Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook

ALSO BY
AKI KAMOZAWA & H. ALEXANDER TALBOT

Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work

Copyright © 2013 by Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kamozawa, Aki.
  Maximum flavor/Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot.
      pages cm
  Includes index.
 1. Cooking. 2. Cookbooks. lcgft I. Talbot, H. Alexander. II. Title.
  TX714.K3578 2013
  641.5—dc23
                                                                        2012033801
ISBN 978-0-7704-3321-5
eISBN 978-0-7704-3322-2

BOOK DESIGN: Laura Palese

v3.1

INTRODUCTION

  
1 Breakfast

  
2 Breads

  
3 Soups & Stews

  
4 Salads

  
5 Vegetables & Potatoes

  
6 Fish & Shellfish

  
7 Poultry & Meat

  
8 Cakes

  
9 Pies & Tarts

10 Cookies, Candy & Ice Creams

SOURCES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

WE LOVE TO PLAY WITH FOOD.
In fact, we love it so much that we’ve made careers out of it. When we cooked professionally, we started experimenting in our free time, teaching ourselves new approaches and embracing innovation to make food taste better. We eventually made the jump to opening our own business and now consult with restaurants and companies big and small to help them solve kitchen conundrums and think more creatively about cooking.

As a result, you’ll find lots of kitchen science in these pages. When, years ago, we became fascinated by figuring out the hows and whys of what happens in the kitchen, we started chronicling our adventures on our website and blog,
Ideas in Food
. Modern cooking, aka molecular gastronomy, has inspired many chefs and cooks to explore new ideas in the kitchen, which is always a good thing. But some of its techniques can be too over the top for most home cooks—like using liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream. So in this book we focus exclusively on recipes that can help home cooks make better meals every day. And while there are many cool things you can do with food, we’re only ever interested in the tricks and techniques that help deliver maximum flavor.

Often we’ll take a standard recipe and see if we can improve it by experimenting with different ways to prepare it. When you make
French Fries
, for example, conventional wisdom is to soak the cut potatoes and then deep-fry them twice in oil, once at a lower temperature and then a second time at a higher one. We found that several tweaks resulted in fries that are always golden and crisp on the outside and tender on the inside: soaking in salted water, steaming the potatoes to hydrate the starches, and then frying just once to brown the exterior. And if you want a great burger alongside, check out our
Butter Burgers
, which also break some culinary rules; contrary to popular belief, burgers cook more quickly and evenly if you flip them regularly.

We also use pantry ingredients strategically to maximize flavor. It turns out that the secret to the best
Korean-Style Chicken Wings
starts with a simple marinade of egg whites, baking soda, and salt, which not only seasons them but also starts to break down the proteins on the skin, resulting in juicy wings with a thin, crackling exterior. Tapioca takes the place of eggs in
Banana Caramel Ice Cream
, making it smooth and creamy while keeping the flavor strong and pure. And we discovered
a great way to get even more oomph out of nuts
: Cook them in a simple sugar syrup first, allowing them to soak in the liquid, before toasting them as you normally would. The nuts take on a deep, dark brown color and have a rich flavor and an excellent crunch.

while there are many

      COOL THINGS YOU
CAN DO WITH FOOD,

         
we’re only ever interested in the

   
TRICKS & TECHNIQUES THAT
      HELP DELIVER MAXIMUM FLAVOR

In many recipes, we take advantage of common kitchen equipment that home cooks may otherwise overlook. Take the microwave. This often-maligned machine is actually very useful. We put it to use in making
cheese “Danishes”
, which sounds odd, but you end up with a lightness in texture that isn’t possible to achieve in a regular oven. Another piece of equipment that we champion is the pressure cooker, which is not as scary as it may sound. It speeds up some cooking processes so much that it’s much easier to make, for example, delicious
baked beans
on a weeknight, since the pressure cooker decreases the unattended cooking time to just under an hour. And in recent years, there’s been lots of talk about sous vide, which is basically using a water bath to cook food precisely to a specific temperature—no more, no less. Using this technique at home—whether with a formal setup or just by using zip-top bags and a pot of water—you never need to worry about overcooking expensive cuts of meat; in fact, our favorite
way of cooking a porterhouse
is to cook it first sous vide and then grill the meat, producing a perfectly tender juicy steak with that all-important char on the outside.

We want
Maximum Flavor
to be a helpful kitchen guide and a source of inspiration. So not only does each recipe offer some sort of insight into how food works and how you can make it taste better, but, throughout the book, we’ve also included sidebars with discussions on topics such as gluten-free mixes for baking, how to balance salty and sweet flavors, and what fermentation is and how it makes sourdough so delicious—all to help inform your day-to-day cooking.

You’ll find that measurements in the ingredients lists are given in standard American volume measurements and also by weight in grams. The volume, or imperial, measurements are the ones with which most home cooks are more comfortable, and we want everyone to cook from this book. That said, using the gram measurements will provide the most accuracy, and we strongly encourage the use of a scale for all of the recipes with an emphasis on baking; volume measurements for ingredients such as flour, cornstarch, and confectioners’ sugar vary greatly as the ingredients tend to get packed down in their containers.

We hope that
Maximum Flavor
gives you lots of interesting ideas and helpful information to boost your own kitchen creativity. The recipes in this book can be adapted and altered to suit your own palate, and the techniques can be applied to other dishes (the handy freezer shucking tip in the
New England Clam Chowder
recipe just may make cooking quick seafood dishes on a weeknight more of a reality in your house, too).

   
SO EXPERIMENT, TASTE,
PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD,

         
and discover again why
              cooking and eating are so
         fascinating and fun.

BACON & DEVILED EGGS