Vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet, but many people don't like them, mainly because they are too bland and lack a significant, appealing flavor. So, what are some clever tricks to solve these problems?
Tofu with Bok Choy
Removing Unpleasant Flavors
Many vegetables have a bitter or earthy taste, such as spinach, water bamboo, bok choy, and mushrooms. If these vegetables are used directly for cooking after washing and cutting, they can be very unpalatable because of their high oxalic acid content or the unique musty flavor of fungi. So, we can use a simple blanching method to remove most of the oxalic acid and musty flavors from the vegetables.
Masking Unpleasant Flavors
Some vegetables have very strong spicy, bitter, or pungent flavors, such as chili peppers, bitter melon, and Houttuynia cordata. These vegetables cannot be treated with the flavor-removing method because these flavors often come from their beneficial components. For example, the bitterness in bitter melon comes from momordicoside and quinine, which have excellent health benefits. When cooking such dishes, a "masking" method of seasoning is needed. For instance, when cooking spicy or bitter dishes, you can add a little sugar, as sugar has a "harmonizing" effect that can soften the taste of chili peppers and bitter melon, creating a subtle "sweet and spicy" flavor and a hint of the "sweetness that follows bitterness."
Borrowing Flavors
Most vegetables are disliked for being bland, such as eggplant and lettuce. These vegetables can "borrow" flavor from ingredients or seasonings with very distinctive tastes. Rich and savory ingredients like chicken broth, fermented black beans, and oyster sauce can give vegetables a very rich and delicious flavor, such as sesame paste hand-torn eggplant, fermented tofu with water spinach, and oyster sauce lettuce. You can also use twice-seasoned cooking oils like scallion-garlic oil or mushroom oil. Because oil is an excellent carrier of flavor, the unique tastes of ingredients can fully infuse into it. When cooking these vegetarian dishes or even meat dishes, you can use these oils to achieve the goal of borrowing and enhancing flavor. Examples include shredded potatoes in chili oil and amaranth in golden garlic broth.