MAXIMIZING FLAVOR:
CREATING A NEW, COMPASSIONATE CUISINE
“I had no idea so much flavor could be delivered without butter, cream, milk, eggs, and other kitchen staples. Chef Richard Landau’s staff must include a benevolent gremlin or a fairy godmother who sprinkles magic dust over the pots and the pans. I had trouble understanding how vegan food had advanced this far and this fast without an accompanying outpouring of acclaim.”
—ALAN RICHMAN, FIFTEEN-TIME JAMES BEARD AWARD–WINNING RESTAURANT CRITIC, IN GQ, NAMING VEDGE ONE OF 2013’s MOST OUTSTANDING RESTAURANTS
“I wasn’t trying to make vegan food. I was trying to make great food.… I still am a caveperson at heart who craves these carnal flame-roasted flavors, and that is what I have always cooked. My goal is to turn people on to what food can be once you take away all the labels.”
—RICH LANDAU, VEDGE (PHILADELPHIA)
Throughout history, people have chosen vegetarianism for many reasons. The most common motivations fall into three primary categories: eating animals isn’t good for you (health), isn’t good for others (environment), and isn’t good, period (ethics). The current generation, however, appears to have pioneered a new reason for the shift away from meat and dairy products: maximizing flavor.
Terrance Brennan, whose twenty-year-old Manhattan restaurant, Picholine, has earned many accolades, including two stars from the Michelin Guide and three stars from the New York Times, and offers one of America’s best vegetarian tasting menus, described to me the process of perfecting his winter squash soup: “I switched from chicken stock to vegetable stock when I realized the flavor of the chicken stock was overpowering the flavor of the squash. And then I switched from vegetable stock to squash stock in order to intensify the squash flavor further,” he said. “And I didn’t stop there—I also came to realize that by adding cream to my squash soup, I was only diluting the flavor of the squash and not adding flavor, so I eliminated it.”
Wait—what? This classically French-trained chef, in the course of creating one of the best winter squash soups in America, had actually made it vegan?
This discovery reminded me of my surprise at learning, while researching The Flavor Bible in the mid-2000s, that French chef Michel Richard had eliminated the meat stock in his French onion soup and replaced it with miso broth, which he found brought as much if not more richness and umami to the soup without overpowering the flavor of the onions. In his 2006 book Happy in the Kitchen, Richard provides recipes for mushroom water and tomato water, which can be used as lighter, vegetarian alternatives to meat stock in sauces.
Just a few decades earlier, when the 1970s movement toward nouvelle cuisine saw a decrease in the use of butter and cream in French cooking, the continued use of meat stock appeared sacrosanct. However, with the publication of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s groundbreaking 1990 book Simple Cuisine, his use of vegetable stocks, juices, and vinaigrettes in lieu of traditional stocks and sauces gained traction. “I have always been fascinated with the Mushroom Broth [made from caramelized white button mushrooms, shallots, garlic, parsley, and water] and its reduction, which, after a mere 30 minutes, closely resembles a veal stock,” Vongerichten writes in its pages, “and, if reduced further [another 10 minutes, when it becomes a syrup], a veal demi-glace that would take a day to prepare.” The world-renowned chef has since opened Manhattan’s vegetable-centric ABC Kitchen, which serves a deliciously crusty falafel-inspired veggie burger, and Vongerichten has announced plans to open a vegetarian restaurant in 2014.
Likewise, Daniel Boulud’s restaurant menus have always emphasized vegetables. New York’s Café Boulud has long highlighted dishes inspired by the farmer’s market under the heading “Le Potager.” After a 2013 redesign, Boulud’s db Bistro Moderne reopened with a new “Cuisine du Marché” section of the menu that is mostly vegetarian, including a db market salad with kohlrabi and radish and a dish of salt-baked celery root with wild mushrooms, apple confit, and toasted barley jus. His eponymous restaurant DANIEL (one of Restaurant magazine’s “World’s 50 Best Restaurants”) is also vegetarian-friendly and has offered a vegetarian tasting menu since the 1990s. Its November 2013 vegetarian menu included such flavor-rich dishes as lentil velouté with root vegetables, Orleans mustard cream, chive oil, and watercress; and glazed butternut squash with roasted black radish, pumpkin seed oil, and mustard salad.
Indeed, more restaurants from coast to coast and around the world (from Calgary to London to Sydney) have been offering vegetarian tasting menus, making this one of the fastest-growing trends in the industry. Today, it’s virtually expected that every city’s very best restaurants—such as DANIEL, Eleven Madison Park, and Per Se in New York City; CityZen, the Inn at Little Washington, and Komi in the Washington, DC, area; and Mélisse in the Los Angeles area—will accommodate vegetarian and vegan guests. Many kitchens of the elite Relais & Châteaux–affiliated restaurants throughout North America have gone to great lengths to please their vegetarian guests, including Camden Harbour Inn in Maine, Canoe Bay in Wisconsin, Fearrington House Restaurant in North Carolina, Hotel Fauchère in Pennsylvania, Lake Placid Lodge and The Point in New York, and Winvian in Connecticut.
