Deciphering Dishes

[Shellyann36]

Hubby and I have started watching Master Chef and the last show we saw was when the competitors had to sample a meal made by chef's from previous contests and create the meals themselves by the look of the meal as well as the taste.

Could you recreate a dish by the look and the taste alone? I am not sure that I could. I think I would miss out on some of the ingredients.

 

[firelily99]

The easy ones like mashed potatoes I would be good to go but the ones that they are making on the show? Probably not. Still it must be interesting to watch and see what they have come up with to stump the contestants.

 

[Ellyn]

In one episode of Top Chef, one of the challenges was for the contestants to taste an ingredient and identify what it was. These were professional gourmet chefs, and they all did terribly! Interestingly, hibiscus juice apparently tastes like calamansi juice. I'm sure that they could have done better if they were to know what the ingredients were and how it tasted, and to create a dish out of those ingredients, but de-construction (first step to re-construction) is obviously very tricky!

I probably couldn't tell the difference between tomatoes in lemon marinade, sweetened bell peppers, and pimentos.

For example, I always thought that the skin of Japanese croquettes were made out of some bread dough. My godmother makes them perfectly just with mashed potatoes, it's the Japanese breading around it that makes it seem like a whole meat pastry. So, my taste and texture recognition are obviously off, even if I can enjoy the food.