and evaporation. This is tolerated because evaporation concentrates the remaining proteins and increases flavor intensity. In fact, the spores that cause mold to occur on the surface of the beef are also responsible for it’s flavor and increased tenderness, since the bacteria will weaken collagen, which is responsible for making meat tough.

When beef is dry-aged, the majority of the tenderizing effect occurs in the first 10 days, although two-to-three days allows significant effects. Boxed beef, stored and distributed in vacuum packaging, is, in effect, wet-aged during distribution. Premium steakhouses dry age for a minimum of 21 to 28 days or wet age up to 45 days for maximum effect on flavor and tenderness.

Some chef’s will dry age their meat for 60-90 days, and in rare occasions, even longer, When beef is dry aged for this long, it develops incredibly complex flavors reminiscent of walnuts and aged cheese, with a deep “beefiness.” Because fat plays an important role in moisture retention and flavor development, long dry aging is usually reserved for prime grades of meat of meat. However, choice beef will realize some benefits (mainly tenderness) with a short stint in the aging room, about 10-30 days.

When purchasing beef, it’s important to consider the intended use of the cut. If you’re a true steak connoisseur, then you may find your money is well spent on a prime grade, dry-aged tender cut such as a New York Strip, Fillet of Beef, or Ribeye Steak. If, however, you are purchasing an extremity cut that is naturally tough, like the rib portion, it is not necessary to spend the money on prime grades since these cuts contain a large amount of fat regardless, and are usually made tender through long, slow cooking, which also creates complex flavors that would otherwise require dry aging.

While the flavors created by dry-aging are not the same as those yielded by slow cooking, when extremity cuts are braised or slow cooked, the differences are negligible.

Pork

Finish this sentence: “Pork, the _______________.”

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave, grew up outside the US, or were born after 1995, I’m sure you instantly filled in the blank with “the other white meat.” What few people understand is that this five word slogan almost single-handedly destroyed the quality of American pork which is just now starting to recover.

In 1987, in an effort to compete with chicken, the National Pork Board began an advertising campaign branding pork as “the other white meat” in an attempt to position it as a healthy source of protein. Although the advertising campaign was highly successful, it had an unintended side effect; farmers started to selectively breed and produce leaner styles of pork, favoring the production of pork with less fat.

As we discussed in our beef section, intramuscular fat plays a major role in meat’s tenderness, flavor, and ability to maintain juices throughout the cooking process. Just think for a second if beef farmers had gotten together and decided they were no longer going to produce prime grades of beef in an attempt to compete with the health benefits offered by chicken and turkey.

Although it might seem like an extreme example, this is exactly what occurred with pork, which is why, to this day, many pork chops and tenderloins have poor marbling and dry out quickly when cooked.

However, all is not lost. Well-marbled pork is making a comeback and can be purchased from high-end supermarkets and butchers.

Since pigs are raised in various conditions, try and purchase “all natural” pork whenever possible. This will ensure your pork is hormone-free, which can have a large effect on its flavor. If you’re really after a well-marbled piece of pork, try purchasing the Berkshire Breed, which is also commonly referred to as Kurobuta in Japan.

The Berkshire breed was refined in the 1800s and has remained pure ever since, meaning it was never bred to compete with the low fat qualities of chicken. One of America’s largest producers of Berkshire pork is Snake River Farms, which, in my experience, has produced consistently good quality pork.

For a truly “porktastic” experience, try to get your hands on the Mangalitsa, which is a Hungarian breed of pig prized by chefs for its intensely marbled flesh and deep, porky flavor, it’s pretty much the Kobe equivalent of pork breeds. Because they are in such high demand, they’re usually snatched up by conspiring chefs before they ever have a chance to make it to the open market, but if you do enough digging, you should be able to find a good source in your area or online. If you’re really passionate about making sausage or other cured meat products, this is the pork to have.

GUIDE TO SEASONAL PRODUCE

The fact that “local, seasonal, fresh,” and “organic” have become marketing buzz words for the restaurant industry shows you how far our industrialized food system has taken

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us from our roots. Chefs should not get special accolades for buying “fresh, seasonal, produce” because it’s their job to start with the highest quality ingredients available. Saying your menu is seasonal is like saying “hi, I’m a car mechanic, I fix cars that don’t work.”

