I got home from work feeling exhausted today. I relaxed and spent some quality time with dad who was scrolling through our old childhood pictures.
I desperately wanted to write something this evening, it is quite normal for me to get such urges from time to time. My mind wandered between different topics and hot issues. I was debating to write between politics and gender issues and suddenly my mind came to a halt and I wore a cheeky smile on the thought of ummmm "Food". A topic very close to my taste buds.
Last night, we hosted a dinner for family members at a Thai Restaurant. I had an excellent time, great ambience, surrounded by wonderful family members and the best of thai cuisine, what more could I have asked for. I enjoy Thai food and crave for it all the time. What is odd, that every time I have it, it feels like the experience of the first time. When it comes to food, i am always readily available. It would be very rare for me to ever decline food. Having written this, I just realised I did not go to a dinner cermony I was invited to this evening...
Nothing can be more exciting than food! I and food share a beautiful bond which no one can break no matter how hard they try. I enjoy trying different recipes and I am quite adventurous when it comes to food and can try anything and everything.When I say anything and everything I literally mean it anything and everything!
With everything that's been going on, I haven't managed to cook as much as I would have liked. It's different now that I am back in my hometown, whilst living abroad i used to cook whenever I got a chance for myself or others. However now with my busy and pressed schedule I don't have time to cook but surely have been eating a lot and my mind is always pre-occupied by the thought of food. Not a good sign.
So while I haven't been doing a lot of cooking, I've still been thinking about food a lot. Over the past year or more, I've been trying to learn more about what makes food taste great. I've been trying to improve my sense of taste by tasting and learning how to describe food and chocolates. And for the sole purpose of educating my palate (so that I know what good food tastes like) I enjoy dining at some wonderful restaurants whenever I travel and also keep a track of new restaurants in homewtown.
The area I'm most interested in at the moment is... flavour. I guess that seems pretty obvious, but I think it's often overlooked in favour of texture. Tender, juicy ribs; rich and creamy ice cream; melt-in-your-mouth chocolates. While texture is certainly integral to the deliciousness of any dish, for me at least, flavour is more important. And by flavour, I don't mean the flavour of the sauce or topping, but the actual flavour of the main ingredient (the meat, bread, vegetables etc.).
There are, as I'm sure you're aware, many ways to coax flavour out of ingredients. Whether it's adding salt, lemon juice, or using techniques like sous vide to prevent flavour from escaping, I'm interested in anything I can do to make ingredients shine. Starting with the best ingredients I can find and afford, I'd like to be able to cook the shrimpiest tasting shrimp, and make an orange sorbet that has a flavour of a thousand ripe oranges bursting in my mouth.
I will leave you on this note, until I write again...
