Turning up the heat amps up the flavours
If you’re bored with your cooking routine, a simple strategy for changing things up comes with heat. High heat. Slow and low is wonderful, if you have the time, but on the other end of the spectrum, a little fire offers exciting flavourful nuances to pique your palate.
Dried herbs, seeds and spices can be a first step in eliminating blandness. You can amp up their herbaceous and heady flavours by dry roasting/toasting them to release their oils and aromas before crushing in a mortar and pestle. Use whole spices such as cumin seeds, coriander, fennel, allspice, etc., because readyground spices lose their potency much faster than whole seeds. The toasting brings more depth when added to soups or sauces, or any dish that needs perking up.
Gently toasting or roasting nuts also brings more flavour as the process coaxes out their natural oils and aromas.
Toasted almonds, pine nuts and walnuts all add so much taste, aroma and crunch sprinkled over a salad or other savoury dishes. Roasting is essential when using hazelnuts, as you need to remove their bitter skins. Rub the still warm roasted nuts between a dry tea towel and the skins just fall away.
Dried chilies come back to life quickly kissed by a hot dry skillet, then crushed or ground – as in a salsa macha with toasted peanuts – or rehydrated in hot water and used whole and stuffed, or ground or blended with other toasted spices to be seasoned and reduced for curries or moles.
Infused chili oil is a snap with your favourite dried chili and some nice fruity olive oil. Heat the oil gently then add slivers of chili.
The chilies will sizzle a bit but don’t let them burn or they’ll become bitter. (Maybe wear a mask or open the window, as chili fumes can be irritating.)
Roasting fresh chilies to a blistered state, then removing the skin, concentrates their sweetness and brings a touch of smokiness. A roasted red pepper dip, for example, is brilliant with roasted potatoes. And roasting is essential in stuffed peppers like Mexican chilies rellenos.
Big chunks of lemon peel are exquisite roasted alongside chicken wings. They impart lovely lemony flavours and become crispy chiplike delicacies.
Even lackluster outof-season tomatoes get a boost roasted with some olive oil and herbs.
An easy method for a big flavoured soup or sauce is use a sheet pan to roast chunked up tomatoes, along with onions and garlic until nicely browned, and then proceed.
Cauliflower goes next level, cut into florets, tossed in oil and roasted in a 400-degree oven until charred on the edges. And use those cauliflower leaves too. The sticker shock associated with this Brassica means nothing goes to waste.
If you have a blowtorch – and why wouldn’t you? – custard or lemon tarts wouldn’t be the same without a resulting sweet caramelized bruleed top.
Firing up the grill for any vegetable – and stone fruits - provides an easy punchy flavour boost, and for fruit, concentrated sugars and juicy acidity. Maximum heat gives the essential char to a dryaged steak or other protein, needed to seal in flavour. Even wedges of romaine, lightly charred on a hot grill transforms a Caesar salad.
And who can complain about the virtues of marshmallows, primitively impaled on a long stick and roasted until charred over a campfire? Could the sticky-sweet molten interior and the nostalgia it evokes be the inspiration for s’mores?
The results achieved from this burn-babyburn technique is called the Maillard reaction, named for the early 20th Century chemist Louis Camille Maillard. He first described the chemical reaction of sugars and amino acids on the surface of food combined in the presence of high heat, creating all sorts of new and delicious flavours not previously present. So the next time you turn up the heat, think of science. With fork and pen in hand, and a passion for culinary adventure, Shelora Sheldan, a Penticton writer, cook and curious traveller, goes in search of the delectable.
The following are the five most-read stories on our websites for the week ending April 13:
THE DAILY COURIER
1. Student held at knife-point in high school washroom in Penticton
2. Kelowna plans ‘significant’ road-building efforts in next two years
3. Kitsch mulls new ideas for ill-fated waterfront development
4. Werner Schmidt, Kelowna’s long-time egofree MP, dead at 92
5. Work resumes at UBCO’s troubled downtown Kelowna site
THE HERALD
1. Four arrested for 2021 murder of Taig Savage
2. Armoured house hits market near Naramata
3. Gentle crackdown begins on Summerland mushroom farm
4. Bylaw department’s hours cut amid reshuffle
5. Axe falls closer to three schools