One thing we love to teach at Living Light Culinary Institute is flavor balancing. We start teaching it almost immediately – in our first hands-on class, Essentials of Raw Culinary Arts.™
Raw Food Recipes: Balance Five Tastes
Flavor balancing is so important – no matter what kind of raw food recipe you create, from something with only a few ingredients, like a simple Strawberry Salad with delicate butter lettuce and herbs, to a much more complicated gourmet raw vegan dish, flavor balancing makes the tastes come alive!
To create a truly wonderful raw food recipe, learning how to balance the five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and pungent will help you transform your dish into harmonious perfection. And there’s an extra element that some people haven’t even heard of – a term to describe the savory taste, borrowed from the Japanese language, called “umami.” There’s so much to learn about this simple concept of flavor balancing – it’s just one of the segments our students get excited about. They love learning the simple tricks that make a huge difference! We’re proud of our raw culinary curriculum, because each step builds to the next in a logical and practical order that makes sense! We’ve been developing our teaching systems for a long time, and we know our methods make a big difference in how students learn.
Raw Food Recipes: A Visual Treat
When creating a raw food recipe, one of the main components is visual: how does the food look on the plate? How is it arranged and what is the color scheme you are using? It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does need to appeal to the eye first. So many elements are important when creating raw vegan recipes. Food also appeals to our emotions, and so at Living Light we teach our students how to satisfy every aspect of nourishment – the body, mind, and spirit – all of our raw vegan food is “soul food”! Our Food Styling class at Living Light is another great way to truly understand the visual aspect of creating raw food recipes and why “eating with our eyes” is so important. No wonder they say that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Raw Food Recipes: Color and Texture Balance
Besides flavor balancing, color and mouthfeel are vital. You always want to balance colors and textures in your raw food dishes – both in an individual raw food recipe (when possible) and definitely in a complete meal – never serve several dishes with the same texture and color scheme at a meal. It’s also important to consider the region where you live, the seasonal availability of produce, and a variety of other factors.
We’d love to teach you how to make raw vegan food that’s beautiful, delicious, and bursting with nutrients. If you’d like to know more about our classes and certification programs, our enrollment advisors have all the “ingredients” you need to get started. They can help you design a program that’s perfectly balanced just for you! Call 707-964-2420 or visit RawFoodChef.com for more information.
[…] Flavor balancing is so important – no matter what kind of raw food recipe you create, from something with only a few ingredients, like a simple Strawberry Salad with delicate butter lettuce and herbs, to a much more complicated gourmet raw vegan dish, flavor balancing makes the tastes come alive! Source […]