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By Root 114 0

and fish. I’ve tried every way imaginable and here’s what I found works best. With meats, game, and fowl, I salt anywhere between eight and twenty-four hours—removing the meat from the refrigerator for twenty to sixty minutes, depending on its size—before I cook it. This is also a great time to add any other seasonings—herbs or spices—to the meat, as the salt helps the flavor penetrate the muscle. This might contradict whatever you’ve heard, but trust me, it works. I didn’t believe it myself, but several years ago two of my chefs at Lolita, Jonathon Sawyer and Jon Seeholzer, told me they wanted to try presalting the meat. After much debate and arguing over why it would or wouldn’t work, I suggested we do a side-by-side taste test. To my surprise, the presalted chop not only tasted better, but it was also juicier.

I salt seafood right before it goes into the heat. Although I enjoy the flavor that presalting gives to fish, it tends to firm up the flesh and I don’t like the texture.

For vegetables that are about to be grilled or sautéed, I like to salt about thirty minutes in advance to pull out any additional liquid or bitterness in the vegetable. This will really make your vegetables sing and bring out all their sweetness and flavor.

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it, just in case: avoid iodized table salt. It has an acrid chemical flavor, and as long as you have a varied diet, you won’t need the iodide supplement. I use coarse kosher salt for most seasoning. I prefer Diamond Crystal for its feel—we almost always measure with our fingers and you can get a great sense of just how much you’re adding—and because it doesn’t have the anti-caking agents Morton’s does. I use a coarse sea salt or fleur de sel, a very special, light flavorful salt from Brittany, for finishing dishes. It adds a delicate salty crunch.

Creating and Building Your Own Dishes: The Elements of Balance

Once you have shopped for and brought home excellent ingredients, you’ll need a game plan for putting them together.

There are many theories and thoughts that go into creating a good dish. Most chefs and home cooks will have opinions on what makes one dish great and what causes another to falter. Assuming you have seasoned everything properly—meaning the right amount at the right time—the most important quality in a dish is balance.

When a dish fails, it’s usually not because the flavors are bad, but rather because the flavors and textures are not balanced. Often chefs will have a dish that’s all fat, or all soft—with no crunch or crisp. Braised short ribs with mashed potatoes: fat on fat, soft on soft. I find that tragic. But it can be fixed by adding components that are crisp, bright, and acidic. Serve those braised short ribs with some root vegetables and a gremolata, or with an herb salad tossed in a vinaigrette, and the dish begins to find some balance and brightness.

To create a dish, I’ll often write down a list of proteins in one column and a list of seasonal vegetables and fruits in another. I’ll tend toward rich, braised dishes in the cold months and lighter, more tender items that are sautéed or grilled in the summer.

If the central item is rich, I begin to think how to balance the richness with acidic and bitter components. If it’s lean, I think about how to balance that protein with fat. Halibut is a lean fish, so if that were the central item, I’d first think about what fat would go with it—some butter, or cream, or bacon, say. And once I had the fat, I’d think about the acidic component to balance that. I might grill or sauté that halibut in the summer, serve it with heirloom tomatoes for their sweetness and acidity, add some Ohio sweet corn, and maybe flavor the corn with cream and bacon.

Without question two of the most critical elements of a dish are fat and acid. The fat is what gives you that great mouthfeel and helps satisfy your soul. Whether the fat comes from a butter or cream or from the protein itself, it’s this richness that makes food fulfilling.

The acidity helps cut through the fat