Leading destination spas have also been on top of this trend for years. Rancho La Puerta in Mexico is well known for its mostly vegetarian cuisine, including a signature version of guacamole whose flavor is lightened and enhanced by the addition of pureed green peas (or alternatively asparagus, broccoli, or edamame). Its California sister property the Golden Door’s longtime chef Michel Stroot, who was the first spa chef nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award, has long insisted, “I want my asparagus soup to taste like asparagus—not cream, not butter, not chicken broth. You don’t need butter or cream when you have freshness and intensely flavored ingredients.”
The Lodge at Woodloch in Pennsylvania, which has its own vegetable and herb gardens (plus master herbalist Nathaniel Whitmore, who waxes lyrical to guests on the health benefits of herbs), inevitably offers at least one veg option on its dinner menu, with many more available during breakfast and lunch. Nate Curtis, chef of Rowland’s at the Westglow Resort & Spa in North Carolina, handcrafted two completely different vegetarian tasting menus for us during the first night of our visit, highlighted by two completely different tofu entrees: pesto-marinated tofu with root vegetable risotto, verjus-braised squash pudding, and pecan tuile; and black garlic–marinated grilled tofu with bamboo rice, orange kanzuri broth, radish slaw, and soy sauce. (Nate’s Southern-inspired veg menu the next night kicked off with a whimsical spin on the regional specialty fried pickles.)
A number of high-end chefs are turning their talents to bringing a new level of vegetarian food to supermarket aisles. In 2013, Dan Barber came out with a line of Blue Hill savory yogurts from milk from grass-fed cows; flavors include beet, butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, and tomato and are sold at retailers such as Whole Foods. Diane Forley (who apprenticed with Michel Guérard, Gaston Lenôtre, and Alain Passard before opening her restaurant Verbena) teamed with her chef-husband, Michael Otsuka (who had apprenticed with Michel Bras and Jacques Maximin), in 2009 to create Flourish Baking Company, which offers top-of-the-line pot pies and other baked goods “with a savory twist”—not to mention fresh vegetables, vegetable infusions, and organic whole grains, ensuring equal attention to nutrition and flavor.
There has been a national explosion in vegan bakeries (e.g., BabyCakes, Dun-Well Doughnuts, and Vegan Divas in New York City; Pomegranate Café in Phoenix; Petunia’s Pies & Pastries and Sweetpea Baking Co. in Portland, OR; Sticky Fingers in Washington, DC; Vegan Treats in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), confectionaries (e.g., Chalk Hill Cookery in Healdburg, CA; Lagusta’s Luscious in New Paltz, NY; Sweet & Sara in Long Island City, NY), food trucks (e.g., Cinnamon Snail in New York City; Homegrown Smoker Vegan BBQ in Portland, OR; and that of Plum Bistro in Seattle, funded via a Kickstarter campaign), and ice cream shops (e.g., FoMu in Boston; Blythe Anne’s in New York City; Maddy’s in Los Angeles). The food they’re turning out is so decadently delicious that it’s winning over non-vegan customers, too—contributing to owners’ reticence to use the monikers “vegan” or “vegetarian” for fear they might turn off potential customers who could be easily won over on the basis of flavor alone.
FIVE TRENDS INTERSECTING TO FORGE A NEW, COMPASSIONATE CUISINE
“I have long thought of the food at the restaurant as vegetable-driven cuisine where, besides outright vegetarian dishes, the preparations derive much of their identity and character from a liberal use of vegetables, herbs, and grains.… It boils down to preserving clean, explosive flavors—flavors that maintain their integrity and elegance.”
—CHARLIE TROTTER OF CHARLIE TROTTER’S, WHICH HAS BEEN CREDITED AS THE FIRST CHICAGO RESTAURANT AND ONE OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RESTAURANTS TO OFFER A VEGETARIAN TASTING MENU
A number of trends are coalescing to create a new, contemporary way of cooking and eating that sacrifices neither deliciousness nor wholesomeness. My prediction? The coming decade will see the evolution of a new, compassionate cuisine that represents the intersection of the following:
- vegetarianism
- health
- globalization
- gastronomy
- flavor
VEGETARIANISM: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTREAM
“Probably 70 percent of our dishes are vegetarian. We’re moving away from all the meat.”
—DANIEL HUMM OF ELEVEN MADISON PARK, TO GRUBSTREET.COM
“Generally speaking, you’re looking at 70 to 80 percent vegetables or grains [on Blue Hill’s menu] now.”
—DAN BARBER OF BLUE HILL AT STONE BARNS, TO BLOOMBERG.COM
While the percentage of committed vegetarians has remained steady since 1999, the past fifteen years have seen bursts of growth in both more stringent veganism and less stringent flexitarianism. Together, this has fueled a 22 percent rise in vegetarian dishes on American restaurant menus from 2012 to 2013, as reported by Nation’s Restaurant News. Many of America’s best high-end restaurants—such as Eleven Madison Park and Blue Hill—appear to be naturally downshifting the amount of meat they’re serving as their cuisines evolve. And many are also making a pointed effort to promote “Meatless Mondays” at their restaurants (see here).
Centuries after Asian Buddhist monks began their development of some of the world’s first meat analogs—based on soy or wheat gluten, and approximating the appearance, texture, and flavor of various meats (including beef, chicken, duck, pork, and shrimp)—these non-animal proteins went mainstream in the U.S. through the advent of vegetarian Asian restaurants such as New York’s Zen Palate, as well as wholesale suppliers such as May Wah. Other meat, dairy, and egg alternatives that have hit the mainstream are not likely to leave supermarket shelves or the menus of vegetarian and vegan restaurants anytime soon.