Since purchasing high quality, seasonal ingredients is so important, included in the following pages is a season-by-season, month-by-month, break down to be used as a “Seasonal Buying Guide.” This is especially helpful for planning a special menu 3-6 months out, to ensure the produce you’ll be using is the highest quality ingredient possible. Included in this guide are quick tips that give you further information for selecting and preparing seasonal produce.

Winter

During Winter, root vegetables and citrus reign supreme and should have prominent places on your menu. This is a great time to explore hearty, rustic dishes that warm the body and spirit after a long, cold day. “Low and slow” cooking techniques such as stewing, braising and slow roasting are well suited to this time of year, when the human body naturally craves richer, heavier flavors.

December

As the bridge month between Fall and Winter, December is your last chance for Fall specialties like apples and many forms of squash. This time of year also marks the true start of citrus season with specialties like Meyer lemons, blood oranges, and cara cara oranges starting to become widely available.

Produce Picking Tips - Beets

Always try and purchase beets with the greens still attached as these are a great indicator of the plant’s overall freshness. Never buy beets with wrinkled skin, which indicates they’re surely pass their prime. Once purchased, remove beet greens if you don’t plan on using immediately, and store in a cool dry place, such as a refrigerator’s crisping draw or a cool cellar, for up to two weeks.

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DecemberDecemberDecember

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Spinach• Bok Choy• Beets

• Red• Gold• Chioggia

• Broccoli• Brussels Sprouts• Cauliflower• Cabbages

• Red• Green• Napa• Savoy

• Chicories• Radicchio• Belgian• Curly Endive• Escarole• frisée

• Greens• Kale• Collard• Mustard

• Greens (cont.)• Chard

• Red• Green• Rainbow

• Root Vegetables• Parsnips• Celery Root• Rutabagas• Sunchokes• Turnips• Potatoes

• Fingerling• Yukons• Sweet Potatoes• Yams

• Winter Squash• Butternut• Acorn• Delicato• Pumpkins

• Orange• White• French Red

• Wild Mushrooms• Chanterelles

• Apples• Granny Smith• Pink Lady• Braeburn• Fuji• McIntosh• Crabapples• Kiwi

• Kumquats• Dates• Cranberries• Pomegranates• Persimmons• Citrus

• Navel Oranges• Satsumas Mandarins• Fall Glo Tangerines• Meyer Lemons

• Pears• Bosc• D'Anjou• Comice • Quince

• Nuts• Almonds• Walnuts• Chestnuts• Pecans• Pistachios

Quick Tip - Using Chicories to Balance Flavors

Winter is time for rich, braised dishes and heavy flavors. Although these dishes can be comforting on a cold day, one still runs the risk of creating “palate fatigue,” where bite after bite of food becomes one dimensional, with the heavy, fatty flavors coating and deadening the palate.

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A great remedy for palate fatigue caused by a rich, winter dish, is the bitterness offered by the chicory family including radicchio, endive, and frisée. Some examples of possible pairings are:

• Frisée salad paired with duck pâté or mousse.• Veal sweetbreads served with sautéed endive.• Braised beef short ribs garnished with thinly sliced radicchio.

The addition of bitter chicories will cut through the palate coating fat, while the fat will help balance the overbearing chicory bite. This yin and yang approach will yield a more interesting and complex flavor structure.

January

JanuaryJanuaryJanuary

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• California Haas Avocado• Broccoli• Cauliflower• Brussels Sprouts• Cabbages

• Napa• Bok Choy• Savoy

• Celery• Celery Root • Chard• Leeks• Kale • Collard/Mustard Greens• Fennel

• Root Vegetables• Beets• Turnips• Carrots• Parsnips • Rutabagas• Sunchokes• Sweet Potatoes• Yams

• Chicories• Radicchio• Endive • frisée

• Butternut Squash• Hedgehog Mushrooms

• Citrus• Lemons• Meyer Lemons• Mandarins• Blood Oranges• Cara Cara Orange • Red Grapefruit• Tangerines• Navel Orange

• Kiwi• Kumquat• D’Anjou Pear• Bosc Pear• Pink Lady Apple

January is the true start of the produce Winter season, as apples and squash from Fall fade away until the following year. As the citrus season continues to strengthen, look for prices to drop and quality to improve. The Cara Cara oranges will start to taste like candy and you’ll notice the flesh of blood oranges start to darken into a rich burgundy.

