The writer of the blog Sparkly In The City at sparklyinthecity.blogspot.com recently wrote a post about the advantages of having a signature dish. In short, it's a special dish that you can make easily and bring to parties, so that eventually you become known for bringing it and everyone can automatically assume you have some cooking prowess, even if in reality it is the only dish you have ever known how to make in your entire life. So my friend Sparkly asked if I would write a sister post to hers about HOW to make a signature dish. So I'll list a few tips below:
- Think of dishes you like to eat at parties. Since this is your signature dish, and it will be at most of the parties you attend (because you're the one bringing it) it is unwise to select a base- recipe that isn't even appealing to you.
- Google the recipes- look at multiple dishes, and select one based on your level of cooking experience- I've been a chef for 7 years and I still wouldn't sign up to make souffle my signature dish, because the difficulty in a flawless execution is not something I want to go through before every party.
- If you are a novice in the kitchen, read over the recipe and look for action words you don't understand. You either need to immediately google the word and figure out if it's just a pretentious word for a simple action, or move on to a recipe that you understand upon first look.
- Short ingredient lists do not necessarily indicate simple recipes, but I do recommend them- For a signature dish, you don't want to have to restock your entire kitchen with ingredients that you don't even know how to use in any dish other than your signature. You want to keep it simple, so that you can make a 5 minute trip to the store, or always have your kitchen stocked with the ingredients, and hopefully make the dish with very little notice or forethought.
- Now, you've selected a recipe- what's so signature about a dish that you found a recipe for online? First of all, that it's homemade. You're already making something more special than any of those people who bring a 2 liter of Dr Pepper or a bag of chips. But you know I'm fixing to tell you how to make the dish truly signature- special and secret!
- My best trick for secret or signature recipes is that even if I were to take a recipe and just change or add one ingredient- I just changed the entire chemistry of the dish! You only need ONE change to make something completely different. Here are some suggestions for what you can add to make something just a little bit special:
- On a sweet signature dish, it may be as simple as sprinkling a tiny pinch of sea salt onto the top of whatever you make.
- I'm a native Texan, and we have a habit of adding Jalapeno to EVERYTHING. But, in all fairness, it always makes things taste better! There are some great seasonings out there like Jalapeno salt and Habanero salt that you can use in order to add a punch of flavor while still practicing restraint.
- Bacon. Most party-goers will enthusiastically consume things with bacon added if only to say they tried it. All the better if you succeed. I do not recommend that most new or novice chefs bother trying to add bacon to ice cream, even as a professional I have found it exceedingly difficult to avoid it turning into ice cream with bits of soggy meat. Come to think of it, you could, however, serve some fresh, crispy maple bacon bits on the side in a bowl to sprinkle on top along with nuts, cherries and whipped cream!
- For both sweet and savory (salty, meaty, hearty) dishes, add just a pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, ginger, clove to the recipe to change the depth of flavor. You can even play with curry or cumin if you're really adventurous, just be extremely cautious and only add a very very little bit at a time.
- You can add mint or basil to either savory or sweet dishes, but take great care in how you add it, how much you add and what flavor profiles you are adding it to. If you are unsure, allow yourself opportunity to experiment before you need to have the dish ready for others to consume, or write me specifically and let me know what the dish you want to alter is, and how you think you'd like to enhance it. I can help you individually with what you need.
- You can also take something basic and add a sauce, like a peanut butter chocolate cream pie that I made a few weeks ago- It was a pretty typical pie recipe, but I added a sweet, grapey red wine sauce on the side for people to put on the plate with their slice, so that they got a PB&J sort of flavor profile.
- You may also be able to mix up different recipes. Again with the pie crust example, If you have a recipe that calls for a graham cracker crust, you may choose to mix it up, and make one with a different kind of cookie or cracker, like Oreos, Club crackers, Nilla Wafers, even pretzels! Though I prefer, when working with something salty like pretzels, to mix the crumbs with a sweeter cookie like the Oreos, Grahams or Nilla wafers.
- Pay attention to popular flavor pairings. If you have a great recipe for something that is heavy on caramel, you may have noticed the recent trend of adding salt to caramel desserts. You don't, however, see a lot of "sea-salted raspberries". Keep in mind what is already appealing and popular when you're messing with recipes. I'm not saying you shouldn't try a little salt on your raspberry dream bars, but I BEG you to taste and taste again before you serve it to a bunch of people and get a reputation for bad tasting food.
- One more option is to consider taking all the elements of a classic dish and making it into a less conventional state- for instance, you may freeze your cream pie, or you may make a milkshake with all the flavors of banana pudding. You may take a popular punch or beverage and freeze it into small Popsicles- root beer float on a stick, anybody? You may even simply take the elements of a loose dessert, or one with lots of components, and make it easier to eat in a party setting. One example of this is that I once took all the components of a banana split, spooned small portions of each onto a crepe, and made little sweet dessert spring-rolls. They were cute, clever, delicious, and really very simple to make.
- I even took that idea a little further because I froze a few of them, stuck a Popsicle stick into them, battered them in pancake batter and fried them. You can fry ANYTHING. This is not necessarily for novice cooks, though- hot oil is nothing to take lightly. Please exercise caution and obtain more experienced supervision whenever cooking with hot oil until you are comfortable and experienced in doing it without help.
I am excited to hear what signature dishes my readers can come up with! Please email me your new signature ideas, recipes, successes and disasters. If you send me photos, all the better! I hope to post a follow up blog to this in a few weeks featuring y'all's culinary adventures!
