Decorative bottles of oil

Chapter 1
The FASS Factor: Tricks for Getting to Yum!

There’s a myth—widely perpetuated by chefs—that the ability to differentiate tastes and thus make food taste great is a gift the gods have bestowed on but a few lucky souls.

To which I say, “not true!”

I think we all have an innate, accurate sense of taste. Chances are your ancestors prospered because they could taste the difference between edible and poisonous berries and between fresh and rotten meat and vegetables. It seems to me you’re asking to get tossed out of the gene pool permanently if you’re trying to flee from a saber-toothed tiger while suffering from food poisoning.

Given this anthropological evidence, I’m amazed at how little faith people have in their ability to judge flavors. In my experience, cooks new to the kitchen always hem and haw when I ask them how a food tastes and what can be added to improve a dish. And if that cook is someone who is battling cancer, when I ask them to taste a dish in progress they’ll almost always say, “I can’t taste right.”

On the surface there’s some truth in that assertion. Cancer treatments—chemo, radiation, and some medications—can sometimes deaden taste buds. Still, I’ve yet to meet a single person—ill or otherwise—who couldn’t be taught how to trust their taste buds. Once that lightbulb goes on, they discover they possess the ability to turn a mediocre dish into a fabulous one. All they needed were the tools and a little education on how to use the tool kit. That’s what I gave them. That’s what I want to give you.

The magic acronym for learning how to trust your taste buds is FASS; it stands for fat, acid, salt, and sweet. One of my clients, Gary Bang, came up with the acronym when I was going on and on about how the trick to getting any dish to taste right is to balance out its fat, acid, salt, and sweet content. And while I’d like to take credit for FASS, there’s really nothing new about the idea of balancing tastes. It’s what experienced cooks do, giving it as little conscious thought as a great pianist gives to her breathing when she’s performing Schubert to a sold-out house.

I can send you into the kitchen with only four ingredients that will balance any dish and make its natural flavors soar. They are:

• Extra virgin olive oil (your fat)

• Lemon juice (your acid)

• Sea salt (your salt)

• Grade B organic maple syrup (your sweet)

Learn to use these four ingredients and you’ll make that once-insurmountable leap from “Hmmm, this needs a little something” to “That’s it; it’s perfect!

To put FASS to work for you, never forget the number one rule: You must give yourself permission to become a tasting fool. At every step, every time you add an ingredient or cook it to release its flavor, you must taste, taste, taste. It’s the only proper way to correct a dish’s course. Waiting until the end to taste and make changes is like closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted; it’s not going to work. Besides, we culinary alchemists love witnessing our ingredients being transformed by the heat into heady creations.

Meet the Band

Now let’s introduce the members of the ensemble and explain a bit about the effects they have on your taste buds.

FAT

Fats take food on a magic carpet ride across your palate. That’s important because your tongue contains different islands of taste buds. Sweet taste buds tend to gather at the tip of the tongue, while bitter buds congregate toward the back of the mouth. The coating action of fat allows flavors to spread around the tongue and mouth so that they can be fully tasted. Fat also adds some heft to a dish, and its presence leaves us feeling satiated. That’s why a little fat goes a long way. Cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil is always my fat of choice because of its nice, clean taste.

ACID

Acids break down the tissues and fibers in vegetables and meats, allowing all those savory juices to run wild. Acids—especially citric acids, which are the acids I’m referring to in FASS—are sour, and they act as an excellent counterbalance to sweet flavors in a dish. Lemons and limes are my acids of choice, but many vinegars, including brown rice, red wine, and balsamic, also fill the bill quite nicely.

SALT

I love the way my friend Gary Bang summarizes a common misconception about salt. “You put salt on your eggs and they taste salty and that’s what salt is for.” No, no, no, no, no! When used in cooking, real salt—that is, sea salt—is used not to impart its own taste, but rather to unlock the flavor of every food it comes in contact with. As with acids, sea salt crystals act like tiny scrubbing bubbles that release flavors. There is no substitute for sea salt. Basic table salt won’t do. It’s been bleached of all its elements (save added iodine) and has a slightly bitter taste. Sea salt is a healthier salt, with more than eighty minerals and elements from the sea. Two last notes on salt for the scientifically inclined: The latest studies suggest that sodium does not cause hypertension, although it may somewhat increase blood pressure. My sense is that informed physicians are leaning toward a “moderation is okay” approach. Another piece of sea salt research may especially interest people with compromised or weakened taste buds. It suggests that sodium stimulates and improves the conductivity of electrical current in nerve cells. Talk about putting a charge in your taste buds!

SWEET

Sweet is the siren song of food. Tease these taste buds, which stand front and center on your tongue, and the brain screams “more, more, more!” This is a vital sensory response for people with cancer. They’re not likely to take more than one bite of any dish to which they don’t have an immediate positive response. That’s not to say you should load up on the sweet, because that’s not the goal. Balance is. That’s why I use only Grade B organic maple syrup. It’s incredibly flavorful, far healthier than refined sugar, and does a marvelous job cutting the acid and bitterness in any dish. Honey, brown rice syrup, and agave nectar all also work in a pinch.

Ready to play with your food? Good. Honing your buds requires a lot of trial and error in the kitchen. I know you don’t believe it now, but eventually you’ll get so good at FASS that you’ll throw a dish’s taste off on purpose just to see if you can rebalance it. You’ll lusciously succeed … and once your friends find this out, they’ll call you every time they mess up a recipe.

