To Decorate Taste

Just a little treat for my cello recital. I must say the cello gets me cooking. It is strange but yes it is true. Everybody likes a little snack while or after you play. This is on my menu along with my mom's red velvet cake and blackberry bars. Speaking of blackberries you may think I have a picky pallet only for creamy sophisticated foods. Well I am a lot more simple then you think. My favorite food is blackberries. Get me a bucket full and I'm yours! I LOVE them. Back to my cookies. These chocolate chip cookies contain a special ingredient called mesquite flour. This flour has a chocolate aroma and makes an intense shadow taste into your food. I added a few ingredients based on my hopefully keen nose. These contents were the juice of one strawberry, a sprinkle of ginger and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I did this to add sort of a contrast with the chocolate, besides it never hurts to add some spice that is exotic to America. Today I have learned that contrasts intensify the flavor and give a shadow to your meal or dessert.

The Best Taste!

You might be tired of hearing about my pizza attempts; however, this time you might be slightly interested. Do you see this beautiful picture! It may not be perfectly round but darn it, it ain't mountain pizza (which is a good thing)! There is a big lesson in this episode of cooking keep trying! Yes, even for timid chefs. I can't stress this hard enough TRY TRY TRY!!!!!!!!! Try is your new mantra, say it every day and you will realize what you commenced actually succeeded. You'll go from making your typical chocolate cookie to perfecting pie and so forth. The best taste in life is something you put effort into. This is where you can use a self placebo effect. Meaning that if you say in your mind this is gonna work this is gonna work you will eventually find yourself tasting your food and saying yum ( by the way I never say yum because it is such a cliche` and sounds silly) or a more sophisticated adjective. This happens ( this is only my theory) because your brain gets wired for something good if you keep repeating this is gonna be good and when you taste the thing you made your brain automatically tells you delicious. I don't know for certain but that's my theory, for now anyway. Well that's my tip. Please use it!

Another Pesto, A Different Dish.

Delicious! No that's a boring word how about snazzy. Yep I really just have to thank my lucky stars that pesto is ( or nearly is anyway) around my perfection zone. I am really proud of pesto and I give a million thanks to the person who invented it. Say... we all should really think for a moment... if we were on our owns out in the wild do you think we would be making croissants just by gathering things from for example a forest? No, so think about it, we have come a long way from gathering greens and hunting meat just for a very poor survival. Nowadays we don't think like that, we actually have foodies who are so picky they wont touch anything that is "peasant food"., we have complex meals with cheese, sauce, veggies, and beyond! So you have to give a little thanks to the people who decided using oils ( I mean oil is in a majority of foods) and other more detailed things. I really feel lucky. You know what? No matter how professional I get I am going to remain an optimist on food. We are lucky to have the technology to make snazzy foods and experiment with a sense that is often ignored, taste. Go on in the kitchen! Pick something weird out like root beer in the kitchen and make your taste remember its position. Feel lucky you have food, in fact feel lucky you have the food of life. The food of life just gets more complex and delicious just like food! Go on with a smile do what you want, that is productive. Expand the complexity of humanity. Go on do it! I know you can conquer the kitchen of life!

Perfection With Pesto

Tonight, believe it or not, I made a quick, five minute pesto with some luxurious pasta. I had had a long forty minute bike ride and was looking forward to a nice rich dinner. Not many dinner choices were to be made. Basically I probably had around five options for something I hadn't had for lunch. We were very lucky and had spare basil so I whipped up some dinner with a trivial recipe and came out with something fabulous! The Parmesan really kicks the pasta up and with some good quality olive oil lurking deep into the flavor give the tongue a fruity taste. I learned today that even what seems to be a provincial recipe actually has a little more goodness than you would think!

Mountain Pizza!

On Friday ( a ways back) I made a pizza obviously. It may look, shall we say mountainous, in this image but it was utterly piquant. This beauty was made from scratch. I happened to be the dough maker while my mom made the artistic sauce and the flavorful caramelized onions. The onions really add a bite while the mushrooms will typically cool down the flavor and the roasted red peppers add color and a more burnt flavor to the mountain pizza. The lesson from this occurrence is: It doesn't matter what the food looks like, as long as it is tasty you and your friends will not even notice.