Recipe First Aid

When a recipe goes awry…. fixing mistakes in the kitchen…

Mistakes happen even to the most experienced chefs but that’s how new recipes get made… Recently I was cooking for a client, who does not eat garlic or onions. So I explored a new spice combination to enhance the flavor of the dish. I wanted to do something Ethiopian since I was cooking with  Teff. After looking at several recipes in an Ethiopian cookbook, I decided on using a combination of cardamom, cayenne, and fenugreek… I sauteed the teff in extra virgin coconut oil with the spices. I think I got a little over zealous with the cayenne even though I only added a little bit …I guess the cayenne was  hotter than I thought…  when the dish was finished it tasted a little too spicy for me… so what was the fix?

Rule number one don’t add salt…that will increase the heat!

Add fat, something sweet, sour or water… So I decided to add a little more coconut oil, and cinnamon, a sweet spice to cool the heat. It took a few tries to get the cinnamon just right. Thank goodness, I didn’t have time to start over!

It came out great and I now can add a new recipe to my repertoire… This reminds me of another time when I was teaching where the balsamic vinegar had lost its label and a student mistook it for tamari and added it to an Asian vegetable stir fry… Oops!

So how did we fix that? What a wonderful teaching moment! To fix the sourness of the balsamic vinegar we needed to add fat, or something salty or sweet. We added a little maple syrup and tamari, a group of students and I tasted it again. YUM! That dish became one of our favorites at lunch! I think all the students actually learned more about cooking that class as they learned how to engage their senses vs. just following a recipe!

Cooking tips- Recipe first aid!
How to fix overzealous seasoning to bring out the best flavor of a dish. Here’s what you can do:

Too spicy – add fat, water, or something sweet or sour…
Such as an oil or a sweet spice like cinnamon

Too Sweet-  Add salt, fat or liquid

Too Sour- Add salt, fat, liquid or something sweet

The only thing that can’t be fixed is burnt!

Photos by Tracey Eller

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