When Ina Pinkney was developing a recipe for gingerbread pancakes for her popular West Randolph Street restaurant, Ina’s, she knew she wanted more than ginger to come across in the flavor.
“People can be overwhelmed by the taste of ginger; you often get a bitterness in gingerbread,” she said.
So she added something unexpected to the batter: dry mustard.
“You can’t taste it, but it adds a flavor profile that boosts the other ingredients,” Pinkney said.
Professional cooks often have tricks like these up their sleeves. Maybe it’s adding coffee to barbecue sauce, or vodka to a grapefruit ice cream. These additions aren’t just a matter of adding novelty, but are a way of tinkering with the overall flavor to make an even more interesting dish. The unexpected ingredients are worth experimenting with at home, too, to explore the many levels of flavor a recipe can offer.
A traditional example would be the chocolate that goes into a spicy Mexican mole, such as the red mole that chef Kevin Kerales serves at Platiyo.
But other chefs like to play with ingredients to put a twist on the classics. Jay Lovell, chef of Lovells of Lake Forest, was inspired while creating the menu for a wine dinner. Starting with a duck breast, Lovell dusted the poultry with a mixture of sugar and cocoa powder and seared it in a skillet, letting the sugar caramelize on the crisp skin. For a sauce, the chef added to a reduction of white wine and veal stock.
“A French mole, I call it,” Lovell joked.
But the recipe wasn’t simply whimsical, he said. “For me, the cocoa and coffee bring up a richer, darker flavor in the bird. It also matched the wine. You can taste chocolate and coffee notes in some wines, and it was there in the cabernet for this course.”
Cocoa even makes an unexpected appearance at the Asian-fusion restaurant Opera, in the south Loop, where chef Paul Wildermuth adds cocoa powder to slow-cooked pork with beans. The cocoa not only adds a “deep richness,” Wildermuth said, but it also gives “a nice sort of satin sheen to the dish itself. The cocoa flavor also supports the sugar in the recipe.”
Diners might be even more surprised about another ingredient Wildermuth adds to strawberry desserts: Chinese black vinegar, a dark, aged vinegar that might be compared to balsamic.
“It just enhances that strawberry flavor so well,” he said.
One of the masters of creating subtle flavors, New York chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten of Vong Thai Kitchen here and other restaurants across the country, creates a mushroom reduction so intense it becomes a “syrup” and can be used as a sauce for meat, instead of a classic glaze of reduced veal stock.
Chef Chris Quintille of we restaurant in the Loop’s W Chicago hotel learned a trick at his previous chef gig at one sixtyblue: using pureed carrots to thicken and sweeten a red wine sauce for beef.
Keegan Gerhard, recently the pastry chef at Seasons restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel, said he adds a touch of saffron to his desserts with Grand Marnier to enhance the liqueur’s appeal. He also adds white pepper to blueberry jam to bring out that fruit’s berriness.
And Chef John Weiszer, recently of Azure restaurant, boosts his signature dessert, flourless chocolate cake, with chili peppers.
Home cooks have their own tradition of combining surprising ingredients, such as doctoring tomato sauces with a pinch of sugar when the tomatoes aren’t up to snuff, or giving barbecue sauce and cake a little pizazz with cola. Campbell’s tomato soup spice cake, developed in 1949, is still one of the company’s most requested recipes, according to spokesman Lawrence Faulkner. The cake has appeared in dozens of community cookbooks since its introduction.
Still, it takes practice to identify subtle flavors and match them up. Cooking amateurs can learn this, which is why Shelley Young offers a “Flavor Dynamics” class at her Lincoln Park cooking school, The Chopping Block. It’s a scaled-down version of a class taught to students at the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley.
“The theory of it is to recognize basic flavors; understanding salty, bitter, sweet and sour,” Young said.
“Then we talk about how salt combines with bitter, or fat combines with bitter, for instance. We use radicchio, taste it plain, then sprinkle salt on it, taste it, then add lemon juice and taste it again.
“Most lettuces are bitter eaten on their own, but when you introduce salt and oil and vinegar it changes the flavor components.”
Young says that by understanding basic components of flavor, it is easier to rethink ingredients outside of their traditional uses. One example is Young’s oatmeal cookies made with garam masala, the Indian spice blend typically used in curries or other savory dishes.
But the spice makes sense, she said.
“Garam masala has a lot of sweet spices in it like cloves and cinnamon and black pepper. I think putting black pepper alone in a cookie is not necessarily appealing, but when you look at all the ingredients together in there, it makes sense.”
So don’t just leave it up to the chefs to play with their food. Interested cooks can try their own concoctions. Consider matching up flavors that had not seemed compatible before–think of it as a blind date for your food–and see what happens.
It could be good, it could be bad, but it certainly won’t be boring.
Braised pork with cocoa
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
Serve this recipe, adapted from one by chef Paul Wildermuth of Opera restaurant, with steamed rice, Asian noodles or even lettuce cups for a fresh presentation.
