warriorprose: Food: Flavored by itself

The Food Network (et al.) are reinforcing the notion that food has to be complicated and multi-faceted and work in multiple ways. Cooking competitions like Chopped, Iron Chef, Hell's Kitchen, and so on make it seem like good food must be hard to prepare. Like a decent dish has to be challenging and complex and wrought with mind boggling variety. But why? Why, Jesus, does food have to be complicated?

Excellent food items taste good in and of themselves and require little effort to prepare and eat. The reasons you'd have to enhance or alter the flavor of something are

It tastes bad or bland and you're trying to make it taste like something else, or
It might add to the existing flavor and "bring out" some aspect of said dish.

Keep it simple and you'll subtly enhance the flavor. Make it too convoluted and whatever it is you're eating (and possibly the benefits of said item/s) might get lost in the conflict. If you ever find yourself answering the question "What goes into this?" with something other than what the dish is, reconsider what you're making and eating.

Example (based on a true story):

"What's in mashed potatoes?"
"Uh, mashed potatoes. Duh."
"Yeah. But come on. What else is in mashed potatoes?"
"Well, butter, creme fraiche, sour cream, parsley. You know."
"So it's not just mashed potatoes."
"No, it is just mashed potatoes. But you have to add a bunch of stuff to it, too. Or else it's just...mashed...potatoes."

Eat the following cheap and simple items and for Chrissake don't do anything weird with them. Don't make a stew or a salad. Just cook that shit and eat it. Skip the sweeteners and sauces and just goddamn eat it. Christ.

Steak.