A dash of adventure, a teaspoon of fun, a couple cups of gumption. What is the best recipe for being BOLD in the kitchen? Sometimes the challenge of taking something mundane and amping it up is the most fun I’ve had with food. I love coming across recipes that utilize flavor mashups that seem completely unrelated. Sweet and savory mashups, texture mash-ups, interesting cuisine connections…done with flair and fun, these can be so delicious!
1. Strawberries and Balsamic Vinegar: Aged balsamic vinegar can be sweet as well as acidic, making it the perfect complement to strawberries. Especially good with spinach and toasted nuts, such as walnuts.
2. Ice Cream and Olive Oil: You heard right! Drizzle a little high quality extra virgin olive oil over vanilla ice cream and you have a delectable treat no one would expect. The olive oil creates a sort of saltiness that complements the sweetness of the ice cream and propels it into a whole different category of delicious!
3. Manchego Cheese and Honey: Cheese and honey is not really groundbreaking, but Manchego has such a rich, delicate consistency, to pair it with honey seems almost redundant. But a sweet light drizzle of lavender honey or lighter variety honey would catapult Manchego from excellent, to “oh my god my taste-buds just performed the most epic flash mob EVER.”
4. Oysters and Fruit: I discussed raw oysters this week for WanderFood Wednesday, and how there’s a lot of exploration and experimentation right now into taking the experience of enjoying oysters to the next level. One new thing is creating dipping sauces that err more on the side of sweet rather than savory. I will say I am less of a fan of these as oysters are already SO sweet in nature, I like cutting that with something spicy or acidic, but sometimes the acid of a fruit toned dipping sauce is just enough to make the pairing perfect.
5. Bacon and Chocolate: It works, I swear! The saltiness of bacon and the smokey flavor combines seamlessly with good quality milk or dark chocolate. It’s a sinful combination really, two vices in one? Yes please.
6. Scallops with Grapefruit: Scallops are some of the most rich shellfish around. So finding ways to cut through the richness is always good. I ran across this recipe recently on the Huffington Post website and am dying to try it! Grapefruit are so acidic and so flavorful I can just imaging the flavor circus created when paired with scallops.
7. Black Pepper and Watermelon: I’ve never been a huge melon fan, with the exception of watermelon, which is funny since it’s probably the most bland melon out there. For this reason though, it’s a chameleon of a fruit that can be paired with the most wacky of foods. With black pepper the fruit tones of the watermelon really shine through the spicy kick of the pepper. Looking forward to trying this refreshing sounding salad this summer!
8. Blueberries and Avocado (pictured above): So I tried this one the other night, inspired by a recipe found on The Lean Clean Eating Machine blog and it was surprisingly delicious. Drizzled over with a little fresh squeezed lime, these flavors fit together much better than I was expecting. I’m not even sure why, since they really shouldn’t work. Blueberry are so sweet and strong and avocado has such a different consistency and interesting flavor, there is seemingly no crossover between these two foods, they’re not even really opposites. But it works!
Do you have a favorite strange flavor combination?
Eat Well, Travel Well ~ Samantha