Produce Picking Tip - Leeks

A close relative to onions and garlic, leeks can add a wonderful aromatic and sweet element to stocks, soups, and sautés, especially when cooked slowly over low heat. The white part of leeks are the most commonly used portion, since leeks are more

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fibrous in the dark green regions. To get the most for your money, select leeks with the largest amount of white available. The green portion can be blanched until tender and puréed into pestos, herb oils, or any other application benefitting from a stable, dark green color and faint onion flavor.

Produce Prep Tip - Broccoli

The best part of broccoli is by far the stem if properly prepared. Simply peel the outer fibrous layer with a vegetable peeler, cut into 1/4” slices on the bias, and blanch until tender. The blanched and sliced stems can now be roasted or sautéed, served alone or as part of a vegetable medley.

February

FebruaryFebruaryFebruary

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• California Asparagus• Haas Avocados• Broccoli• Cauliflower• Brussels Sprouts • Cabbages

• Napa• Savoy • Chard• Collard/Mustard Greens

• Fennel • Root Vegetables

• Beets• Turnips• Carrots• Parsnips

• Just Starting• English Peas• Fava Beans

• Chicories• Radicchio• Endive• frisée

• Sunchokes• Butternut Squash• Hedgehog Mushrooms• Sweet Potatoes• Yams

• Citrus• Lemons• Meyer Lemons• Mandarins• Blood Oranges• Cara Cara Orange• Red Grapefruit• Tangerines• Navel Orange

• Kiwi• Kumquat• D’Anjou Pear• Bosc Pear• Pink Lady Apple

As the last full month of Winter, you’ll notice the quality of citrus fruits are in full swing, with many varieties starting to peak. If the Winter is mild however, you will start to see glimmers of Spring towards the end of the month, with the appearance of english peas and fava beans imported from South America. The quality will still be marginal and prices high, so let your Winter fever fester for another month until these early Spring crops start to emerge at a lower price with higher quality.

Produce Storing Tip - Root Vegetables

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Once picked, root vegetables can be kept for months if stored properly. If you have access to a cellar with an ambient temperature of 50-60°F/10-15°C, this is a prime location for long term storage, especially if placed in clean sand, which helps to regulate the root vegetable’s moisture. If storing in a refrigerator, place in a vegetable drawer, preferably buried in sand. When ready to use, simply rinse under cold running water and cook as desired.

Produce Prep Tip - Brussels Sprouts

Just like eggs, brussels sprouts contain sulfur compounds that break down and develop a strong aroma if over cooked. This is why so many people equate brussels sprouts with rotten eggs. To avoid the “rotten egg” flavor, always blanch the brussels sprouts in a large pot of salted, boiling water until tender (about 3-5 minutes). Shock immediately in ice water and allow to cool thoroughly before draining and drying. From here, use a high heat cooking method like frying, roasting, or sautéing, to slightly char the outer portion of the brussels sprout while warming through. The goal is to cook brussels sprouts as quickly as possible to avoid the development of sulfuric flavors.

Spring

As the cold of Winter slowly fades and temperatures start to rise, you’ll find people naturally craving fresh, light flavors. As the days become warmer, your dishes and flavor structures should lighten, and heavy Winter techniques like braising, confit, and stewing should give-way to poaching, grilling, and sautéing.

In this transition time from cold to warm, you should be listening to your own cravings. Go to a local farmer’s market (if available), or a supermarket with a good produce section, and take the time to inhale deeply. Your nose will instantly tell you what is fresh and in season; the astringent green smell of fava beans, the season’s first strawberries, or the floral smells of Winter citrus hitting its peak.

