Ingredients Are Everything!

In the realm of my immediate friends, I don’t know anyone who gets excited to go grocery shopping like I do. When I spend all day every day in the kitchen, I find joy in little things like my ingredients and tools. For both cooking and baking, the quality of your ingredients will determine how good the dish comes out.

If I decide to spend the extra money and go to a farmer’s market, it’s almost always overwhelming because I want everything. All the gorgeous organic produce, fresh meats, cheeses, honey, jams, butters, you name it. It didn’t take me long to appreciate good quality produce in my adventures with cooking and baking.

Like most of America, I tend to go to my usual grocery store since I can try to get more for a little less money, but that doesn’t always mean I have to skimp on quality. When I’m planning recipes to write and film for the week, I like to go to the store and simply see what looks good. A couple weeks ago, I noticed there were tons of gorgeous strawberries, and even better, they were on sale! I got lots of them and made about 4 different strawberry recipes that week including pavlova, tart, sauce, and then enjoyed some just tossed with sugar and fresh orange juice with breakfast. I am all about versatility. I love getting one ingredient and being able to use it in a number of ways. That’s why I try to find the best quality I can afford. I like fresh ingredients to be the star of dishes, and when I put together a recipe and decorate it, I try to make sure you really know what the star of the dish is. I want some part of that ingredient to be in every part of the dish. The pavlova for example had a strawberry flavored meringue, strawberry cream, and fresh berries on top.

A lot of people struggle with getting creative in the kitchen. That’s sometimes caused by overcomplicating things and thinking you need to put together this intricate dish with all these components to it to try and be fancy. Something I’ve learned over the years of writing recipes and going to a variety of restaurants from cheap to super expensive is that simplicity is one of the most elegant traits of a dish. If you have a beautiful ingredient, doing too much to it is almost insulting it. A good quality ingredient has enough flavor to stand out on its own, so all you have to do is find a few other small things to emphasize everything that makes that ingredient special. Yesterday I saw heirloom tomatoes at the store, and I found this one that was particularly beautiful. I sliced it, drizzled some good olive oil over it, sprinkled some sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, and that was it. It needed nothing more. Obviously not all ingredients are like that, but the general idea of keeping it simple is always good to keep in mind when it comes to creating a good dish.

So next time you go to the store, and you aren’t quite sure what you want to make that week, or if you’re going and need a little inspiration for your next special meal, let your senses speak. What looks great? What smells good? Because if you don’t like it at the store, odds are you won’t like it on your plate.