Sneaking in Flavor: Part of the Job, Most of the Fun

For 25 years now, literally every time I drop something into an ice bath, I get anxiety.  My brain goes right to, “holy $^#% it’s going to lose flavor, hurry up and get it out”.  Ok, so technically, there is very little diffusion when you cool something quickly (i.e. very little flavor escapes) unless you leave it in the ice for a very long time.

The point here is not that ice baths are bad, they’re great..  Rather, there is this element about cooking that keeps us constantly evolving that’s really beautiful.  There are all of these little opportunities when we’re cooking to sneak in more flavor.  It’s how we end up finding ways to surprise people with something that tastes way better than they expected and they don’t quite know why.  

What does this mean for us as chefs?  Well, for me, it means, being a great cook / making insanely delicious food is the product of far more effort than talent.  How far you’re willing to go to find little nuance and details that others don’t think about to make something better.  Leonardo Da Vinci is a great example of this.  His super power was not really how great of an artist he was.  It was how far he would go to observe every little detail; his level of curiosity to find what others were not willing to take the time to see.  He would spend months observing every little detail about something as mundane as a woodpecker’s tongue or a horse’s facial expression.  Walter Isaacson explains it really well in his biography: [Leonardo] described his method-almost like a trick—for closely observing a scene or object: look carefully and separately at each detail. He compared it to looking at the page of a book, which is meaningless when taken in as a whole and instead needs to be looked at word by word. Deep observation must be done in steps: "If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them and do not go to the next step until you have the first well fixed in memory”.   Taking this approach to rethinking every step of what you’re creating can have a profound impact.  Not to mention a lifelong pursuit that never gets boring.

The recipe below for quick seared tuna is a nice example.  I learned the technique from chef Anthony Amoroso years ago.  We actually used Hamachi not tuna.  It overcooks quickly.  So after a super quick sear on a wicked hot plancha-> we shocked the Hamachi in a soy and yuzu ice bath to chill the fish quickly.  So it cooled quickly BUT you didn’t have to race to take it out because it was friggin marinating too!

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