A philosophy of cooking

When I construct a dish, any dish, I rarely use less than 9 ingredients. Why? because three points define a plane, and three planes define a three dimensional space. When you take an ingredient and pair it with two similar ingredients you are creating a space your dish exists in. Do it at least two more times with orthogonal ingredients in the same dish, balance magnitude of the results, and the dish will almost always succeed. I call this structure a trinity of trinities.

Consider one possible version of chili. Take ground meat, beans*, and an ingredient to be named later as a base trinity. Add a trinity of chilis. Poblanos, some roasted Hatch chilis, some pickled jalapeno. Add a trinity of alliums. White onion, garlic, shallot. Add a trinity of seed spices: cumin, coriander, carroway. Add a trinity of herb spices: oregano, chervil, bay leaf. A trinity of pepper: black, green, hot spanish pimenton. Crushed tomato, shredded carrot and caramelized white onion (reusing one part of one trinity for another trinity is a bonus) are a trinity of sweeteners. When I serve it on a Romaine leaf it completes the base trinity.

That chili can easily be unbalanced if you don't grasp the shape of the structure you are building. it can be confusing. but it will never, ever be one dimensional.

This philosophy is why I completely disagree with two things I hear over and over again from many cooks and chefs. The first is simplicity. OK, if you're an hopeless amateur or an Italian chef**, be simple. The second is 'Cut everything the same size so it cooks exactly the same'. OK, why do we want it to cook the same? Answer: we usually don't. Usually, we want it to be cut THREE different sizes; or added to the dish at THREE different times! Or BOTH.... stretching one ingredient into NINE different textures: a trinity of trinities by itself. Or cook it three different ways.


*Fuck Texas. My chili always has beans. I like it that way.

**Fuck Italian food. It's not a real cuisine. It's a collection of stupid wrongheaded rules about cooking that get followed like a paint by numbers coloring book by boys who want to fuck their mothers. 'No cheese with seafood'. Complete Utter Bullshit.