The number of dedicated vegetarian and vegan restaurants has also grown at all points along the spectrum, from quick-service and fast-casual chains (e.g., Maoz Vegetarian, Native Foods, and Veggie Grill, the last of which characterizes 90 percent of its customers as omnivores looking to reduce their meat intake through its vegan “Chickin’ ” sandwiches and vegan “carne” asada) to casual-to-midscale spots (e.g., Blossom, Café Blossom, and the Candle Cafes in New York City; Café Gratitude, Gracias Madre, and Real Food Daily in Los Angeles; Root near Boston) to upscale restaurants (e.g., Candle 79 in New York City; Greens and Millennium in San Francisco). These represent a wide range of approaches to meatless cuisine, from naturally homey (e.g., Garden Café in Woodstock; Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York; and Follow Your Heart near Los Angeles) to diner delights (e.g., Champs in Brooklyn, Chicago Diner in Chicago) to sophisticated (e.g., Crossroads in Los Angeles, Dirt Candy in New York City, Green Zebra in Chicago, Vedge in Philadelphia), and from vegetarian to vegan to raw vegan (e.g., G-Zen in Branford, Connecticut, and M.A.K.E. in Santa Monica).
HEALTH: AN OLDER POPULATION GROWS WISER
“As of 2010, diet surpassed smoking as the No. 1 risk factor for disease and death in America.”
—MICHAEL MOSS, WRITING IN A NOVEMBER 3, 2013, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE COVER STORY ON BROCCOLI
As this book’s Introduction suggests, Americans are finally waking up to the importance of diet and allowing health concerns to reshape what we eat—moving away from meat, eggs, and dairy (not to mention refined and processed foods, and often added salt, sugar, and fat), and increasingly toward a nutrient-dense, whole-food, plant-strong diet. With the aging of the population, we’re getting not only older but wiser—and increasingly seeking out food that’s as healthful as it is delicious.
Matthew Kenney found that his classical French training, with its layering of “fat on fat,” was “anti-flavor”: “It masked the flavor of the ingredients, and eating it didn’t make me feel good,” he recalls of the period before his evolution toward an olive oil–based, Mediterranean style of cooking. Then, in his thirties, he found himself sensitive to the way food made him feel and started eating less animal protein. But it was his transition to eating only vegetarian and raw food that he found life-changing. “My aches and pains went away,” he recalls. “I looked and felt younger. And as a chef, this new way of eating and preparing food reignited my passion.”
Kenney went on to open a number of raw-food restaurants, including Manhattan’s Pure Food & Wine (with then-partner Sarma Melngailis) in 2004 and Santa Monica’s M.A.K.E. in 2012, not to mention raw-foods academies in Miami, New England, and Santa Monica. “Most of the food being served in the world is so outdated—it’s more harmful than helpful to people’s health,” Kenney observes. “There’s definitely a correlation between a Bacchanalian approach to food and ill health. But I believe health and wellness and the culinary arts should be friends, not foes. You should not have to compromise.”
GLOBALIZATION: A SHRINKING WORLD’S EXPANDING CHOICES
“The pork-loving chef [David Chang], whose menu once read, ‘We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items here,’… has become obsessed with vegetables.… Chang couldn’t believe dishes prepared without meat, onions, or garlic could have such intense flavor.”
—GISELA WILLIAMS, WRITING IN FOOD & WINE (MARCH 2011) OF CHANG’S EYE-OPENING VISIT TO SOUTH KOREA TO EXPERIENCE THE VEGETARIAN BUDDHIST TEMPLE CUISINE PREPARED BY MONKS AND NUNS, ON THE HEELS OF SERVING A MEATLESS SUMMER VEGETABLE DINNER AT THE JAMES BEARD HOUSE ON AUGUST 20, 2009
As people from all corners of the earth come together to address the problems facing the planet, they are also embracing the diversity of cuisines from around the globe. Food has long been a portable embodiment of culture and a key driver of globalization (think of the spice routes), which continues to expand the range of ingredients, cooking techniques, and flavor profiles of interest today. Long a global melting pot, the United States is the world’s largest spice importer and consumer and has seen spice consumption grow nearly three times as fast as the population over the past decade. Ten years ago, an average American spice rack might have a mere ten spices; it now has forty.
Patty Penzey Erd, who owns The Spice House in the greater Chicago area with her husband, Tom, counts a long list of seasonings that her store couldn’t sell ten years ago and that it can barely keep in stock today, such as asafoetida powder, curry leaves, epazote, mango powder, pomegranate molasses, and tamarind. “These are all things that pair better with vegetarian dishes than with meat dishes, for the most part,” she observes. “Also, curries sell so much more than they ever did before, along with our garam masala mixture, and both work beautifully with vegetable dishes. Last night I attended a dinner for [Milwaukee chef] Sandy D’Amato at [Carrie Nahabedian’s Chicago restaurant] NAHA, where my favorite dish was the garam masala–spiced kohlrabi soup with tamarind-glazed almonds.”
