Meatloaf with a Cutie

I made meatloaf, baked potatoes, broccoli and garlic bread for dinner a few months ago; it was a nice night of straight cookin for hours. Meatloaf itself is nothing special; it's a basic recipe I've made dozens of times that's a favorite in the simple-palatesof my grandpa and father, so I figured, what better way to please them? Besides, it can still be entertaining to cook. What I didn't expect was for my little brother, Mattox, to walk in half way through preparing the meal and ask if he could help!

He has done this before, but I never took him seriously. I'd say, "Sure! Go mix that right there!" and he'd take one look and reply with, "Hmmmm, nevermind."

Othertimes, when he seemed more anxious, I wouldn't know what task to give Matt and I'd have to tell him he couldn't help. How could I let an 8 year old that's never been in the kitchen chop onions or sauté green beans? My teaching him to cook never seemed to work out.

Today, however, as he approched me hand mixing a bowl of ground beef, onion, and crushed bread, I thought I knew how he could help. I didn't want to wash my hands, but needed to add more ingredients, so I coached Mattox on adding pepper, seasoned salt, garlic, an egg, and worshishire sauce. Then, as I continued to mix, I had him.make garlic butter.

"Garlic butter?" He had exclaimed when I told him what he was doing. "Why not garlic bread, Dez?!"

"Don't worry, Matt, once we out the garlic butter on the bread and toast it, it will become garlic bread." Boy, did that make him happy!

When I was nearly done with the meatloaf and getting ready to shape it, Mattox asked me for gloves. When I said I didn't have any, he ran away and found some, stating, "You and I are going to switch jobs. I jist wanted the gloves so my hands wouldn't get icky." Well imagine my surprise when me germaphobe little brother stuck his hands into a pound and a half of beef and started mixing it all together!

Once I had him form the loaf, he helped me make a glaze. At first, pouring ketchup, Dijon mustard, brown sugar, and worshishire sauce groassed him out, but as I added a little more of this or a tab bit of that, he asked if he coud pour the ingredients and mix the glaze. Sadly, I couldn't get him to taste the glaze on his own, but at my age I wouldn't have either.

From there the movie Thor came on TV, so I was on my own for the broccoli and such as Mattox went to watch the movie. It was still a lot of fun to see my little brother take an interest in cooking. I hope he keeps it up so he doesn't live off of Top Ramen when I'm gone.

Want to try the recipes I mentioned above? Visit October 28, 2014 Recipes.

Fourth Interview Questions

My Interview 4 questions:

1. How would you define flavor?
2. What are the most important factors to flavor?
3. How important is taste when it comes to flavor? How does taste affect flavor?
4. What is the difference between flavor and taste?
5. The similarities?
6. What role does sight play in the enjoyment of food? How can you harness this to make a dish better?
7. And touch?
8. And smell?
9. And hearing?
10. If you had to rate the five senses in order of most important to least important in the enjoyment of food, what would your order be and why?
11. Describe umami as a taste. Is it important? Why?
12. What kind of role does umami play in cooking?
13. Which of the tastes is your favorite? Why? What is your favorite way to use it?
14. What is your favorite taste or flavor combination? Why? What are some examples of that combination?
15. In your opinion, what is the most surprising combination of ingredients you have worked with? What made them work well together?
16. Name two ingredients you would never put in the same dish and why.
17. How can you balance the tastes on a plate of food? That is, a main course that may have 2-3 different components making up the meal.
18. How important is the quality of ingredient you use when cooking? Does organic/free range/no additives affect the quality of an ingredient? Why?
19. What makes an ingredient high quality?
20. How do you define "natural" when talking about ingredients?
21. What are some good brands or suppliers that produce "high quality" or "natural" ingredients?
22. How can the average person incorporate natural food into their cooking?
23. How important is salt when in comes to cooking?
24. What is your favorite kind of salt and why?
25. What are your favorite seasonings? Why?
26. How do you utilize herbs in your cooking?
27. How might you alter the seasoning of a certain dish to make it reflect a different style of cooking?
28. What is the most effective way for a culinary artist to enhance the flavor of a dish? Please describe your answer and reasoning.
29. How did you develop your previous answers? Were there any movies, books, articles, or videos that helped you?

Nine of the questions above were used in my Interview 3.

Blog 17: Third Answer

1. Essential Question: What is the most effective way for culinary artist to enhance the flavor of a dish?

2. Answer 3:The most effective way for a culinary artist to enhance the flavor of a dish is to use salt along with proper seasoning while cooking.

3.  Support:

• Salt is a flavor enhancer; it brings out the tastes and makes them more obvious in other foods. This is one of the reasons why many fine quality meats are seasoned with little more than salt.
• Chemically speaking, salt can alter the way your taste buds perceive certain flavors when the salt is broken down by your saliva. For example, when you add salt and sugar to grapefruit, an extraordinarily bitter fruit, the sodium in the salt blocks the taste receptors for bitterness, effectively tricking the tongue into only tasting the sugar and other flavors in the grapefruit.
• Salt is an integral part of not just food, but also the human body. Incorporating it tastefully makes it easier to consume. For example, salt is an electrolyte; when you sweat, your body loses electrolytes, but something like a Salty-Nutty-Crunch bar helps replenish the lost electrolytes.

4. Sources:

• Dornenburg, Andrew, Karen Page. The Flavor Bible. New York. Little Brown and Company: 2008. Print.
• Ramsay, Gordon. Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking: Everything You Need to Know to Make Fabulous Food.New York. Grand Central Life & Style: 2012. Print.
• My third interview with Chris Baker

5. The world would be a very boring place without salt.