March

March is the bridge month between Winter and Spring, making menu planning simultaneously exciting and frustrating, especially since Winter produce is starting to wane in quality before Spring ingredients fully ripen. This is especially true at the beginning of March, when a colder than normal winter season has preceded.

Since March can still seem like Winter in many parts of the Northern hemisphere, this is a good time to say goodbye to your favorite braised dishes and Winter ingredients as they will surely be out of place at the end of this month.

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MarchMarchMarch

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• California Asparagus• Haas Avocado• Artichokes• Broccoli• Cauliflower• Brussels Sprouts• Cabbages

• Napa• Savoy

• Chard• Collard/Mustard Greens• Fennel Root

• Celery Root• English Peas• Fava Beans• Chicories

• Radicchio• frisée

• Sunchokes• Spring Garlic• Spring Onion• Hedgehog Mushrooms• Tatsoi• Leeks

• Citrus• Meyer Lemon• Blood Oranges• Red Grapefruit• Tangerines• Navel Orange

• Kiwi• D’Anjou Pear• Pink Lady Apple• Strawberries• Kumquats

Produce Prep Tip - Sunchokes (AKA Jerusalem Artichokes)

Sunchokes (also known as Jerusalem Artichokes), are a species of sunflower native to North America. The plant’s tuber is the edible portion, with a flavor cross between artichoke heart, potato, and parsnip. Because it’s a dense root, it’s best treated like a potato, using the root vegetable blanching method, or simmered until tender and then mashed/puréed.

Produce Prep Tip - Artichokes

While artichokes are commonly steamed and served whole, there are some applications that call for the cook to first trim or otherwise slice. It is important to note that artichokes are extremely bitter in their raw state, and this bitterness can easily transfer to other ingredients in the kitchen through contact with your knife, cutting board, and hands. When finished preparing artichokes, it is imperative you thoroughly wash your hands, knife, and cutting board before handling any other products.

April

Although the Spring equinox is technically in March (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), April is the true start of the Spring season as far as chefs are concerned. During this month, Spring crops will become available at reasonable prices and increased quality. These ingredients include asparagus, english peas, fava beans, and baby root vegetables like turnips, heirloom carrots, and radishes.

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It’s during this time the hyper-seasonal ramp (which is like a cross between Spring garlic and leeks) emerges for a short period of time, usually for only a couple weeks at the end of March or beginning of April. Ramps can be used in pestos, chopped and added at the last minute to soups, or charred under the broiler with a little oil, sea salt, and freshly cracked black pepper.

AprilAprilApril

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• California Asparagus• Haas Avocado• Artichokes• Broccoli• Cauliflower• Fennel Root• Celery Root• English Peas• Fava Beans• Chicories

• Radicchio• frisée

• Spring Garlic• Spring Onions• Leeks• Baby Beets• Mâche• Belgian Endive• Baby Turnips• Baby Carrots• Baby Radishes• Sweet Onions

• Citrus • Meyer Lemon• Red Grapefruit• Tangerines• Navel Orange

• Tropical Fruits• Kiwi • Mango• Papaya

• D’Anjou Pear• Strawberries

Produce Picking Tip - Avocados

When selecting avocados, they shouldn’t be firm or overly soft. Because they’re so fragile, you risk bruising an avocado by poking or squeezing too aggressively. Instead, gently press the pad of your thumb into the top of the avocado where the stem would normally attach. It should be soft but not mushy. Also, if you smell the same spot where the stem would attach, it should smell like a ripe avocado.

Now push back the little bud at the top of the avocado and look inside the resulting dimple. If it’s brown, then so is the avocado. If it’s green and the area around the dimple is soft but not squishy, the avocado is both ripe and green.

If you don’t plan on using your avocados within a day or two of purchase, buy firm avocados and allow to ripen at room temperature in a paper bag.

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May

Spring vegetables are now in full swing and wild morel mushrooms will make an appearance after rain storms. This is your last chance for Meyer lemons and if Spring is on the hotter side of seasonal norms, start looking for the emergence of stone fruits like apricots and apriums (an apricot/plum hybrid).