Our evolving cuisine reflects our ongoing incorporation of these spices—in authentic, contemporized, and even melded (i.e., fusion) dishes. As The Flavor Bible points out, cuisine is undergoing a startling historic transformation: with the advent of the global availability of ingredients, dishes are no longer based on geography but on flavor. This radical shift calls for a new approach to cooking—as well as a new genre of vegetarian “cookbook” that serves not to document classic dishes via recipes but to inspire the creation of new ones based on imaginative and harmonious flavor combinations. Thus the book you hold in your hands.
GASTRONOMY: SETTING A HIGHER BAR FOR HAUTE CUISINE
“The natural progression of my thinking over thirty years as a chef.”
—ALAIN PASSARD OF THE MICHELIN THREE-STAR RESTAURANT L’ARPÈGE, ON HIS 2001 DECISION TO FOCUS ON A TASTING OF VEGETABLES—“THE GRANDS CRUS DU POTAGER”—AS HIS SIGNATURE MENU
“When you take a custard into the savory realm, it’s much more versatile, happily taking on any number of flavor profiles.… As oils can be infused with herbs, so, too, can custards: a basil custard in tomato soup, for instance; a tarragon custard with diced orange as a refreshing opening course. Some of the cream in the custard can be replaced by a vegetable juice to lighten it and intensify the flavor.”
—THOMAS KELLER, IN HIS BOOK BOUCHON (2004)
“I never, ever eat anything for health reasons. I eat for taste,” says Rene Redzepi… [of] Noma, otherwise known as the best restaurant in the world.… [H]e offered to help with my remedial education. Beginning with this: The reason we should eat our vegetables isn’t because they’re better for us. We should be plucking and pan roasting our friends in the plant kingdom, first and foremost, because they are damned delicious.”
—ADAM SACHS, BON APPÉTIT (DECEMBER 2012)
Gastronomy has been described by philosopher Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin as “the rational study of all related to man as he is eating; its purpose is to keep humankind alive with the best possible food.” It all comes down to two things: the ingredients themselves and the techniques with which they are prepared.
The variety and quality of ingredients available in the United States took a giant leap forward after Alice Waters opened the doors of Chez Panisse in 1971 and then decided that she wasn’t going to settle for sub-par ingredients. In rejecting industrialized food, she launched a revolution—and a new food economy—by developing direct relationships with farmers and other suppliers. Recent decades have seen the rise of specialty producers such as the Chef’s Garden in Ohio and Chino Farms in California and the explosive growth of farmers markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA). Vegetables are clearly eclipsing meat as the new stars of the plate and palate.
Diane Forley, whose 2002 book The Anatomy of a Dish chronicled her botanical approach to cooking and delineated the family trees of various vegetables (a theme later taken up in Deborah Madison’s 2013 Vegetable Literacy), observes how many vegetables thought to be odd twenty years ago are considered commonplace today. “Lots of nutritious plants are starting to be popular, like purslane, nettles, miner’s lettuce, and things previously thought of as ‘weeds,’ ” she observes. “And root vegetables like parsley root and kohlrabi are just not considered unusual anymore.”
Long-time chef of the vegetarian Greens Restaurant in San Francisco Annie Somerville has noted, “When most people don’t like a vegetable, it’s typically for one of three reasons: It’s overcooked, it’s undercooked, or it’s under-seasoned.” Over the years, chefs have learned how to cook and season vegetables for maximum flavor, drawing on the principles of flavor compatibility and leveraging classic flavor pairings while forging new ones.
Chefs like the late Charlie Trotter brought a new level of respect to vegetables, applying painstaking techniques previously reserved for animal-based ingredients and featuring them on the country’s first vegetarian tasting menus. “Alice Waters may have discovered vegetables, but [Charlie] Trotter was the first man I know who cooked them beautifully,” said Alan Richman in the March 29, 2011, New York Times. After Copenhagen’s Noma was named the world’s best restaurant in 2010, chef René Redzepi was lauded in Bon Appétit for “treating vegetables like meat: braising them, basting them, flavoring them with lots of herbs and butter (preferably that made from sweet, rich goat’s milk).”
Vegetarian cooks have long used blenders (such as immersion blenders and Vitamixes), dehydrators, juicers, smokers, and spiralizers. And after a decade of intense culinary experimentation inspired by Chef Ferran Adrià of Spain’s El Bulli restaurant (creating foams, gels, and caviar-like spheres), there is a new arsenal of culinary techniques being developed and employed to enhance flavor.
M.A.K.E.’s Matthew Kenney builds his dishes around vegetables but takes pains to explain, “It is not simply a pile of carrots. It will be carrots cooked sous-vide until tender, while others are raw and still others pickled. A dish will feature a wide variety of variations on an ingredient, with the foundation being fresh ingredients and any sauces simply enhancements.”
Tal Ronnen of Crossroads restaurant in Los Angeles conducts master vegetarian workshops at Le Cordon Bleu, which shared his vegan adaptations of the five classic mother sauces of French cuisine (béchamel, espagnole, hollandaise, tomato, and velouté). “It was an elective for students and required for the whole staff on all nineteen campuses,” he recalls. “It was great because this is influencing literally hundreds of future chefs who would never have looked at vegan cuisine seriously. By the time the course was over, they saw vegan cuisine in a different light.”
As one the country’s most gifted vegan chefs, Ronnen is already elevating the vegan restaurant experience to a level never seen before. And as more of the world’s best restaurant chefs turn their own attention, talent, and creativity to vegetarian and even vegan menus, he and they are starting to demonstrate the true potential of plant-based cuisine.
