Comments on: Big flavors

By: Jason Truesdell

Jason Truesdell — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 02:28:48 +0000

I think your observation that a cuisine’s “greatest strengths are also its greatest flaws” is very apt… Although to be fair, American cuisine has come full circle from primarily bland, salt-and-pepper-is-as-good-as-it-gets to over-the-top, unnecessarily and unappetizingly dramatic. It just shows that American cuisine is a bit immature in its pursuit of adventure.

For most countries, simplicity is usually where cuisine shines brightest… Japanese cuisine is about simple preparations that just wake up the basic flavors of what is being served, and Italian cuisine’s most impressive dishes are also generally its simplest.

At first glance, Thai and Indian cuisine appear to break those rules, but if you look more closely, you’ll see that the complex flavors generally accompany relatively unfussy, imprecise cooking techniques.

Japanese dishes other than nimono, and Italian dishes other than stews, often require more precise timing or careful seasoning for the ideal result… More complex flavor bases seem to coincide with slower, more gentler cooking techniques with more room for error.

If you splash a little too much soy sauce on a Japanese ohitashi or overcook pasta by a minute, the flavor can be completely ruined, but if you keep a Thai curry dish on the stove a little too long or leave your daal a little too long, or add a bit too much seasoning, it’s not going to be a disaster.

The essential weakness of American cuisine seems to me to be a problem of moderation: our food is too big, either too cooked or too raw, either underseasoned (I remember a rural girl worrying that onions and garlic were too spicy, even as she complained that a bland version of tomato sauce she asked her friend to make wasn’t as good as mine) or “bam!” overseasoned, with everything but the kitchen sink mixed in to a dish; when a tablespoon of wine would do, we would pour in half a bottle for dramatic effect. We either do instant food or make a single dish that requires four hours of attention.

By: Pops

Pops — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:47:27 +0000

De Gustibus non disputandum est.

By: Ryan Freebern

Ryan Freebern — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:08:58 +0000

Oh, I thought you had meant that PROP was something that naturally occurred in some foods and made them taste terribly bitter to some people and not to others. Sort of like how cilantro tastes soapy to some people and not to others. I understand now.

By: mamster

mamster — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 16:20:38 +0000

PROP is a thyroid medication, so you can’t just go out and get some. I tasted it in a biology teaching lab. But based on my eating experience, which is like yours, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn I couldn’t taste it.

Tasting ability definitely falls off as you age, but probably not enough to change your PROP-tasting category, since we’re talking an order of magnitude or more in taste bud density. Babies are probably averse to bitter foods for evolutionary reasons, since many poisons are bitter.

As for hot foods, there are two things at work: there’s our natural physiological response to them, and then there’s how we decide to interpret the stimulus. Hot foods cause pain, period, but pain doesn’t have to hurt, if you catch my drift.

By: Ryan Freebern

Ryan Freebern — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:01:45 +0000

Huh. I think I may be a nontaster, too, since I absolutely adore extremly hot and sour foods. What’s PROP found in that I could test with?

Do you suppose one’s ability to taste changes as one ages? Most kids don’t like very hot or bitter foods, but that often changes as they grow. Could a PROP-taster become a nontaster in adulthood?