On Cooking and Tasting

There seems to be a step missing in virtually every recipe I have ever read. The step should read:

• Taste It! And adjust to what you like.
  

I have rarely found a recipe that is equally suited to everyone who eats it. One of the joys and benefits of cooking is that you can adjust recipes to your own personal taste.

When you really start to understand cooking, you learn to adjust recipes as you cook them to your own personal taste. At first this will mostly be adjusting the amounts of the ingredients already in the dish. After you are comfortable doing that, you can start adding things to change the taste. This is best done with a lot of practice. There are a few guidelines I can offer.

• Salt enhances taste up to the point where things start tasting salty, then it hides them.
• If your dish is too spicy, you can add something creamy.
• If your dish is too salty of sweet, add a sour taste.
• If your dish is too bitter or sour, add a bit of sweetness.
• If your dish is too bitter you can also add salt.
  
• If your dish tastes flat, you many need more spice varieties and add them earlier in the cooking of the dish. You can also try adding a bit of acid...vinegar, citrus juice, wine, etc.

There are some flavor groupings that are worth mentioning. These are tastes that go well together. If you find one, you can often substitute or add another one of these. Keep in mind, just because basic goes with rosemary, and rosemary goes with fennel doesn't necessarily mean that basic and rosemary go together. Although, using all three could be very interesting.

Here are some groups.

• Vanilla, cardamom, nutmeg, mint
  
• Lavender, honey, pear
• Cinnamon, cloves, allspice
• Fennel, cardamom
• Basic, sage, coriander
• Rosemary, cumin
• Orange, anise
• Cumin, spearmint
• Cinnamon, cocoa, cayenne pepper
• Cayenne pepper, paprika, chili powder
• Rosemary Thyme
• Sweet paprika, allspice, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, thyme, ginger
• Cumin, oregano, coriander, garlic, onion, black pepper, allspice, cilantro, cloves
  

You should also pay attention when you do look at recipes to see what kind of pairings they include. Remember them, you can use them later.