FLAVOR: EXPLORING THE FLAVOR EQUATION
“Flavor profiles are really in the herbs or the vegetables, not the protein. That is what determines the character of the dish.”
—TOM COLICCHIO, TO STEPHANIE MARCH OF HAMPTONS MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 2012)
“[When creating new dishes], I will choose an ingredient to focus on, and that is where The Flavor Bible comes in—I look for [a pairing] that is out of the ordinary, then I’ll come up with the other components that I want to use. Next, I’ll sit down with my sous chef and work it out in a collaborative, organic, and democratic process. I might come up with two parts [of a dish], hit a roadblock, and then talk to someone and open The Flavor Bible. Usually it is a matter of hitting on a single ingredient that will spark the dish into a different direction and make it all come together.”
VEGETARIAN SHOW-STOPPER DISH AT BETONY
One of my favorite dishes of 2013 was Eleven Madison Park alum Bryce Shuman’s grain salad at New York City’s Betony, which won a three-star rave from Pete Wells of the New York Times shortly after opening. It’s deceivingly simple-looking: a smear of thick Greek yogurt on a plate, topped with mixed grains, which are in turn topped with a variety of sprouts. Knowing by its extraordinary flavor that there was a lot more to it, I had to ask Bryce to tell me about the secrets behind it.
That yogurt? It’s been pressed and strained until very thick, in order to anchor the grains on the plate. Those grains? They’re a combination of barley, bulgur, farro, quinoa, spelt, and wheat berries. Each is cooked separately—the bulgur and quinoa steamed, and the barley, farro, spelt, and wheat berries simmered. The grains are mixed, and half are dehydrated. The dehydrated grains are submerged (via a strainer) in very hot (450–470 degree) oil for literally one second, so that they puff—creating a crunchy texture. Finely chopped shallots and chives are added to the unpuffed mixed grains, which are seasoned with kosher salt and drizzled with lemon vinaigrette. The grains are then tossed with the puffed grains and placed on the yogurt base. Then they are draped with a combination of mostly clover sprouts, some pea sprouts, and a few mung bean sprouts, and finished with another drizzle of lemon vinaigrette.
Flavor stands at the center of the intersection of these trends, uniting them all. No matter what other factors come into play, it is a love of flavor that is leading chefs to explore new, meatless avenues of flavor enhancement. There’s an aspect of flavor that is intensely personal—and a reflection of one’s experiences, preferences, and values.
Understanding flavor is just as important to vegetarian and vegan cooking as it is to any other style of cooking. The first chapter of The Flavor Bible (2008) outlines the basic principles of flavor. I am happy to recap these basics here and to expand upon them for the purposes of contemporary vegetarian cuisine.
Our taste buds perceive five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. The essence of good cooking is to bring these five tastes into balanced harmony to create deliciousness. It’s that simple—and that difficult. After all, flavor is a function of our other senses—that is, not only taste, but also smell, touch, sight, and hearing. And because we’re human beings, other nonphysical factors come into play, including our emotions, thoughts, and spirits.
Learning to recognize as well as manipulate both the obvious and subtle components of flavor will make you a much better cook. This book will be your companion in the kitchen whenever you wish to use plant-based ingredients to create deliciousness.
Everyone who cooks—or even merely seasons their food at the table before eating—can benefit from mastering the basic principles of making food taste great. This complex subject is simplified by one fact: while the universe may contain a vast number of ingredients and a virtually infinite number of ingredient combinations, the palate can register only the five basic tastes.
Great food balances these tastes beautifully. A great cook knows how to taste, to discern what is needed, and to make adjustments. Once you learn how to season and how to balance tastes, a whole new world opens up to you in cooking. Great cooking is never as simple as merely following a recipe. The best cooking requires a discerning palate to know when a dish needs a little something or other—and what to add or do to elevate the flavor.
WHAT WE PERCEIVE VIA THE MOUTH
TASTE
Sweet. Salty. Sour. Bitter. Umami. Every delicious bite you’ve ever tasted has been a result of these five tastes coming together on your taste buds. We taste them as individual notes and in concert. Each taste affects the other. For example, bitterness suppresses sweetness. In addition, different tastes affect us in different ways. Saltiness stimulates the appetite, while sweetness satiates it. Take the time to explore the five basic tastes, and you’ll find that they’re often influenced by factors such as freshness and ripeness, which are also helping to fuel the trend toward local cuisine.
Sweetness It takes the greatest quantity of a substance that is sweet (versus salty, sour, bitter, or umami) to register on our taste buds. However, we can appreciate the balance and “roundness” that even otherwise imperceptible sweetness adds to savory dishes. Sweetness can work with bitterness, sourness—even saltiness. Whether delivered via honey, maple syrup, molasses, sugar, or another ingredient, sweetness can also bring out the flavors of other foods, such as fruits and certain vegetables (e.g., tomatoes) and grains (e.g., oats).