Strawberries, although usually decent during April, will start to drop in price while gaining in quality during the month of May.

MayMayMay

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• California Asparagus• Haas Avocado• Artichokes• Broccoli• Cauliflower• Fennel Root• Celery Root • English Peas• Fava Beans• Chicories

• Radicchio• frisée

• Spring Garlic• Spring Onions• Leeks

• Baby Beets• Mâche• Belgian Endive• Baby Turnips• Baby Mixed Carrots• Baby Mixed Radishes• Sweet Onions (Texas 10/15)• Beets• Cabbages• Chard• Corn (new)• Morel Mushrooms• Sugar Snap Peas• Fingerling Potatoes• Bloomsdale Spinach

• Citrus• Meyer Lemon• Red Grapefruit• Navel Orange

• Apriums• Apricots • Rhubarb• Kiwi• Mango• Papaya• D’Anjou Pear• Strawberries

Summer

As Spring turns to Summer, the days get longer and hotter, which make many crave refreshing fruits and light dishes. The prime crops to keep an eye on are melons and stone fruits including peaches, plums, cherries, and apricots. This is a great time to practice your quick cooking methods such as grilling, roasting, and poaching.

Summer also presents the opportunity to play with the complex flavors and slightly bitter compounds formed when “charring” food on a hot grill, over an open fire, or under a broiler. This “char” isn’t limited to proteins, and can also be used to add flavor to fruits (peaches, watermelon, plums) and vegetables (asparagus, artichokes, corn).

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June

June is the transition month between Spring and Summer. Look for your favorite Spring vegetables to weaken in quality (fava beans, asparagus, green garlic) while new Summer crops will start to emerge, (peaches, cherries and corn).

JuneJuneJune

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Haas Avocado• Artichokes• Asparagus• Beets• Broccoli• Cabbages• Chard• Cauliflower• Corn (Local)• Fennel

• Green Garlic• Morel Mushrooms• Spring Onions• Sweet Onions• English Peas• Snap Peas• Fingerling Potatoes• Baby French Beans• Yellow Wax Beans

• Peaches • Nectarines• Plums• Cherries• Apriums• Apricots• Rhubarb• Kiwi• Mango• Papaya• D’Anjou Pear• Strawberries

Produce Picking Tip - Peaches

When picking peaches, follow your nose. When they come into season, you’ll know it the second you venture into the produce section of your local supermarket. The fragrant stone fruit will reveal its presence before your eyes have a chance to spot it. A ripe peach should have no visual blemishes or bruises, smell fragrant, (especially on the stem end), and feel heavy for its size.

July

During this month, berries and stone fruits are in abundance, with their prices steadily dropping as their quality improves. Specialty melons will begin making an appearance at your local farmer’s markets or in well-stocked supermarkets.

July also marks the time in which early ripening varietals of heirloom tomatoes will start to become available. Although their quality will be good, your choices of varietals will be limited, and the price will still be relatively high compared to August and September, when most cultivars of heirloom tomatoes begin to fully ripen and reach their peak.

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JulyJulyJuly

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Basil• Eggplant• Sweet Peppers• Chanterelles• Sweet Onions• Summer Squash

• Gold Bar• Sunburst• Scallop• Bi-Color

• Blue Lake Beans• Romano Beans• Corn• Baby French Beans• Yellow Wax Beans• Tomatoes

• Heirloom• Mixed Cherry• True Vine

• Peaches• Nectarines• Apricots• Plums• Blackberries• Blueberries• Raspberries• Grapes• Specialty Melons

• Gala• Sharlyn• Juan Canary• Casaba• Orange Flesh

• Watermelon• Bartlett Pears

Produce Prep Tip - De-Silking Corn

During the peak of Summer, corn will be so fresh and sweet you might want to shave the kernels off the cob and just lightly sauté, or even serve raw in salsas. The problem is, corn has fine silk-like threads that run the length of the cob. These annoying silks get stuck in your teeth and a guest can misidentify it as a stray hair left by a careless cook.

