19. Toast aromatics to get better flavors
I made creamy lemon orzo last night:
Orzo is a “pastina”, or little pasta. While it’s closer to the size of rice or a lentil, it’s not a grain. It’s made from flour, similar to pasta.
Here’s how I prepared it:
Froth some butter in large sauté pan over medium-high heat
Add chopped yellow onions, soften
Add dry orzo, lemon zest, black pepper. Toast for 2-3 minutes
Add water and salt. Cook for 6-9 minutes until the water is mostly absorbed and the orzo are al dente
Stir in grated parmesan cheese, lemon juice and more lemon zest
Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and more black pepper
The final dish was a ~4/5 in taste. It was a tad too onion-y, which I could solve by adding slightly less onion and also cooking them down a bit more. I also think I could’ve used 15% more flavor from each part (lemon, pepper, parmesan) even though the combination and proportional amounts were just right.
The reason I’m writing about this dish is because it reminds me of something I’ve learned as a home cook: if you buy good ingredients, and you know how to use them, you don’t need to make it complicated.
Buying good ingredients isn’t controversial to anyone. Buy as high of quality foods as you can afford. Buy produce in season and meat from nearby farms. Your food should look vibrant and delicious.
Using those ingredients correctly is where I’ve grown more as a home cook. Thinking, “I’d like a creamy, lemon orzo alongside my chicken tonight,” and being able to use orzo, butter, lemon, parmesan, black pepper and olive oil to create something delicious wasn’t previously obvious to me.
A perfect example is the toasting step. With orzo, you can best inject flavor in two places: at the beginning when the orzo is dry, or through a sauce at the end. The toasting was the beginning part. Just a few minutes of medium heat alongside lemon zest, black pepper and softened onions infused the orzo kernels with those flavors. The toasting was the most fragrant step of the process. (Of course, the lemon juice and black pepper were also added at the end to add additional flavor to the dish).
In my very early days of cooking I might have tried to do something ineffective such as add lemon juice to the water that the orzo cooked in. This wouldn’t have had the desired effect (unless I put a lot of lemon juice in).
But by toasting the dry orzo with lemon zest — and also adding the juice in at the end — you respect how the ingredients’ flavors naturally combine. The result is a more delicious dish.