There’s a balance to cuisine. I say that simply, not in the way Zen philosophers obsess eternally to achieve celebrity validation when Halle Berry, the guest judge on Iron Chef, says: “I like this.”…do. No, it’s far simpler. Foods have 3 properties: sweet, savory (salty/acidic), and bitter. And it’s this last category that I had failed to consider.
I’ve been on a quest to make tomato sauce, but they always come up short, probably because I’m neither Italian nor have access to the list of unpronounceable Monsanto-patented ingredients (nor wish to).
My initial troubles involved flavor-enhancement. An acid-base is common in sauces for the kick, but tomatoes, already being acidic, couldn’t handle the addition well, as the resultant sauce had an extreme sour bite. I tried wine, vinegar, lemons, and most recently-powdered citric acid. Then, to balance the sour, I added sugar for sweetness, but this only created a sweet/sour tomato sauce.
Fortunately, the Internet came to my rescue, and I discovered that cocoa powder would balance things out. I was skeptical, since my sauce already had sugar, so it seemed that I would be adding a chocolate taste. But I was wrong.
Bitterness–the oft-overlooked basic human taste, essential in this case. And my sauce was good enough that Liz took more in for lunch the next day. Now that’s a true culinary win!
–Chef Simon