To ensure this doesn’t happen, simply cut off the bottom 1.5 inches (3-4cm) of the corn cob while the husk is still in place. Next, microwave for 1 minute on high. This will generate enough steam within the husk to loosen the corn’s silk without actually cooking the corn. From here, simply peel back the husk as soon as it’s removed from the microwave and wipe with a clean kitchen towel. Your corn on the cob is now silk-free and ready to use.

August

As the hottest and final full month of Summer, August will be the last chance for many types of stone fruit. As stone fruit begins to fade, heirloom tomatoes will be dropping in price while gaining quality. Although slightly cliche, it’s almost a culinary crime to not serve a caprese salad during the month of August, since both tomatoes and basil are at their seasonal peaks.

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Be on the look out for specialty melons like casaba, juan canary, and ambrosia; all will be extremely sweet and fragrant due to Summer’s growing heat.

AugustAugustAugust

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Eggplant• Blue Lake Beans• Romano Beans• Basil• Sweet Peppers• Chanterelles• Summer Squash

• Gold Bar• Sunburst• Scallop• Bi-Color

• Corn• Baby French Beans• Yellow Wax Beans• Fresh Cranberry Beans• Okra• Sweet Onions• Tomatoes

• Heirloom• Mixed Cherry• True Vine• True Vine Roma

• Peaches• Nectarines• Plums• Blackberries• Blueberries• Raspberries• Grapes• Figs• Valencia Oranges• Specialty Melons

• Gala• Sharlyn• Juan Canary• Casaba• Orange Flesh• Ambrosia Melon

• Watermelon• Bartlett Pears

Produce Picking Tip - Melons

It seems everyone has a secret method for picking melons whether it’s poking, prodding, or thumping, but the best way to gauge ripeness is much less involved. Simply hold the melon in one hand and smell the stem end; it should have a sweet, fragrant smell and feel heavier than it looks, a good indication the melon is especially juicy and ripe.

Produce Storing Tip - Tomatoes

A tomato’s flavor will greatly suffer if stored below 55°F/13°C, especially if mature yet not fully ripe (i.e. green tomatoes). Exposing tomatoes to cold temperatures before they’re ripened will result in minimal flavor development, blotchy coloration, and a soft, mealy texture.

Fully ripe tomatoes are less sensitive to cold, but the flavor can still be degraded when exposed. Store tomatoes at room temperature because flavor-producing enzymes will slow under refrigeration, making cold tomatoes less tasty. If the tomatoes are extremely ripe and you’re concerned they may spoil at room temperature, store them in the fridge.

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Even after refrigeration, if the tomatoes are allowed to sit at room temperature for a day or two, a good percentage of enzymatic activity will return, resulting in more flavor.

Produce Picking Tip - Understanding Vine Ripe Tomatoes

Most “red tomatoes” found at local supermarkets are un-ripe, even though their bright red color would suggest otherwise. The reason? When tomatoes are fully ripe, they’re extremely fragile, making them difficult to ship in bulk. The industrial solution is to pick tomatoes while green and firm, then force-ripen via exposure to ethylene gas.

It’s important to note; ethylene gas is naturally produced by mature fruit right before ripeness is achieved. Exposure to ethylene gas is responsible for triggering specific enzymes in fruit, which in turn break down complex molecules while generating new compounds responsible for fruit’s sweetness, flavor, and fragrance.

When tomatoes are allowed to fully ripen on the vine, they will contain more sugar, acid, and complex flavor compounds, making them taste all around superior to their force-ripened counterparts. This led to certain tomato producers selling “vine ripe” tomatoes, which, as their name suggests, were fully ripened on the vine before being harvested and shipped.

The term “vine ripe,” however, was never legally defined by the USDA, which led to some less than scrupulous producers picking green tomatoes with a segment of the vine still attached, shipping, force ripening with ethylene gas, and selling as “vine ripe tomatoes.”

The moral of the story? If you want a true vine ripe tomato, buy it from a local farmer or farmer’s market, and only during mid Summer to early Fall.

Fall

Fall is perhaps the greatest of all seasonal transitions. Summer produce starts to peak just as Fall vegetables and fruits become available. This seasonal “cross-over” can lead to some creative and even exotic flavor pairings.

