Less is More

One of my favorite food websites is Savory Cities: New York. It features brief (2 min.) videos in which well known chefs or restaurateurs talk about the concepts behind their food and their restaurants in general. I love the website, it's fantastic, but there is one thing that cracks me up about those videos. Every chef says in his or her voice over: "I'm all about showcasing ingredients, I think that the ingredients should speak for themselves and that less should be done with them."

Meanwhile, the camera pans to plates that are unrecognizable as food... How are these guys doing "so little" to their food and still making it look like it came from another planet?

Jason and I have discussed how our cuisines (if we want to be pretentious enough to call it that) have changed over the years... For myself I would say that a number of things have changed.

For one thing my palette had become much more attuned to salt. I love salt. Love it. I find that an under seasoned dish always fails to excite me, even when I've adjusted it myself. The best restaurants nail this spot on. Some others, such as Otto (where the food was inedibly salty) and Flatbush Farm (where the trout I had was bland) highlight the intense difference that this single ingredient makes.
Another thing that has changed is my interest in variety meats and odd fish. Menu items that get me worked up: cheeks (fish, pig, cow), bacalhau in any form, tongue (beef, pork, or duck), headcheese, liver (duck, chicken, calf, pork), tripe, kidneys, etc. I always want to see how some chef (or immigrant from wherever) makes these things taste good.
Thirdly, my cuisine really has become (I think) rather restrained, a more bare bones style. Protein, vegetables, and a little sauce. Less really is more. Particularly if you are cooking with intense, interesting meats, it is very easy to do too much to them. I want my food to look and taste delicious and I want it to be recognizable as what it is. I was feeling pretty flush yesterday so I bought a 2" hand-cut sirloin steak from A&S Pork Store in Park Slope (here's a link to make you want to cry.) It came out to about a pound and a half of steak deliciousness. I prepared this glorious hunk of beef au poivre, with a dollop of herb butter. I served it with simple roasted vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes, red onions, as well as a radicchio and arugula salad, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. I put a lot of love into this, and it came out better than I had hoped. Simple flavors, very little sauce: the bounty of summer plus a giant piece of meat.