You Gotta Taste This!

And give it a sniff, while you’re at it.

“He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long forgotten!” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Get the wine glasses, will you?” My sister asked me, opening a fresh bottle of rosé.

I walked over to her glass door cupboard, grabbed a few by their stems, and without thinking about it, raised one to my nose for a sniff.

“They’re clee-ean!” My sister cried, incredulously.

It’s not that I didn’t think they were. I could see them gleaming, perfectly polished in the sunlight streaming in the window.

But I’ve developed a habit of smelling everything. I don’t even realize I’m doing it: unwrapping the meat from the pink butcher paper. Opening the coffee canister. Pulling on leather gloves or wool mittens.

It’s a habit I developed in sommelier school and have never shaken – nor do I want to. When I was enrolled in somm school in 2007, part of the curriculum was a 12-week course on sensory development. All day we would taste and smell items blind. Nothing is more frustrating than holding a vile up to your nose, smelling something so familiar yet equally elusive – what is it? God, I know this… It’s… it’s … ok I give up. Only to find out it’s orange peel or pine needles or something just as obvious.

For three months I tasted and smelled and practiced in class, and then went home to practice some more. Grocery trips went from 30-minute runs to three-hour odysseys. One week I bought $75 worth of “exotic” fruits to understand the difference between quince and kumquat, dragon fruit and durian.

Now, for better or worse, I can smell things many find undetectable. My schnoz is so heightened, I’ve memorized garbage schedules in the neighbourhoods surrounding my house and won’t go into them on pick-up day. But I can also tell you that kale tastes like orange pumpkin, certain coffees taste like Campbell’s vegetable soup, and Lucques olives taste like chocolate. You don’t believe me but try it and you will see I’m right.

I also know that basil, when made into a syrup, smells like dill, raisins smell like fresh tobacco, and cherries smell like bananas. I discovered that last one during a whisky tasting, when I was given Jack Daniel’s to try blind. JD touts its cherry flavours as part of its charm, but I only could find banana. Violet flowers smell like nothing, but violet incense is so heady it’s nauseating, which is also why I struggle with Malbec, as it’s the leading note for me.

My beginner wine students get very anxious they can’t discern the apple from the lemon in a glass of Chablis. Of course they can’t. Seeing a lemon gives you a cue to what you should experience. Seeing an apple sets up a certain taste expectation. When these flavours can’t be seen, it’s really hard to detect them.

“I dunno. Tastes like wine,” they shrug sadly.

So my first assignment to the wine class is to make a list of 10 things to smell every day. Set a timer on their phone to remind them to stop and smell the roses. Or the cappuccino. Or the Époisses. Keep notes on the phone or an old-fashioned notebook. But smell everything – the tea bags when opening the box, and how the aroma changes as the tea is made. Brown sugar versus honey. Heck – smell your hands after holding your metal car keys for a few minutes. They probably smell like metal now, too.

The next assignment (my homework has a much better completion rate than the accounting instructor’s) is to taste their wine critically. Wine by its very nature is convivial: we gather for a drink after work with colleagues, we share a glass with friends while catching up at the end of the week, we clink glasses with our family over dinner. Most of the time, we’re drinking our wine but concentrating on other things – as we should. Wine, or cocktails, are the scaffolding to social events. We sip while we chat, aware the liquid is good or maybe just ok, but not necessarily picking up the nuances and character of the drink.

So the homework I assign is to take a few quiet moments to consider the flavours, aromas, and textures of a wine – not every wine and not all the time, that would make you an unsufferable party pooper who could expect invitations to cease promptly – but once or twice a week, try to find the apples in the Chablis or the strawberry in the Beaujolais. Also consider how the wine feels in your mouth: is it rough and course with unruly tannin? Silky and smooth like melted butter? Fulsome and coating, or delicate and gossamer? Now try that same wine with a bite of cheese or a slice of salami. How has it changed? Better? Worse?

These small exercises practiced diligently a few times a week will eventually become as rote for you as they are for me. Even when you are laughing with your BBF’s in your sweats on girls’ night, you’ll suddenly realize you can detect the mouthwatering green apple and delicate salinity of your Chablis.

You will have become a better taster.

How Do You Like Your Pickle?

In a few weeks a cocktail class I teach will start again.

A six-session series, with each workshop involving 4-5 drink recipes plus one quick and easy snack recipe. Just a little nibble to go with the free-flowing cocktails. (There’s an online version starting in November, so if you are not in Toronto and would like to join me from wherever you are in the world, here’s a link to register.)

I think the students are a bit shocked at my approach. Instead of instructing from a pulpit at the front of the classroom, I make them gather around my workstation (it’s a teaching kitchen so I have a big counter and stove and the mirrors overhead and all the bells and whistles. It’s pretty swanky; too bad it’s the college’s, not mine.)

At every stage of each recipe, I get the students to taste the ingredients. Try bottled lime juice versus fresh. Sample the bitters on their own to understand their flavour. Make a Manhattan without the bitters and then make one with. What’s the difference? What version do they like best?

In the final class our snack recipe is a quick cucumber pickle. I have the students taste the cucumbers with salt, the brine on its own, and then, of course, the finished quick pickle. (I shared it on a Quaintrelle Weekender a few months ago; I’ve linked it at the bottom of this post if you missed it.)

I ask them what they prefer. Would they want more sugar, a few herbs, maybe a titch more vinegar?

There are no wrong answers, but often the participants, all successful adults in their own lives, stand frozen, like a deer in headlights, terrified of saying the wrong thing.

Searching for the “right” answer the teacher wants to hear, is not the way to learn – or, for that matter, to teach. At least not to me.

I implore my students to use the recipes as a guide but adjust to their own tastes. The only way that can be done is understanding how the various ingredients contribute to a final product. Taste and taste and taste as you go.

Look at that perfectly cooked turmeric rice! Second time’s a charm!

I remember taking an Indian cooking course and making rice (almost nothing in life is more stressful than making rice for Indians.) I followed the recipe, and as the water cooked down, my teacher tasted it, scrunched his face, and disdainfully said, “salty.” I had to start again.

Don’t just blindly follow a recipe and serve it without knowing what’s coming, sometimes that will work, but many times it just won’t.

How salty is your salt (they do differ.) Is your chicken stock the fairly bland stuff from a tetra pack or the deeply flavourful, gelatinous homemade broth found in butcher shops (or made by you?) What kind of olive oil are you using? Is it grassy and herbaceous or fruity and floral? All of these things will make a difference in the final outcome of your dish.

So taste and taste and taste.

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