Saltiness When (for our 1996 book, Culinary Artistry) Andrew and I banished more than thirty of America’s leading chefs to their own desert islands with only ten ingredients to cook with for the rest of their lives, the number-one ingredient they chose was salt. Salt is nature’s flavor enhancer. It is the single most important taste for making savory food delicious. (Sweetness, by the way, plays the same role in desserts). Salts flavored with smoke or truffles offer even more ways to enhance the flavor of soups or risottos, and New York City’s venerable spice store Kalustyan’s lists dozens of varieties on its website. Beyond salt, regionally appropriate salty ingredients also play an important role in enhancing veg meals, such as Parmesan cheese with dishes like pastas, pizzas, and risottos, and soy sauce and tamari with stir-fries and veg sushi.
Sourness Sourness is second only to salt in savory food and sweeteners in sweet food in its importance as a flavor enhancer. Sour notes—whether a squeeze of lemon or lime, or a drizzle of vinegar—add sparkle and brightness to a dish. Honing your choices for adding acidity, such as by selecting the right vinegar (whether apple cider vinegar for fruit salad, rice wine vinegar for nori rolls, or sherry vinegar for gazpacho) can enhance it even further. Balancing a dish’s acidity with its other tastes is critical to the dish’s ultimate success.
Bitterness Humans are most sensitive to bitterness, and our survival wiring allows us to recognize it in even relatively tiny amounts. Bitterness balances sweetness and can also play a vital role in cutting richness in a dish. For example, the bitterness of walnuts balances the sweetness of a beet salad while cutting the richness of the goat cheese that often accompanies it. Chocolate’s bitterness is an innate counterbalance in rich desserts. While bitterness is more important to certain people than to others, some chefs see it as an indispensible “cleansing” taste—one that makes you want to take the next bite, and the next.
Umami (Savoriness) In addition to the four original tastes, there is now widespread acceptance of a fifth taste, umami, which Andrew and I first wrote about in 1996 in Culinary Artistry. It is often described as the savory or meaty “mouth-filling” taste that is noticeable in such ingredients as aged cheese (e.g., blue, Parmesan), fermented foods (e.g., miso, sauerkraut), mushrooms, and sea vegetables, and in such flavorings as monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is the primary component of branded seasonings such as Acćent. Vegetarian dishes loaded with umami range from miso soup with shiitakes, tofu, and wakame to pastas with tomato sauce, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese.
MOUTHFEEL
In addition to its sense of taste, the mouth has a sense of “touch” and can register other sensations, such as temperature and texture, that play a role in flavor. These aspects of food, generally characterized as mouthfeel, help to bring food into alignment with our bodies, and bring some of a dish’s greatest interest and pleasure. The crunchiness and crispiness of a dish contribute sound as well as textural appeal.
Temperature Temperature is one of the foremost among the other sensations that can be perceived by the mouth. The temperature of our food even affects our perception of its taste; for example, coldness suppresses sweetness. A food’s temperature can affect both the perception and enjoyment of a dish. A chilled carrot soup on a hot summer day—and hot roasted carrots on a cold winter day—could be said to be “healing” through their ability to bring our bodies into greater alignment with our environment.
Texture A food’s texture is central to its ability to captivate and please. We value pureed and/or creamy foods (such as soup and mashed potatoes) as “comfort” foods, and crunchy and crispy foods (such as nachos and caramel corn) as “fun” foods. We enjoy texture as it activates our other senses, including touch, sight, and sound.
While babies by necessity eat soft or pureed foods, most adults enjoy a variety of textures, particularly crispiness and crunchiness, which break up the smoothness of texture—or even the simple monotony—of dishes. At New York City’s Kajitsu restaurant, Chef Ryota Ueshima often incorporates a crispy tempura-fried element into his silky ramen or udon noodle dishes for a pleasing contrast in texture and flavor.
Much of the flavor of meat is conveyed by its texture, such as its chewiness (e.g., chicken) or its crispiness (e.g., crisp-fried bacon). It’s possible to approximate a similar texture with meatless ingredients (e.g., fried Provolone slices can approximate crispy bacon in a “vegetarian BLT”) or plant-based ingredients (e.g., lentils, whole grains, mushrooms, or frozen-then-cooked and crumbled tofu can approximate chewy ground beef, such as in tacos or chili, while thinly sliced crisp-fried tempeh can approximate bacon, e.g., in a club sandwich). In playful cuisine, caviar can be approximated via spherification, a chemical process introduced by Ferran Adrià at Spain’s El Bulli restaurant in 2003, which involves the creation of spherical caviar-like substances from calcium lactate mixed with sodium alginate and one’s choice of flavorings, from sea vegetables to watermelon.
Likewise, many people enjoy the creamy texture of milk and cream. These can be approximated by plant-based milks, such as those made from almonds, coconut, hazelnuts, hemp, oat, rice, and soy, or by plant-based creams such as cashew cream and coconut cream. If you haven’t yet tried some of the better vegan “ice creams” available, you’re in for a treat: you’ll be amazed by the silky, creamy texture of FoMu’s or Maddy’s ice creams or the commercially available Coconut Bliss nondairy frozen dessert.
For other examples of non-veg foods that can be approximated by vegetarian or vegan substitutes, check out “Getting to the Root of Cravings” on here.
Piquancy Our mouths can also sense what we often incorrectly refer to as “hotness,” meaning piquancy’s “sharpness” and/or “spiciness”—whether boldly as in chile peppers, or more subtly as in a sprinkle of cayenne pepper. Some people find the experience of these picante (as the Spanish say, or piccante as the Italians do) tastes more pleasurable than others, and have varying levels of toleration—hence the “mild,” “medium,” “hot,” or “very hot” labels on many salsas. Mexican cuisine most famously celebrates chiles’ piquancy, although other cuisines—from Thai to Italian (in which you’ll commonly find garlicky broccoli rabe accented with a shake of chili pepper flakes)—do, too.
