If my cuisine were to be defined by just one taste, it would be that of subtle, aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I always have a good quality extra virgin olive oil. A cheap quality oil will end up cheapening your dishes. And I love sweetening my dishes with maple syrup. It has a bit of a bitter kick at the end that works wonderfully in savory dishes.
As a chef, if I can taste something, I can basically figure out what's in it.
After a year, the aromatics in an olive oil are gone. Sometimes the bottles on the shelf in the supermarket are there a lot longer than you are.
I have my mother who is an Irish-Italian, and my father who is African, so I have the taste buds of an Italian and the spice of an African.
Learning to cook in the 1990s, I thought 'proper olives' meant black. The benchmark was Kalamata from Greece: purple-black with an almost mushroomy depth of flavour. Other fine examples were tiny Coquilles from Nice and plump round Tanches from Nyons.
Even just a few spices or ethnic condiments that you can keep in your pantry can turn your mundane dishes into a culinary masterpiece.
Taste, which enables us to distinguish all that has a flavor from that which is insipid.
Sesame oil is probably my favorite condiment, period.
Taste as you go. When you taste the food throughout the cooking process you can make adjustments as you go.
The most overrated ingredients are garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. With garlic, it's personal; I have never been that big of a fan of its flavor. As for extra-virgin olive oil, I do use it quite often but its ubiquity serves to overshadow many wonderful oils like pistachio, walnut, argan and even grapeseed.