As the days become shorter and the nights cooler, look to comforting dishes using root vegetables and rich sauces such as stews and braises. But don’t forget, Fall is prime time for wild game, which pairs nicely with apples, quince, huckleberries, and persimmons.

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September

As a transitional month between Summer and Fall, September is a “chef’s playground” as far as produce is concerned. In this month, look for heirloom tomatoes, berries, and specialty melons to hit their peak. As these ingredients start to fade towards the end of the month, start incorporating root vegetables and squash into your cooking.

SeptemberSeptemberSeptember

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Eggplant• Blue Lake Beans• Basil• Sweet Peppers• Chanterelles• Sweet Onions• Summer Squash• Gold Bar • Sunburst,• Baby French Beans• Yellow Wax Beans

• Fresh Cranberry Beans• Okra• Artichokes• Shelling Beans• Celery Root• Chili Peppers• Tomatoes

• Heirloom• Mixed Cherry• True Vine• True Vine Roma

• Gravenstein Apple• Plums• Grapes• Blackberries• Blueberries• Raspberries• Grapes• Figs• Valencia Oranges• Persimmons

• Fuyu (firm)• Hachiya (soft)

• Pomegranates• Specialty Melons

• Juan Canary• Casaba• Orange Flesh

• Watermelon• Cantaloupe• Honeydew• Bartlett Pears• Asian Pears

Produce Picking Tips - Understanding Heirloom Tomatoes

When talking produce, an heirloom varietal is a cultivar that hasn’t been hybridized; in essence, it’s a true original. There are many reasons farmers and biologists may choose to hybridize a certain type of produce, the most common being the enhancement of flavor, appearance, size, and ability to resist disease or growing environment. However, this hybridization usually will come at the cost of another character trait, sometimes intentional, other times, unexpected.

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In the case of tomatoes, a recent finding reported in the journal Science states the selective breeding responsible for the even, red blush of tomatoes, making them look so enticing on supermarket shelves, may also be responsible for their lack of flavor.

According to World-Science.net:

“For about 70 years, breeders have selected tomato varieties with uniformly light green fruit before ripening. These tomatoes then turn red evenly as they ripen, and they look nice in a supermarket display. Powell and colleagues say the gene at the heart of uniform ripening codes for the production of a molecule called GLK2, which is a transcription factor, meaning it governs genetic activity. 

‘GLK2 boosts the fruit’s capacity for photosynthesis, the process of converting sunlight to sugars, Powell and colleagues found. The molecule also aids the production of  lycopene, a health promoting compound. But the uniform-ripening mutation disables GLK2, the researchers found. This leads to inferior development of photosynthesis-enabling cellular structure called chloroplasts, and in turn, lower production of key ingredients that give tomatoes their sweetness.”

While the hybridization of supermarket tomatoes made them look more appealing to the consumer, they actually became less flavorful and inferior in taste when compared to un-hybridized, heirloom varietals.

Another consequence of selective breeding is different species of tomatoes loose their unique identities and characteristics. Just stop and think for a second how boring the world would be if there were only one or two types of apple, melon, or poultry. Heirloom varietals give consumers and chefs more choices and control when selecting flavors for cooking.

October

Although Fall technically begins in September, your farmer’s market won’t start reflecting this transition until October. During this time, many different apple varieties will become available, as well as root vegetables, hearty greens that don’t appreciate the Summer’s heat, and numerous types of squash.

October is also your last chance for seasonal tomatoes. If you’re one to make (and can) your own tomato sauce, now’s the time to do it. Ideally, check your weather forecast and try to buy a flat or two of tomatoes right before the first frost hits. During this time, farmers will be harvesting all their tomatoes in a “use it or lose it” mindset, meaning they’ll be willing to sell bulk amounts at deep discounts.