Astringency Our mouths pucker to register astringency. This is a drying sensation caused by the tannins in red wine or strong tea and occasionally in foods such as walnuts, cranberries, and unripe persimmons. The astringency of cranberries is often a welcome addition to sweeter apple and pear desserts such as pies or crisps, while a handful of astringent pomegranate seeds can add a refreshing counterbalance when sprinkled atop rich Mexican moles or Persian walnut sauces.
WHAT WE PERCEIVE VIA THE NOSE
AROMA
Aroma is thought to be responsible for 80 percent or more of flavor. This helps to explain the popularity of aromatic ingredients, from fresh herbs and spices to grated lemon zest. Incorporating aromatic ingredients can enhance the aroma of your dish and, in turn, its flavor.
While there are only five basic tastes, there is an almost infinite number of aromatic notes that contribute to the flavor of food. Most aromas can be characterized as either sweet or savory.
Sweet notes are largely associated with sweeteners, fruits, and certain vegetables (e.g., sweet potatoes), herbs (e.g., basil), and spices (e.g., cinnamon). Savory notes are typically associated with “meatiness” almost as much as with alliums such as garlic and onions, even across different cultures. Other savory notes can include cheesiness, smokiness, and spiciness. Cheesiness can even be found in vegan cuisine, such as in nutritional yeast, or in vegan cheeses. Smokiness can be imparted via cooking techniques (e.g., grilling, hot or cold smoking) and/or ingredients (e.g., smoked paprika, liquid smoke). And spiciness can reflect flavor chords that are regionally specific combinations of flavors (e.g., garlic + ginger + soy sauce = Asia; garlic + lemon + oregano = Mediterranean).
Some qualities are perceived through both taste and smell:
Pungency Pungency refers to the taste and aroma of ingredients, such as horseradish and mustard, that are as irritating—albeit often pleasantly—to the nose as they are to the palate. The simple sweetness of a beet soup can be punched up with a dollop of horseradish cream sauce, while bitter green salads often find mustard vinaigrettes a welcome enhancement.
Chemesthesis Chemesthesis refers to other sensations that tickle (e.g., the tingle of carbonated beverages) or play tricks on (e.g., the false perception of “heat” from chile peppers or “cold” from spearmint) our gustatory senses. Experimental chefs have had fun introducing sugar combined with carbon dioxide (commercially known as Pop Rocks) into high-end desserts, providing mini-explosions of flavor in the mouth.
WHAT WE PERCEIVE VIA THE OTHER SENSES, THE HEART, THE MIND, AND THE SPIRIT
“THE X FACTOR”
When we are conscious of and alert to what we are eating, food has the power to affect our entire selves. We experience food not only through our physical senses—including our sense of sight, which we address below—but also emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually.
The X Factor takes into consideration the fact that different people will perceive the same dish differently. For example, someone who grew up loving strawberries and someone who is allergic to strawberries will perceive the flavor of the same hypothetical “perfectly prepared” strawberry tart differently. Likewise, an omnivore and a vegetarian will perceive the aroma or flavor of the same hypothetical “perfectly prepared” meat stew differently.
When vegetarians or vegans say that they have “lost their taste for meat,” they don’t actually mean that their taste buds have changed, but that—physically, emotionally, mentally, and/or spiritually—they perceive its flavor as no longer palatable.
THE VISUAL
The visual presentation of a dish can greatly enhance the pleasure we derive from it. During the best vegan tasting menu of my life at Eleven Madison Park, I was as delighted by the visual presentation of the carrot tartare, which was ground before my eyes in a meat grinder temporarily attached to our table for this purpose, and accompanied with a palette of spices and herbs we could use to season it ourselves, as I was with its exquisite resulting flavor.
Just a few decades ago, it was still possible to taste a dish with the eyes, but only those who’d spent time in world-class kitchens knew the tricks of such artistic plate presentation or modern techniques. Since the widespread dissemination of photos of dishes from the world’s best restaurants via the Web, it’s become easier to reproduce a great dish’s elaborate form than its exquisite flavor.
How a dish looks can also affect our perception of its flavor in more direct ways; for example, the deeper the color of a berry sorbet, the more berry flavor is perceived. The stronger the connection between a particular food and a particular color, the stronger the flavor impact—such as raspberries and strawberries with red, lemon with yellow, and lime with green.
THE EMOTIONAL
“I say all the time that [my mother’s Spanish potato and egg tortilla] is my favorite because it conveys a point: that sentimental value comes above all else.”
—FERRAN ADRIÀ, FOUNDING CHEF OF EL BULLI (SPAIN)
We taste with our hearts as much as with our tongues. What else could explain adult preferences for one’s mother’s dishes over those prepared by a great chef? This also helps to explain the lasting appeal of traditional dishes and cuisines of countries around the globe, which stem from our love for their people, their cultures, and the deeply rooted culinary traditions that have sustained them over centuries.