When I teach people how to use FASS, I often use a soup built from scratch. Why? Because we’re taking a flavorless element—water—and turning it into a bowl of yum. Water’s complete lack of any taste makes it much easier for those new to FASS to isolate the flavor of every ingredient they add to the pot. Actually, I’m not initially interested in making students correctly guess what part of FASS needs to be added to make a stock taste right. That’s too much pressure to put on them. I’d rather engage and excite them about the cooking process and how it slowly releases taste.

I’ll use Magic Mineral Broth as an example. I fill the pot with a hodgepodge of vegetables, set it to simmering, and have people taste the stock every ten to fifteen minutes or so. After their third or fourth taste, I see heads start to bob up and down. That once tasteless water is now beginning to metamorphose. Flavors are being released as well as smells, all of which combine to create an aromatic brew. The color of the stock begins to deepen, a visual sign of catalytic change. Old misperceptions break down under the weight of this sensory evidence; new possibilities emerge. That finished pot of stock no longer looks so impossible to create. I catch people staring at it with a newfound confidence.

Once I see that spark, I know my students are ripe for a little FASS learning. I ask a few questions about the pot of stock we’ve just made. The dialogue usually goes something like this:

Me: “How does it taste?”

Them: “Okay. Pretty good.”

Me: “Okay? Do you want to eat just okay food?

Let’s make it great. What do you think it needs?”

Them: “Hmmm … It needs a little salt.”

This is a universal response. Everyone reaches for salt first when something doesn’t taste quite right. I fill up a quarter teaspoon with sea salt. My students glance at the spoon, then at the twelve-quart stockpot, and immediately get a skeptical look. I know what they’re thinking: “That’s not enough salt to make it taste salty.”

That’s true, but it is enough salt to alter the taste. The salt goes in and they taste the stock again. Now their heads begin nodding in unison.

“Better?” I ask.

“Better!” they agree. The salt is doing its job, releasing the stock’s flavor. Many times people want to stop right there, but I want to get them to yum! So I ask again, “Does it need something else?”

Usually we’ll add a pinch or two more of salt and taste the broth again to determine how much the salt can accomplish without creating a salty taste. Everyone agrees the stock tastes great, but now the game’s afoot. Tuned into their taste buds, the students sense something is still missing. They just don’t know what that something is.

I do. I reach for a lemon. Remember how I said the acids from a little lemon can make flavor notes ring?

“How about this?” I ask, holding up the lemon. There are more surprised looks. People are thinking of how sour a lemon tastes instead of focusing on its ability to enhance existing flavors. They don’t want a sour taste in their stock—and I can’t blame them—but they’re willing to go along with me. Spritz. Taste. Lip smacks. Even a few gasps of delight.

“Wow. That’s it!”

“That is soooo great.”

And it is great, as a base. Delicious stock is the foundation for great soup. Still, although this stock is tasty and nutritious, it doesn’t have the satiating quality of a meal. Why? Again, remember what FASS stands for. The stock has acid, salt, and some sweet from the juice of the vegetables. What’s missing? That’s right: fat. Most people make soup using fat-free vegetable stock. This means that the rest of the soup ingredients need to contain some fat to round out the dish.

Here’s how the rest of the lesson plays out. For many classes I choose to make Caramelized Sweet Red Onion Soup with the Magic Mineral Broth as stock. I use this combination because it’s relatively simple, extremely tasty, and helps me demonstrate FASS in action. In a saucepan we pour some extra virgin olive oil. That’s the fat. Then we add onions and a pinch of salt. Again, the salt can’t be tasted, but it breaks down the onion, releasing more of its juice. After the onions are golden brown we pour a cup of stock over the onions, reduce the contents to seal in the flavor, and then pour in the rest of the stock. Invariably, someone asks the question I’ve been waiting for: “I see how we added fat, but where did we add sweetness?”

I put a spoon in their hand and point them to the pot.

“I can’t believe onion soup could taste so sweet!” is the inevitable response. I’ve tricked them a bit by keeping them away from the onions while they cooked, but only to make the point that many vegetables, when allowed to cook properly, produce a luscious, sweet juice.

So now we’re almost there. Once again, we go over what’s in the soup from a FASS viewpoint. We have our fat, the olive oil. We’ve added sea salt along the way to our onions. Those onions, in turn, released sweet juice.

“What’s missing?”

Everyone points to the lemon. We need a little acid. Just a little more brightness to bring it home. Spritz.

Taste. Incomplete sentences. “Oh! Wow!” Someone’s taste buds have just received a serious wake-up call! We have reached yum!

Throughout this book you’ll see references to FASS. These include tips on how to balance FASS in stews, salads, and even snacks. It’s not a test; I promise you the recipes will taste delicious even if you’d rather not think about FASS. But I hope you do make the effort to think about FASS for a couple of reasons. I look at these recipes as launching points for your own creativity. FASS is a great tool to have at your disposal when you decide it’s time to take off on your own culinary wanderings, a kind of global positioning system for your taste buds.

Think about what FASS does and how it pertains to cooking for people with cancer. Let’s say their taste buds have been somewhat compromised and they taste only half of what you and I taste. Without attention to FASS, a given meal may have only 75 percent of its potential taste. To you and me that’s mediocre but tolerable. But to someone with compromised taste buds that same meal is nearly flavorless, a complete turnoff. After one bite they’re done. By optimizing a dish’s taste with FASS, that same person is drawn to the food. The bottom line is they eat more. They’re nourished. They feel better. For a precious moment, you’ve helped them reconnect to food, and in turn to life, health, and wellness.