1 pork shoulder roast, about 4 1/2 pounds
4 teaspoons salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons peanut oil
6 cans (14 1/2 ounces each) chicken broth
1/2 cup each: brown sugar, soy sauce
1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
3 green onions, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 whole star anise, see note
2 dried arbol or other hot chilies
1 piece (2 inches long) ginger root, peeled, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 cup plum or rice wine
1. Season the pork with 2 teaspoons of the salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Heat the oil over high heat in a large Dutch oven; sear the meat on all sides until well-browned, about 3 minutes per side. Add the broth, brown sugar, soy sauce, onions, garlic, star anise, chilies, ginger, peppercorns and remaining 2 teaspoons of the salt. Heat to boiling; reduce heat to simmer. Cover; cook until fork tender, about 3 hours.
2. Remove meat from liquid; set aside on a platter. Increase heat to high; boil liquid uncovered until it reduces by one-fourth, about 20 minutes. Strain liquid; return liquid to Dutch oven. Combine cornstarch, cocoa powder and plum wine in a small bowl. Whisk into liquid. Heat to a boil; cook, stirring, until thick, about 2 minutes. Shred meat with a fork or hands; return meat to sauce. Cook until heated through, about 1 minute.
Test kitchen note: Star anise is an element of Chinese five-spice powder. Look for it whole in Asian aisles of the supermarket or in Chinese food markets.
Nutrition information per serving:
450 calories, 43% calories from fat, 21 g fat, 7 g saturated fat, 120 mg cholesterol, 3,255 mg sodium, 20 g carbohydrate, 42 g protein, 0.5 g fiber
Gingerbread pancakes
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 4 minutes per batch
Yield: 20 (3-inch) pancakes
Ina Pinkney, owner of Ina’s restaurant in the Randolph Street corridor, has a hit with these pancakes, served on the weekend. Serve with maple syrup or butter.
1 cup flour
1/2 cup each: sugar, potato starch, see note
1/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon each: baking soda, ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon each: ground cloves, ground mustard, pumpkin pie spice
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons molasses
1. Sift together the flour, sugar, potato starch, whole-wheat flour, baking soda, ginger, salt, cloves, mustard and pumpkin pie spice in large mixing bowl; set aside. Combine buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, oil and molasses in a large bowl; stir into flour mixture.
2. Heat an oiled griddle or skillet over medium-high heat. Heat oven to 200 degrees. Pour 1/4 cup of the batter onto griddle for each pancake. Cook until batter bubbles, about 3 minutes; turn. Cook 1 minute. Place pancakes, uncovered, on oven-safe platter in the oven until all pancakes are done.
Test kitchen note: Look for potato starch in the natural food section or baking section of supermarkets. You also can order potato starch in 1-pound packages ($3.50, plus shipping) from kingarthur.com
Nutrition information per pancake:
95 calories, 44% calories from fat, 4.7 g fat, 1.4 g saturated fat, 25 mg cholesterol, 155 mg sodium, 12 g carbohydrate, 1.8 g protein, 0.2 g fiber
Mushroom syrup
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
Yield: 1/2 cup
This interesting recipe, adapted from “Simple Cuisine,” by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, has a deep earthiness that could fool diners into thinking it is a meat sauce. The author suggests serving this with lamb or fish. This may be made ahead and refrigerated or frozen. Because of the difficulty of accurately calculating nutrition information, we omitted it here.
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound white button mushrooms, quartered
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 shallots, sliced
1 clove garlic, halved
2 tablespoons minced parsley
1. Heat butter over medium-high heat in a pan large enough to hold mushrooms in a single layer. Add mushrooms, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring constantly, until mushrooms are deep brown and have caramelized, 15-20 minutes.
2. Stir in shallots, garlic, parsley and just enough water to cover mushrooms; scrape up any browned mushroom bits clinging to pan. Boil mushrooms over medium-high heat 15 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh strainer, pressing down on vegetables; discard vegetables. Return broth to pan; cook over medium-high heat until reduced to a syrup, about 10 minutes. You should end up with no more than 1/2 cup.
Garam masala oatmeal cookies
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 12 minutes per batch
Yield: 2 dozen cookies
These yummy cookies, from a recipe taught to students at The Chopping Block, get a punch from an Indian spice mix.
1 1/2 cups each: regular or quick-cooking oats, flour
1 cup golden raisins
1 teaspoon garam masala, see note
1/2 teaspoon each: baking soda, baking powder, salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup each: granulated sugar, packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the oats, flour, raisins, garam masala, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.
2. Beat together butter and sugars in a large bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until light and fluffy. Add vanilla; stir in flour mixture until just combined. Scoop rounded tablespoons of dough onto greased baking sheets; flatten slightly. Bake until golden, 12 minutes. Cool on wire racks.
Test kitchen note: Garam masala is a spice blend commonly used in Indian cooking. Look for it in the spice aisle of supermarkets or in Indian grocery stores.
Nutrition information per cookie:
140 calories, 29% calories from fat, 4.7 g fat, 2.6 g saturated fat, 25 mg cholesterol, 95 mg sodium, 24 g carbohydrate, 2.4 g protein, 1 g fiber