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OctoberOctoberOctober

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Artichokes• Beets• Broccoli• Brussels Sprouts• Cabbage• Cauliflower• Celery Root• Chards• Chanterelles• Dried Beans• Green Beans• Escarole

• Kale• Kohlrabi• Fingerling Potatoes• Turnips• Sunchokes• Sweet Potatoes• Winter Squash• Yams• Tomatoes (Last Chance)

• Heirloom• Mixed Cherry• True Vine• True Vine Roma

• Apples (In General)• Cranberries• Kumquats• Lemons• Valencia Oranges• Bosc Pears• Comice Pears• Seckel Pears• French Butter Pears• Persimmons

• Fuyu (firm)• Hachiya (soft)

• Pomegranates• Quince• Nuts

• Almonds• Walnuts• Chestnuts

Produce Picking Tips - Sweet Potatoes & Yams

Closely related to grasses and lilies, yams are a tuber native to Africa and Asia. There are over 600 known varieties of yams and 95% of the world’s crops are grown in Africa. A true yam is usually much drier and starchier than a sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes on the other hand are a member of the morning glory family and can have an exterior color of white, yellow, red, purple, or brown, and the flesh can have a color range of white, yellow, orange, or a combination thereof. True sweet potatoes are usually categorized as “firm” or “soft,” based upon their texture after being cooked (i.e.. when a firm sweet potato is cooked, it still remains firm and intact versus a soft varietal).

The confusion between sweet potatoes and yams originated in the United States, where firm varieties were grown and widely distributed before the soft. When the soft varieties were later introduced and grown commercially, there was an obvious need to distinguish between the two categories of sweet potatoes.

“The African slaves had already been calling the ‘soft’ sweet potatoes ‘yams’ because they resembled the yams in Africa. Thus, ‘soft’ sweet potatoes were referred to as ‘yams’ to distinguish them from the ‘firm’ varieties.

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“Today the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires labels with the term ‘yam’ to be accompanied by the term ‘sweet potato.’ Unless you specifically search for yams, which are usually found in an international market, you are probably eating sweet potatoes!”

www.loc.gov

November

NovemberNovemberNovember

VegetablesVegetables Fruits

• Artichokes• Beets• Broccoli• Brussels Sprouts• Cabbages• Bok Choy• Chicories

• Radicchio• frisée• Endive• Escarole

• Cauliflower• Celery Root

• Chards• Chanterelles• Dried Beans• Leeks• Parsnips• Bloomsdale Spinach• Mustard Greens• Kale• Kohlrabi• Turnips• Sunchokes• Sweet Potatoes• Winter Squash• Yams

• Apples• Cranberries• Kumquats• Lemons• Mandarins• Tangerines• Kiwi• Pears

• Bosc Pears• Comice Pears• Shekel Pears• French Butter Pear

• Persimmons• Fury (firm)• Achy (soft)• Pomegranates• Quince• Nuts

• Almonds• Walnuts• Chestnuts• Pecans• Pistachios

• Valencia Oranges (winding down)

• Navel Oranges (mid November)

As November ushers in colder days, start looking for Fall classics to appear at supermarkets including many varieties of greens, apples, pears, nuts, and chicories. Now is the time to start planning your holiday menus based on both seasonality and cold weather techniques such as braising, stewing, and slow roasting.

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Produce Picking Tip - Pears for Poaching

Pear season spans from late fall through the winter months, making poached pears a great dessert option. It’s not only seasonal, but the spices commonly used when poaching pears (cloves, cinnamon, all spice, vanilla) are closely related to other dishes served in late Fall and Winter, making their integration into a seasonal menu seamless.

When selecting pears for poaching, not all varietals are created equal. While softer pears like Comice or Bartlett may be juicy and full of flavor, they quickly turn to mush and fall apart during poaching.

A much better choice are firm pear varietals, the most widely available being Bosc. The tiny Seckel or French Conference work great, but are harder to come by at your local super market, although you may have luck at a well-stocked farmer’s market.

Produce Picking Tips - Pumpkins

For years, pumpkins have been hybridized for their aesthetic appearance with flavor rarely considered, since most pumpkins produced are destined to be carved rather than consumed. If you’ve ever attempted to turn a carving pumpkin into pie, chances are you had bland results. When purchasing pumpkins for consumption, ask for small baking pumpkins or the “French Red” varietal; both are strains bread specifically for flavor and far superior to “front porch pumpkins.”

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