I am in awe of the pivotal moment in the animated film Ratatouille, which is the single best on-screen depiction of the transformative power of food I’ve ever seen. Knowing that chef Thomas Keller had consulted on the design of the movie’s namesake dish, I found the flavor of the extraordinary ratatouille I was served during my veg tasting menu at Per Se in New York City all the more pleasurable.
THE MENTAL
If we ate only for sustenance, we might be able to survive on nutritive pills and water. But we also eat for pleasure. Because we typically eat three times a day, 365 days a year, we enjoy novelty, such as a twist on the traditional construct of a dish. Increasingly, since the 1980s and the advent of “tall” food, chefs have played with the presentation of their ingredients. Since the 1990s, the advent of avant-garde cuisine and so-called molecular gastronomy has seen chefs experiment more and more with both the chemical composition and presentation of dishes as well.
Conceptual dishes provide pleasurable “food for thought.” Chef Amanda Cohen of New York City’s Dirt Candy goes to great lengths, through a development process often lasting months, to reinvent fun vegetable-centric versions of meaty classics, smoking broccoli and nestling it into a hot dog bun to become a “Broccoli Dog” and subbing cornflake-crusted cauliflower for the namesake meat in a veg spin on chicken-and-waffles. And the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, the site of some of the very best meals of my life, is well known for its signature dish “Portobello Mushrooms Pretending to Be a Filet Mignon.”
THE SPIRITUAL
The preparation, cooking, and eating of food is a sacrament. Treating it as such has the potential to elevate the quality of our daily lives as nothing else can. Several of the world’s leading chefs have worked to perfect each aspect of the dining encounter—from the food and drink to the ambiance to the service—to raise the overall experience to a new level imbued not only with pleasure, comfort, and interest, but also with meaning.
TOWARD A MORE COMPASSIONATE CUISINE
“Will three or four meals [at Matthew Kenney’s Santa Monica raw foods restaurant, M.A.K.E.] be enough to sway a hardened raw-foods cynic? Of course not.… But it may be enough to make him take a second look.”
—PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING RESTAURANT CRITIC JONATHAN GOLD, WRITING IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES (APRIL 13, 2013)
“This is a chance for a personal revolution: to leave your mark on this planet by causing the least amount of harm possible. What’s the argument for not causing the least amount of harm? Inconvenience? Indifference? Apathy?… Here’s the coolest thing about being vegan in this day and age: It’s never been easier. You can have the same smell, taste, and texture of meat, cheese, and milk without it. Nobody has to suffer and die for dinner any more, including you.”
—GARY YOUROFSKY, THE VEGAN ACTIVIST WHOSE 2010 TALK AT GEORGIA TECH, TITLED “BEST SPEECH YOU WILL EVER HEAR,” BECAME A YOUTUBE SENSATION
Here at the crossroads of our history and our future, we have choices to make every day with every meal we make and eat. I hope that those choices will be more conscious, informed, and compassionate—for ourselves, for others, and for our planet.
In a recent Technomic poll, two out of three Americans agree that a vegetarian meal can be just as satisfying as a non-vegetarian one. My aim with this book is to help make that fraction even larger. Given the extraordinary talent that is being brought to the realm of plant-based cuisine via vegetarian and vegan menus and restaurants, I have no doubt that fraction will continue to grow.
“José Andrés, Mario Batali, and Tom Colicchio are all preaching that vegetables are the next big thing. They are really helping,” Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby of Vedge in Philadelphia observe. “They are not going vegan, or dressing up in cow suits with ‘Meat is Murder’ signs—they are just out there to say what is true: meat is getting boring, and vegetables are the most interesting food there is to cook. It is an amazing perspective and a great way to look at what is happening on our dining scene.”
It is easier than ever to eat vegetarian and even vegan today—and more are doing so. The easiest places I’ve ever tried to do so are New York City and Los Angeles, where there is an embarrassment of riches. The hardest was a suburb two hours east of Minneapolis, where we had to point out to our waitress at one of the “better” restaurants in town that our guacamole was served brown, and were informed, “It always comes out of the can that color.” But we found a little mom-and-pop southeast Asian restaurant in the same town, where we had wonderful veg dishes, so it just took a bit of perseverance.
I’d have imagined that Omaha (land of Omaha Steaks!) might be one of the very toughest. So I was shocked when I first heard that Brooklyn-based vegan cookbook queen Isa Chandra Moskowitz had moved there and was planning to open a vegan café, which underscored how widespread veg cuisine is becoming even outside major metropolitan areas. My eyes opened wider when VegNews named a dozen small towns notable for their vegan friendliness in 2013 and I saw that they included choices from north to south and from coast to coast, including Asheville, North Carolina; Ashland, Oregon; Athens, Georgia; Boulder, Colorado; Ithaca, New York; Portland, Maine; and Santa Cruz, California.
Tal Ronnen of Crossroads in Los Angeles takes it all in stride. “There is nothing that can surprise me anymore,” he told me. “Because this is not a trend or fad: It is something we are going to have to turn to sustain the future of our world. And I am looking forward to every day as it comes.”
VEGETABLE-CENTRIC RESTAURANT MENUS
Vegetables are being elevated to new heights at the most rarified levels of the restaurant world. No longer mere “side dishes,” they are the main event and the stars of their own celebrated tasting menus.
The following menus shine a spotlight on some of the vegetarian and vegan dishes that have been served in some of the world’s best dining rooms.