THE HOME COOK : Getting the Flavor Right

The hardest thing to learn in cooking is how to give a dish the right tone of flavor. Flavoring a dish requires full attention. Although most recipes give the precise amounts of herbs, spices or aromatics that should be added, you can’t depend on these ingredients being uniformly strong or fresh. The flavors of ingredients kept in jars can vary from lots of “oomph” to almost no taste.

One essential rule is to taste each ingredient before adding it to a recipe. This way you can know how strong or weak it is and whether it still retains its quality.

I remember two instances in different restaurants when the chefs’ failure to taste ingredients led to problems. In one restaurant, the fish sauce and some of the salads always tasted mysteriously metallic and disagreeable. It turned out that the guilty ingredient was rancid capers--the chef thought that anything preserved in a jar lasted forever. Preserved and frozen food deteriorates at a much slower rate than fresh, but it does spoil.

The problem in the other restaurant revolved around some of the pastas and salads, which tasted very rank and unpleasant. This time the culprit was the garlic. Although the garlic cloves looked fresh and pearly, the chef had bought them peeled in five-pound bags. The enzymes and flavor of peeled garlic cloves change dramatically over time, and these were unfit for use.

Here is the method I use to infuse fresh garlic flavor into a dish. Put as many peeled garlic cloves as needed on a chopping board. Sprinkle coarse or regular table salt over the cloves (proportion the amount of salt used to the size of the recipe you’re making). Finely chop the garlic cloves, or run them through a mini-processor, until the garlic juice blends with the salt crystals. Add this mixture to your recipe and proceed. (The small jars of garlic salt, onion salt and celery salt that you see in markets use this general principle.)

When using ginger root, citrus zest or any other highly flavorful ingredient, I use this same method. Generally I use citrus zest and ginger in sweet dishes, so I put a portion of the sugar and the citrus zest or ginger into the food processor, or chop by hand, so the flavor gets captured by the sugar crystals.

The two following recipes will clearly demonstrate how to do this. Aioli (pronounced “I-owe-Lee”) is garlic-flavored mayonnaise. It’s a good thing to have on hand because it adds zest to fish--especially cod--and boiled new potatoes, hard-cooked eggs or green beans. It is outstandingly good as a salad dressing with blue cheese crumbled on top.

The Lemon Cupcake recipe is fine to serve with all those fresh strawberries that are in the markets these days. The cupcakes are also very good with hot tea.

AIOLI (Garlic Mayonnaise)

3/4 teaspoon coarse salt

5 cloves garlic

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

Place salt on cutting board. Top with garlic cloves. Mince garlic, incorporating salt while chopping. Using flat edge of knife blade, mash and crush garlic and salt into paste. Add to mayonnaise in bowl and stir to mix thoroughly. Makes 1 1/2 cups.

LEMON CUPCAKES

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons grated lemon zest (about 2 lemons)

6 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups plain yogurt

1/4 cup butter, melted

Powdered sugar

Stir and toss together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in small mixing bowl. Combine lemon zest and 4 tablespoons granulated sugar in food processor. Process until mixture is very well blended. Add remaining 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, eggs, yogurt and melted butter. Beat until well mixed. Add flour mixture and mix just until blended. Do not over-mix.

Spoon batter into buttered medium muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake at 375 degrees about 12 to 15 minutes, or until tops are delicately browned and straw inserted into center comes out clean.

Remove from oven, gently pierce top of each cupcake 2 or 3 times with fork. Drizzle over each about 2 teaspoons Lemon Syrup, letting syrup run over top and around edge. Cool in pan few minutes, then remove. Just before serving, lightly dust with powdered sugar. Makes about 1 dozen cupcakes.

Lemon Syrup

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons water

Combine lemon juice, sugar and water in small saucepan. Bring to boil, boil 1 minute and set aside.

Note: Cupcakes are best served same day. If not serving immediately, wrap and freeze.