Tag Archives: cooking

February 24, 2017 · 10:16 am

Foaming At the Mouth

This Foodie Friday, let’s talk about foams for a minute. Food foams, that is, and not the thick ones such as whipped cream, marshmallows, or even cake. I mean the foams that have come out of molecular gastronomy and are made out of mushrooms or parmesan cheese or just about anything else. Throw some stabilizing agent (agar, lecithin,etc.) into a liquid, grab the old immersion blender and voila: foam.

Let me give you two prominent cooks takes on them. The first is Gordon Ramsay:

If I want foam I will stick to my bubble bath after the end of a long week. Watching foam sit on a plate and 30 seconds later it starts to disintegrate and it starts to look like toxic scum on a stagnant pool of crap. I don’t want to eat foams. It’s not good.

Then there is Alton Brown‘s take:

Don’t think you can replace cooking technique with throwing a bunch of flavors on top of something. Any more than you can making it into a caviar. Or making it into a foam. If I live the rest of my culinary life without a seeing another foam, I’ll be OK. I’m sick to death of foam. What does foam do? Cover our bad cooking, by and large.

I must admit that I’m not particularly a fan of foams on my plate but I find the above two quotes of interest to us today because each also contains a business point. Chef Ramsay rightfully points out that when customers purchase a product they expect it to perform and endure. If you have kids, you know the experience of toys being destroyed by lunch time on Christmas. It’s almost as if the toy makers never put the thing into the hands of a 4-year-old to test endurance. But many of us have had the same experience with tech toys and other products. We need to build our products and services to last.

The second quote points out that customers aren’t easily distracted. A nicely flavored foam can’t hide a poorly cooked protein underneath it. It’s great that we design digital products and physical products to look nice but consumers value substance over style in the long run. Just as diners order the protein and not the foam, consumers are focused on the main promise the product is making and not on how pretty it is.

Foams add flavor without adding substance. I think we all need a lot more substance in this world. You?

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 27, 2017 · 11:57 am

Adding Umami To The Business

This Foodie Friday we’re going to talk about basic flavors. If you’ve done any cooking, you know that there are five basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and something called “umami,” which is often mentioned as “savoriness.” It’s a Japanese word that means “delicious taste. It’s actually built on three types of amino acids:

japanese soy sauce, it contains more salt than...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some examples of the amino acids associated with umami are glutamates in kombu or soy sauce; iosinates found in fermented fish, shellfish and meats; and guanylates, which are present in mushrooms like shiitake.These different types of amino acids can be combined to increase the umami taste in your dishes.

Got it? As with all the flavors, the trick is to use umami to balance out and enhance the other flavors present in a dish. If you add soy sauce (umami), for example, you’d want to reduce the salt (salty). If you’re using fish sauce (an umami bomb often found in Asian food) you’d add acid to balance it out (citrus juice, for example.). Got it?

Let’s think about umami in business terms. You have the basic building “flavors” of solving a customer’s problem, the enterprise’s financial goals, customer service, producing the product or service, and supporting your team. What distinguishes great businesses from good businesses is the umami added to the mix of those building blocks. Just as adding a rind of parmesan cheese into a soup or stock boosts umami, teaching everyone in an organization to be customer-centric while pursuing clear goals boosts the coherence and performance of the team. It’s possible to offer decent customer service via email but the umami of a caring human to deal with customer issues makes a lot of difference.

A long time ago, someone told me to add red wine vinegar to the clarified butter into which I was dipping a lobster. I know now that the sour and pungent vinegar was balancing the fat of the butter and took the lobster to another level. Balancing all the elements of either a dish or your business and making sure that balance includes something that boosts umami is the key, both in the kitchen and in the boardroom. You with me?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 16, 2016 · 12:55 pm

Your Dishwasher And Your Business

This Foodie Friday we’re going to take a business point from the aftermath of our foodie experiences. Unless you’re in the habit of using paper plates and plastic cutlery, you usually have some dishes to wash after you eat. Many of us are fortunate to have dishwashers to do that job for us. We load the dishes, glassware, and cutlery into the box, add some soap, and go watch TV or read. Of course, the dishwasher can be used for so much more.

A dishwasher containing clean dishes

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You can pretty much put anything that’s not wood or cast iron into your dishwasher for a good cleaning. OK, electronics aren’t such a great idea either. You can, however, let the dishwasher take care of doing some otherwise nasty cleaning jobs such as washing those pop-out range filters or all the buttons and drip pans from your stove. I’ve been known to stick my sweaty, smelly golf hats in there for a good washing (they actually sell plastic forms so the hats won’t shrink) and I also ran some glass light fixtures that were filthy through it. Obviously you don’t want to put anything through that’s hollow and can collect water that might precipitate mold formation later on but otherwise, with the aforementioned exceptions, anything plastic, metal, or glass is a candidate for a trip through the dishwasher.

What does this have to do with business? Most of us think of the dishwasher as a single-task machine. It washes kitchen stuff – dishes, etc. The truth is that it’s way more versatile. I think many of us think about many people this way. We don’t think the accountants are creative nor that the lawyers are marketers. I’ve worked with accountants and lawyers who definitely were. While it’s usually pretty apparent what someone’s strengths are, we don’t ask often enough how those strengths – critical thinking, writing, etc – can be applied in areas other than the one in which the person is currently using them.

You might have to remove the top rack to fit something like a garbage can in there. You might have to ask the accountant to adjust his or her paradigm too. The results, however, are worth it in both cases (who likes to wash a garbage can?). We need to keep an open mind about all things in business, don’t you think?

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , , ,