Appreciating Food as Sensory Art

It's in the sweet, delicate crunch of a freshly picked carrot-- the way it smells of earth.  The pleasure of snapping it between your teeth, the twist of your hand, the little tremors in your cheek.


It's in the perfect amount of aged balsamic vinegar and grassy olive oil drizzled over sliced heirloom tomatoes and the gentleness of mozzarella against the heartiness of a toasted baguette.

It's in just the pinch of cardamom in a batch of warm beignets-- the sensation of biting into a fluff of powdered sugar as it melts together with lightly salted caramel atop the crisp softness of fried dough.

To enjoy the sensory pleasures of eating, to revel in the simple pairing of ingredients or to honor the complicated task of folding together perfectly chilled croissant dough-- it opens up another dimension of appreciation not only for the food itself, but for how food comes to be.


Thomas Keller writes about the first time he skinned and butchered a cage of rabbits and how it forever transformed the way he thought about cooking and our relationship to what we eat. "Respect for food is a respect for life," he says.  It makes one think twice about over-cooking a piece of fish only to toss it in the trash with nary an after thought.

How the combination of flavors and textures stimulate different parts of your lips, your tongue, the roof of your mouth or the back of your throat, all the way down to how it fills you-- well, you could say creating a memorable sensation through food is a practice of sensory art.  It's in the aroma, the after taste, the way the flavors can be accentuated with a sip of wine.  Consider a simple piece of nigiri and how you can change your experience with a piece of fish simply by flipping it over, the oily flesh of fresh hamachi the first to hit your tongue. 


On this Earth Day, I think about what food means. About the Chilean grapes I see in the supermarket, the pesticides that coat their skin, the long hours they spent in a cargo container.  Versus a fresh local apple and how we live together throughout the seasons-- our summer is its summer, our winter is its winter-- and ultimately how that apple will taste when it's delicately sliced into a mixed green salad we can eat at its peak today rather than treated with chemicals for easy packaging and shipping across the world.

I think flavor, texture, taste and the very art of cooking and eating, of creating an incredible, genuinely fulfilling sensory experience has everything to do with how we treat our food, the land its grown on, and those who handle it with care.

So I guess on this Earth Day, I only want to say this: that if we respect our food and respect our earth, we receive that respect in return.

Two Childhood Favorites: Tea Eggs and Ketchup Fried Rice

Tea eggs are a very popular delicacy in Taiwan, where they're often served with stewed pork belly rice.  They're so popular, in fact, that growing up I'd walk to the local Family Mart or OK Mart to get fruit milk, a steamed bun, maybe some salt and pepper puffs, or a tea egg from an electric pot simmering next to the cash register.  I guess you could say that hardboiled eggs, gently cracked and cooked slowly in dark soy sauce is a pretty common sight in certain parts of Asia.

Some recipes for tea eggs call for different spices.  The simplest recipe, however, requires only water, hardboiled eggs, soy sauce, and black tea.  Most Asian markets will likely have tea egg spice bags that you can drop into your pot, which makes things easy.  Some people argue that adding a can of Coke or Cherry Coke really makes the flavors pop.

I haven't been able to find tea egg spice bags in Salt Lake (yet), so just made do with a simple recipe.  The tea eggs still come out tasty and beautifully marbled.

Simple Tea Eggs
Servings: 6 eggs


Ingredients

4 cups water
1 cup dark or double black soy sauce
1 can Cherry Coke (my friend Chi-Hao swears by it)
2 black tea bags (I used Oolong, Pu-erh or Assam)
2 pods of star anise
6 hardboiled eggs
(optional: cinnamon stick and/or whole peppercorn)


Preparation
1.  Gently crack your hardboiled eggs.
2.  Combine water, soy sauce and Cherry Coke in a pot and bring to a boil (make sure the pot is deep enough to hold the liquid and eggs, but narrow enough so that the soy mixture will cover the eggs)
3.  Once the water is boiling, place tea bags, star anise, eggs (and optional ingredients) into the water, turning the heat down to a simmer
4.  Simmer gently for at least two hours.

Something else we loved to eat when I was little was ketchup fried rice.  My understanding is that the Japanese were first to come up with this pairing.  While some people simply squeeze ketchup over their fried rice, my sister Lorin and I always preferred the ketchup stir-fried into the rice.  In many restaurants, you can get the fried rice wrapped in a thin omelet (omurice).

Ketchup Fried Rice
Servings: 4

Ingredients
Vegetable oil to taste
4-5 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup diced onions
4 garlic cloves, diced
1 cup frozen diced veggies, thawed (peas, carrots, whatever you like)
2 cups cold, leftover rice
1/2 cup ketchup
salt and white pepper to taste

Preparation
1.  Heat a little vegetable oil in your wok or fry pan (however much you're comfortable using to scramble 4-5 eggs).  Cook the eggs until just cooked (about 1-2 minutes), but do not overcook; remove eggs from pan.
2.  Add some more oil to your pan and cook onions, garlic and veggies on medium heat until onions are translucent and garlic is browned (about 2-3 minutes)
3.  Add rice to the hot pan, breaking up any chunks of rice with your spatula; stir-fry for 1-2 minutes or until rice softens
4.  Pour ketchup over your rice and continue to cook, flipping the rice frequently, until ketchup is lightly caramelized (about 1 minute), then add scrambled eggs back into the pan and flip the rice until the eggs are thoroughly and evenly combined with the rice.
5.  Add salt or white pepper to taste, if you desire.

Diego tried it for the first time the other day and LOVED it.  He gobbled up his bowl in two minutes flat.  Try it!