Fad foods and trends

I'm really not a big fad fan but I stumbled across this tweet the other day by MsMarmitelover. Now working the other day I ended up having to do the whole drop and smear thing. I really don't get them. Even if the intention is to be an extremely powerful flavour boost.

Now for me every element on a plate has a reason and this is why I don't get them. More often than not these little embellishments offer nothing, the smear struggling under one element either missed with every mouthful or scraped off when finally found. The drop disappearing into the cracks of the dish. You see for me I want a pool of sauce I want a small puddle of anglaise, sauce etc that I can have the choice to eat with every mouthful, creating a taste explosion in my mouth. I want to decide whether every mouthful should have this element or that element not be dictated to by how little I have on the plate. Then not to mention more often than not these tiny elements are rarely the powerful explosions that they would suggest. Then the the main course sauce it's a sin I want it so nice I'm finding bread to mop every last drop up. In fact this reminds me, one of my old chefs use to make the best richest truffle sauce I ever encountered, you know what I use to find more sauce in the pan than some I've seen on plates served(Yep I use to find many a bread roll and a pan, sat on pastry).

Now my next one "Micro Herbs" and "Pea Shoots" ahh!!! don't get me wrong used correctly these can make a dish. The thing is too many of the fad chefs think lets sprinkle these every where. So you'll get pea shoots adorning every salad, seriously do they actually taste these things? I like pea shoots but they have an almost grassy pea taste that is domineering, like some kind of dominatrix .I'm sure they do have their place i.e for me off the top of my head something like an asparagus and pea dish with an egg and rich butter sauce. You can normally continue this on with the others coriander dressing a dish it doesn't belong on, watercress ignoring the beef, celery killing a dish etc....  I also did find a really good producer of these http://www.nurturedinnorfolk.co.uk/

Now the water bath....Mmm I get them don't get me wrong I know my brother was wowed by an egg. I understand the science certainly with an egg the yolk, it is surrounded by something that is overcooked before it is. Again the misuse way out weighs the use, you get people that think it's good to do this to a ribeye, now that I don't understand and never will. The science says it doesn't work, collagen breaks at 68°C and medium rare 55-57 degrees c so how can it work? Now I'm not even suggesting traditional is the best I get a chicken to 63 C I get salmon cooked in a water bath. I also suspect even the traditional way doesn't break down the collagen in time. What I do suspect is it breaks down more, it allows the flavour inducing fat to be left and gets closer to breaking down than a water bath. Then we have a far better maillard reaction than you can achieve when water bathing .

Any way needed to get that off my chest feel a little relieved I'm going to try bring back #the_pool_of_sauce