SEPT_OCTOBER_2015_FINAL_no bleed

the Savings issue

Damage Control, a lesser-known but extremely valuable kitchen skill. This Wednesday-night spaghetti sauce might taste like a deer season salt lick, but most times, a little tweaking could help it make the jump from “EWWWW” to “not so bad.” If you understand fundamental concepts of flavor dynamics, you can salvage a surprising amount of disappointing stovetop experiments. The Basic Moves Isolate Start off by isolating the main problem — usually the taste that made you flinch. Did you hit the gumbo with too much salt? Did you accidentally add four TABLEspoons of hot sauce instead of ¼ teaspoon? Take a second and compare the flavor of the damaged batch to ones that are done right. Analyze Now that you’re thinking about flavors, put it into a more detailed category than the first brain flash. The most common categories are: The first three are pretty simple: they’ve got the right ingredients, but need rebalancing to get closer to your ideal. (Burnt food requires its own set of steps.) Tweak Once you know the flavors that are overdone, you can counteract the extreme flavor with its chemical opposite. (Keep in mind that because of the infinite variety of recipes, there is no exact formula or “one-size-fits all” solution, so experiment.) • Spice — Neutral dairy products like sour cream or plain yogurt can mask capscicum (the chemical responsible for the burn) and add richness to many dishes. • Sweet — Balance with acids like lemon juice or vinegar (for savory dishes). • Salt —The key here is to dilute the dish, either with a liquid (stock or water) or in the case of more chunky dishes (salads, etc.), add more chunks. (If you’ve heard about putting potato chunks in soups to cut saltiness: bad news. It doesn’t really work. Sorry.) Salvage Overcooked foods require their own corrective dance steps. • Cool Off —Get your dish off of the heat and cooled off as quickly as possible. • Too Spicy • Too Sweet • Too Salty • Flat-out Burnt

Save the Dish

A few tips for saving a dish gone wrong. by Pableaux Johnson In the kitchen, as in life, sometimes things go terribly wrong.

After a long day, you might be sleepwalking through a stir-fry you’ve made a thousand times. Or maybe you’ve finally gotten around to trying out that heirloom beef stew recipe from your mom’s sainted Aunt Gertrude — a faded index card scrawled by a woman not known for her flawless penmanship. Your kitchen smells great, but as you take the first “cook’s taste,” you realize that something is not quite right. It could be a blast of searing jalapeño heat, a flinch- making level of salt or a burnt flavor that makes you want to scrape your tongue immediately . Either way, you’re looking for the UNDO button on your stovetop. After the initial response (“It’s BAD!”) you’ve got a simple choice: try to save the dish or switch to Plan B — a quick po-boy or the pizza delivery. Before you reach for the phone, consider this a chance to practice Culinary

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015