Cooking with Nik Sharma's "The Flavor Equation"

[blue_dolphin]

Starting this topic may give me a nudge to get into this book that I've had since it was released last fall.    

There's a topic for it over in the Cookbook forum where @TdeV shared the Couscous with Sesame-Roasted Carrots +Feta in this post. 

 

Today, I made the Baked Sweet Potatoes With Maple Crème Fraîche.  After tasting that maple-crème fraîche sauce, I knew I wanted an excuse to pour on more of it so I turned this side dish into a salad by serving it on a bed of curly endive.  

The sauce has crème fraîche, maple syrup, lime juice, fish sauce and black pepper.  The roasted potatoes are topped with scallions, lime zest, Aleppo pepper and roasted peanuts (I had non so used cashews.)

I really enjoyed all the flavors in this.  

 

[ElsieD]

I have all the ingredients for this.  I am making this as a side.  Thanks @blue_dolphin
,

[Alex]

Thank you! I copied a few recipes from the book (library) and this was one of them.

[blue_dolphin]

Today I picked an easy one: Blistered Shishito/Padrón Peppers with Bonito Flakes p 213

The other day, @liuzhoushared an episode of the BBC Food Programme about MSG that discusses umami synergy, something that Nik Sharma presents in graphic form and uses in this recipe by combining both soy sauce (Glutamate) and bonito flakes (5' GMP).  The soy sauce gets added to the hot pan at the end of cooking to thoroughly seasonsthe peppers and the sprinkle of bonito flakes make them rather addictive. 

While cooking from This Will Make It Taste Good, @Shelby topped shishito peppers with Quirky Furki, Vivian's furikake-like seasoning that includes nori, sesame seeds, sesame oil, salt & vinegar potato chips and these same bonito flakes (or dried shrimp) and I'd say that's an upgrade to using just the bonito flakes alone. 

 

 

 

[ElsieD]

@blue_dolphin  i did make the dish Baked Sweet Potato Maple Crème Fraîche.   I baked up two sweet potatoes but made the full recipe for the dressing.  I divided the dressing between the spuds and while the dressing is delicious, I'd say the full dressing recipe was too much.  But thanks for posting this as I will make it again.

[Anna N]

12 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

umami synergy,

I could not resist the urge to Google this phrase!

 

“Based on measurement of umami compounds in champagnes and oysters we suggest that a reason why champagne and oysters are considered good companions may be the presence of free glutamate in champagne, and free glutamate and 5′-nucleotides in oysters.”

 

So for those who are interested in following me down the rabbit hole

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77107-w

 

Full disclosure – – I don’t like oysters nor champagne.😂

 

 

 

 

[blue_dolphin]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

I could not resist the urge to Google this phrase!

 

“Based on measurement of umami compounds in champagnes and oysters we suggest that a reason why champagne and oysters are considered good companions may be the presence of free glutamate in champagne, and free glutamate and 5′-nucleotides in oysters.”

 

So for those who are interested in following me down the rabbit hole

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77107-w

 

Full disclosure – – I don’t like oysters nor champagne.😂

 

 

 

 

 

Gotta love the authors' academic affiliation:  Department of Food Science, Taste for Life and Design and Consumer Behavior at the University of Copenhagen.  Bet they have good lab potlucks!

Edited May 18, 2021 by blue_dolphin (log)

[Anna N]

12 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

Gotta love the authors' academic affiliation:  Department of Food Science, Taste for Life and Design and Consumer Behavior at the University of Copenhagen.  Bet they have good lab potlucks!

Even as I was reading I was wondering how much was tongue-in-cheek. However it sent me off on a wonderful journey down multiple rabbit holes exploring the latest on umami. 

[blue_dolphin]

I adapted the recipe for Blueberry and Omani Lime Ice Cream and posted the result over here in the Popsicle thread.  

Great flavor combination.  

[ElsieD]

I never knew this topic existed.  Great fun!  @blue_dolphin what do you freeze your pops in?  I found this book on Popsicles available free on Amazon and downloaded it, and I thought i would post the link in case others are interested.

