What Makes a Dish Great?
Posted by Alayne Gardner-Carimi on
Joyful Transformation
What elevates the ordinary and turns it into the sublime? First and foremost, it’s great ingredients. It’s not about luxury produce; it’s about simply using the best of what’s in season, balancing the flavors, and creatively providing that little something deliciously unexpected.
Creativity and depth should never be confused with complication. Dishes are rarely improved by being made more elaborate. Good food is about creating something truly joyful to eat.
Game Changer
You don’t have to be a great cook to have restaurant-quality meals at home. Sometimes it’s as easy as swapping out one kind of oil or vinegar for another. FassZination Walnut Oil can transform a simple vegetable into a delicious dish.
This amber-hued oil has a slightly sweet, nutty essence with light woody notes. Its delicate taste makes walnut oil a great finishing condiment on salads. Drizzle it on fresh bread or over room temperature roasted veggies, grains and charcuterie. Walnut oil is an elegant addition to chilled noodles, and brings out the deeper flavors in squash, aged cheeses, and dark leafy greens.
Simply Sublime
Try it in lieu of other oils in some of your favorite recipes. It elevates many a simple dish.
Roasted Chicken...
Add one tablespoon of FassZination Walnut oil to the pan drippings at the end of cooking for a fantastic gravy to go with your roasted chicken. The walnut taste will be subtle, but the gravy will be extra-delicious.
Carrot Cake...
Substitute 2/3 of the melted butter in carrot cake batter with FassZination Walnut Oil for added aroma
Yogurt or Oatmeal...
Mix a teaspoon of FassZination Walnut Oil into your Greek-style yogurt or oatmeal in the morning to start your day. Walnut oil provides healthy fats that will keep mid-morning hunger under control.
Keepin' it Cool
Walnut oil is mostly used as a finishing oil for dishes such as salad, grains, or roasted vegetables. This nutrient rich, cold-pressed oil has a low smoke point. While you technically can heat up walnut oil, you have to be careful since it has a very low smoke point of only 320°F. If burned, walnut oil may develop a bitter note and lose some of its nutritional value.
Going Nutty has Benefits
The flavor of walnut oil can be a nice change from neutral oils. This flavor boost comes with additional benefits. Newer research suggests cold-pressed nut and seed oils retain many of the nuts’ nutrients. The walnut is one of the most nutritious nuts on the planet (apologies to those who are allergic) and its cold-pressed oil retains its health-boosting effects. Walnuts pack more nutrients, antioxidants, Vitamin E and other bioactive components than other nut varieties and almost 6 times the polyunsaturated fatty acid content of extra virgin olive oils.
VomFASS Madison has many options for premium extra virgin olive oils and cold-pressed nut and seed oils as well as the finest traditional vinegars and fruit balsamics. Whether it’s for a simple salad, aphrodisiac popcorn, or proposal-worthy entree, you can always count on the quality these ingredients bring to your table.