Creative and Systematic Cooking (pt 1)

Creative and Systematic Cooking
Part 1

Ingredients

Ingredients are the number one that matters when it comes to food. No matter how it sounds or how it looks, ingredients decide everything. Croissants made with butter will have distinct taste compared to margarine. Chicken rice made with or without pandan leaves will taste different. Even the freshness of garlic will decide the outcome of a teppanyaki meal. In short, ingredients are the most basic factor for a food.

Choosing an ingredient

There are layers of importance in ingredient choosing. I’ll call them Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Complementary.

Primary is basically the main item for the menu. Let’s say we are going to have a beef steak, for example. What are we going to do with the beef steak? We want to serve Beef steak (meat) with vegetables (sides) and potato (carb.).

So we split into three sections. Meat, Vegetable, and Potato. These are the primary ingredients.

Let’s take a look into meat:
As we’re making a beef steak, we can choose the meat that is commonly made into steaks.
Now we have Sirloin, Striploin, Tenderloin, Ribeye and T-Bone. (let’s limit to this five most favorite parts.) (And if you feel your mouth watering, there’s nothing wrong with that. Mine already started 2 minutes ago)
As the outer loins (sir- and strip-) tends to be lean (less fat content in the meat itself), it’ll get tough as its going. Tenderloins however wouldn’t as it have a nice and tender taste in your mouth. A certain part of the tenderloin, called Fillet Mignon is so superbly tender that KwikGourmet (http://www.kwikgourmet.com/) is selling 4 pieces of 5oz. Fillet Mignon for US$49.95. (That’ll be around S$140/kg.)
For this case, I’ll stick with my favorite. I’ll choose ribeye. It has an even spread of fat all over the meat which makes it very tender and kinda chewy. Just the one I really like.

What I want to do with the meat? I want a ribeye steak on a bed of onions and topped with barbecue sauce. So the ingredient would be Ribeye (primary: the main thing), Onions and butter for sizzling the steak (secondary: important) and barbecue sauce (tertiary: replaceable. I can choose hollandaise, teriyaki or even honey mustard). I might add some baby asparagus for decorations (complementary. Not important at all)

Now goes for the veg.
As I don’t really want to make such a big fuss with veg, I’ll pick a cabbage for this. You can actually imagine and toss everything you like. But as an alternative, I’ll write in peas, corn and baby carrot as well. These are all the primary ingredient. But as I want to pan-fry them, I'll need some butter or margarine as well. Eventhough olive oil will become a healthier but fancier alternatives.

ing, straight cut, cheesy, spiced?), or maybe potato chips (home made or store bought? With dips? Sour cream with mashed onions, guacamole, salsa, thousand island or just sprinkle with salt.) The combination is beyond imagination! Again as I’ll choose my favorite, I’ll pick baked potato. (So I would need a whole potato and American Russet is the best for baking. That would be the primary) with sour cream (Secondary), melted cheese and chipped bacon with leek for its topping(tertiary) and shredded herbs for taste (complementary).

There you go! We’re done with part one.

To be continued

Cons