 

 

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01FYFXPZC/ref=pe_386430_122413350_TE_DP

[Okanagancook]

While googling I inadvertently happened upon a chicken recipe with an interesting marinade…Worcestershire , garlic, ginger, s&p, oil.  So I made it…in the oven roasting with new potatoes and king mushrooms as a type.  It is from this book.  It and other recipes from the book were on The Guardian website.  All this lead me to Eat Your Books to look at all the comments on the book…very useful.  Then I remembered @blue_dolphincooking from Nik’s other book Season.  I liked the look of a lot of those recipes too.  Almost bought Season but didn’t until the Flavour Equation entered the picture.  Both are arriving on Thursday 😊

[blue_dolphin]

Thanks for bringing this up, @Okanagancook - I completely forgot that I started this topic 🙃

 

Might as well add the Couscous with Sesame-Roasted Carrots + Feta from  Flavor Equation that I made yesterday.  Also available on the Guardian website here.

This comes together very easily.  Put the carrots and some garlic cloves into the oven (or in my case, the CSO) to roast.  While they're roasting, cook the couscous and make the shallot/rice vinegar/sesame oil/maple syrup/Aleppo pepper dressing and throw everything together once the carrots are done and garnish with feta & mint.  It would turn a rotisserie chicken into a quick meal. 

 

[Okanagancook]

Do you think quinoa would work here instead of couscous?  I am not too fond of couscous.

 

I can report the chicken dish mentioned up thread was delicious.  It resulted in really well seasoned chicken and the flavour of the chicken really came through.  Easy to make and then pop it in the oven.  Yum.

 

I did buy an extra copy for my friend’s bday.

[blue_dolphin]

5 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

Do you think quinoa would work here instead of couscous?  I am not too fond of couscous.

 

Yes, I think quinoa would be a fine alternate. 

[Maison Rustique]

I follow Nik Sharma on Facebook and get his newsletter. I just love his recipes. And he seems like a really nice guy, too. He has plenty of delicious recipes that even non-experts like me can easily make.

[blue_dolphin]

3 hours ago, Maison Rustique said:

I follow Nik Sharma on Facebook and get his newsletter. I just love his recipes. And he seems like a really nice guy, too. He has plenty of delicious recipes that even non-experts like me can easily make.

I agree.  I think it's impressive that he does his own photography as well. He has a new book coming out in October, Veg-table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals  (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I don't need another vegetable cookbook but I pre-ordered it a few weeks ago when Now Serving was offering 15% off all pre-orders. 

[Okanagancook]

I made the Pomegranate + Poppy Seed Wings.  I cooked the wings in the air fryer.  The sauce is really good.  Addictive.  One can definitely taste the pomegranate molasses but the other ingredients mix so well with it and mellow it out a bit.

 

I made cucumber + Roasted Corn Salad to go with the wings.  Delicious.  It says it serves four but I ate half of it!  Great textures and nice acid.

 

 

[FrogPrincesse]

A few weeks ago I happened to have all the necessary ingredients for the baked sweet potatoes with maple creme fraiche that @blue_dolphin posted about upthread. I wasn't sure I would like the dish with its unusual mix of ingredients (maple syrup, creme fraiche, and fish sauce?) and potential to be overly sweet, but I liked the final flavor and creativity of the dish. The maple syrup and butter enhance the flavor of the sweet potato while the creme fraiche, lime and scallions counteract its sweetness. The umami from the fish sauce made the dressing very crave-worthy. The nuts (I used marcona almonds) were great for texture. The dish needs a lot of small touches to get to its end result, which is very balanced and interesting. I am not sure I would make it again, but I am glad I tried it! 🙂

 

 

[FrogPrincesse]

I made the beef chilli fry with pancetta on Monday. It had a great flavor but lots of issues. First it took much longer than described in the recipe, and I wasn't planning to spend that long on a weeknight (almost 2 hours, beginning to end). It was also quite dry.

I should have followed my instincts and stayed away. The first paragraph of the recipe instructs you to dice potatoes and fry them with rendered pancetta until "crispy". Guess what happens when you put cubes of raw potatoes in a pan - they stick and all the browning ends up on the pan rather than on the surface of the potato (I added extra fat (duck) to try to help, to no avail). It took easily 45 minutes to cook the diced potatoes, and there was no browning on them (but my pan had to be regularly scraped because it was sticking like crazy). Next time I would do this step in the oven after rinsing the diced potatoes to get rid of the starch, which is my usual procedure. The onions could have used some extra cooking, I went longer than the 5 minutes from the recipe, but still it wasn't sufficient to have a result that looked anything like the picture. Lastly, I didn't love the fact that the chillies were only added as a garnish, sprinkled on top, although I liked the freshness that fresh cilantro brought to the dish. Again, great flavors (loved the spice combination), but the recipe would need a lot of tweaks to work properly!