Culinary Fashion Sense: Does this vegetable match my protein?

So, we have pots and pans, rasps and sieves, knives and tongs. We know that buying good ingredients will make our meals taste better and might even inspire us to cook more. And now, we move on to planning your menu.

The question I get asked most, whether online or in real life, is this: how do you come up with your menu? The restaurant where I work has a chalkboard menu. That means that every day, at the beginning of each shift, we decide what people will be choosing to eat at the restaurant that night. And it changes almost every day. There is a certain, loose formula to that decision. I like to have 6 to 7 main courses and I start with the protein element of the dish. There needs to be at least one vegetarian option. There should be at least one fish or seafood dish. There is often a burger of some kind. The rest depends on what we have in the restaurant that is fresh: beef, venison, elk, ostrich, lamb, pork, scallops, halibut, tofu, and so on. Once I have decided on the protein element of the dish, I decide how to prepare it and then I pair it with a vegetable or series of vegetables. This is the part in which people seem to be the most interested. How do you DO that?

The answer is that it takes some practice. Before I worked at this restaurant I just cooked what the chef told me to cook. It was his job to figure out the menu, it was mine to cook it properly. For my first week here, the chef did the same. He wrote out the menu, gave it to me and I prepped and cooked it. Easy. I’ve done this before.

Then came the night when he called from downtown saying he was stuck in traffic and wouldn’t be back for an hour and a half. I needed to come up with one item for the menu. The rest he had already written out. I panicked. PANICKED!! WTF?? Are you kidding me? I’m not ready for this! I can’t DO this!! He made some supportive comment like, “Don’t be so retarded. Of course you can.” Then he hung up.

Thus ended my orientation and training period. From that night forward I was expected to figure out what was on the menu. I was pretty cautious and I asked a lot of questions. Does this make sense? Will this work? Is this too weird? Eventually, I came to understand that planning a menu is much like learning a language. There is vocabulary to be learned (ingredients). There is sentence structure: some adjectives (accompaniments) just support a noun (protein) a little better than another. And there is learning to be concise: a plate with too many elements is like a run-on sentence; there are too many things happening and I just can’t comprehend it all.

There are literally thousands of combinations that work when planning a menu. Many are classical: tomatoes and basil, beef and potatoes, pork and apples, fish and lemon, game meats and berries, pasta and tomato sauce, lamb and rosemary, lentils and raisins. Many are found in dishes which may come from different ethnicities. For example, a curry can have sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, lime, nuts, cilantro, basil, sesame and coconut milk. In other words, any or all of those ingredients will work together. A South American salsa might have pineapple, peppers, red onions, tomatoes, cilantro, basil, and lime and any of those combinations will work together too. The same goes with spices and herbs. If I want to give a dish an Asian twist, I may marinade pork in soya sauce with fresh ginger and lime and a few chilies. I might pair it with a sweet potato puree because you can find sweet potatoes in a Thai curry. Maybe I’ll add sugar snap peas. And to finish the dish I’ll use Thai basil and cilantro. The dish will be far from Asian, but it will be Asian influenced. Something with a Mediterranean flair will have olives and capers, lemon and olive oil, parsley and mint. Generally, things that are grown in the same part of the world will also go well together on a plate.

I’ve been asked to end each blog with a recipe of some sort. However, for this particular blog I thought I’d try something different. Lots of people have said that they cook the same things over and over. To help get out of that rut, pick one thing that you like to eat and I’ll come up with things that would go well with it, along with a recipe for how to prepare it. That way you’ll have (hopefully) a new idea for preparing something that you like to eat. And, if many people participate, then there will also be ideas for things that other people like to eat, which may help to open up your food horizons. Include any dietary restrictions as well so I know what not to include.

Annnnd … GO!

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Written by food_geek

food_geek was once a successful finance professional. Tired of money, nice things, equity, and the possibility of retirement she decided to pursue a career in the food industry at age 35. She is now a sous chef at a small restaurant in a tiny Quebec village where she works the fry station. She looks forward to being promoted to Manager, Drive-Thru. food_geek has been cooking professionally for 30 months.