Hey y'all! It's about time that I introduce my first themed post series!
Starting hopefully in the next week or three, I was thinking about starting a series of blog posts based on one of my passions: food! I absolutely love cooking and the culinary arts, so much so that I'm interested in getting a culinary certificate after graduating from undergrad. So, in order to immerse myself more into the food world, I decided to make this a journey of sorts into different ingredients!
My inspiration for this began about a month or so ago after watching a Netflix docu-series called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I watched as Samin Nosrat travelled to discover important information regarding the four most important factors in a dish. Journeying abroad to Italy, Japan, and Mexico, along with returning to her first ever culinary landing spot at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, she examined the seasoned techniques of individuals as they cooked signature dishes that reflected the complex nature of using the factors of salt, oil and fat, acidic ingredients, and temperature to create dishes that were authentic to their respective cultures. Nosrat sat and learned the ways of these professionals from their unique backgrounds, even taking a lesson from her mother's traditional Persian recipe, before cooking dishes that represented key elements from each respective category. At first, I sat and grew more jealous of Samin tasting salts from Japan and cooking with some of the finest olive oil in Italy. However, I soon had a stronger desire to work on my own culinary skills. I'm nothing more than a beginner, so my skill only goes as far as what I learned from my mom. But I realized that like everything else, I'm able to take my own venture into the culinary field by stepping outside of my comfort zone and doing my own homework.
Here's what I've been thinking so far; after picking a series of food ingredients (mainly from meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains/legumes), my plan was to do a bit of research regarding the history of that ingredient. I'd look up the cultures that mainly use it, it's properties/what makes it that ingredient (for example, what makes a pepper spicy, or what makes cilantro taste bad to me), the different ways that it's used, and things of that nature. Then, I would further my research by cooking with it, starting with the basics (like how to sauté an onion) and branching out into a full recipe (French onion soup).
I'm thinking that I want to start off with one ingredient for anywhere from two weeks to a month, depending on its complexity or variety. While I'm sure that I might be able to go so far as to choosing one ingredient from each category a month, I want to start slow because A) this is a new series, so there's definite room for tweaks, and B) I want to really be thorough with my research and give myself (and you guys, of course) a thorough and really creative presentation. I'll definitely be sure to do things like cite my sources, provide recipes and pictures, and overall talk about my progress with cooking the ingredient. If I end up really liking this project, I can even stretch it out to only one post a month, and then expand to include basic recipes (like broth, for example, or cookies). But I can say that in the next few weeks you might have a research-style post, followed by a recipe/recipe review post.
I'm not sure about y'all, but I'm really excited to start this project. I already have my ingredient list, and while you don't get to know what the first ingredient is, I can assure you that you'll know about it within the next few weeks. I know that it's been on my mind for a while, and although I have ideas for other series, I think that this one is something that will be pretty enjoyable for both me and you.
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