I make a basic stir fry consisting of chicken marinaded in soy sauce, broccoli and bell pepper.
I went to the Farmer’s Market yesterday and had fresh tomato and garlic. So I cut the tomato up into wedges and minces the garlic and put both into a pan on medium with the cover on. I turned it down and let it simmer after a bit while I did the stir fry.
With the stir fry done, and still on high heat, I added the tomato/garlic, and stirred for a while. I then let it heat and reduce the tomato juice.
I have to say that was a great meal! It had far more body than my normal stir fry.
My main question is, what caused that step up in flavor and body? Was it the tomato? It was only one tomato, and it did coat all ingredients with red. Or was it that fresh garlic (like 5 heads, or a small bulb) that heated so long?
I still consider myself new to cooking. If I had cooked the garlic in a similar way alone, then added, would that same improvement have happened? Or was the tomato coating all to blame?
Seriously, it really improved my dish 10 fold. Man, cooking is fun!
Basic flavor balance. Tomatoes have a surprising amount of sugar, and a lot of acid that usually gets cooked out with more cooking time. The soy sauce marinade is salt. You get some bitterness from the garlic and the stir-fry cooking method (charred edges of veggies and meat). Balancing the four basic tastes (and mapping it up with Unami, the fifth, with garlic and soy) makes food taste better.
It’s great when you discover something, isn’t it? Keep on experimenting. Even after years, you stumble onto great flavor combinations. One I’ve been using recently is tomatoes and butter. It’s a great flavor pairing, although there are some other things in there, also. Here’s the sauce:
1 pound medium shrimp, shelled and deveined
2 cloves garlic, minced
couple tablespoons each of olive oil and butter
pint of cherry tomatoes, halved
dry white wine, about 1/3 cup
2 more tablespoons of butter
1/4-1/3 cup of chopped fresh basil
ground black pepper
Salt the shrimp for about ten minutes. Boil a pot of water for the pasta, and heat a large (12") saute pan over med-medium high heat (depends on your pan). When the pot water is boiling, put the pasta in. Add the butter and oil to the saute pan and perfume it with the garlic, about five seconds. Immediately add the shrimp and stir fry for about two minutes per side. Don’t overcook. Remove shrimp from the pan and add the tomatoes, turning heat up a bit to get a good simmer going. Add the wine and let the mixture simmer and reduce while the pasta is cooking. When there is about two minutes left for the pasta, add the next 2 tablespoons of butter and mix in well. Return the shrimp to the pan, then add the basil and black pepper and simmer for about a minute. Drain the pasta well, return to the pot and add another tablespoon or so of butter if you like. Place pasta in a bowl and top with the shrimp mixture.
It’s much simpler than it sounds, but you kinda have to do things within that 12 minute window while the pasta cooks, which means you want to have all the ingredients prepped before you start.