The tooth - TO IT (al dente)

OK, we’ve pretty much run the meat and vegetable texture thing through all its merits.  But the ‘tooth’ doesn’t stop there.    The world’s breadbaskets have brought us a veritable cornucopia of grain foods:  Breads!  crisp flatbreads, delicate naan, chewy resistant San Francisco sourdough, oh my, and other grain dishes like risotto, pilaf, cous cous, and grain puddings.  Don’t get me started on corn pudding.  We have pastas! Centuries of lovingly crafted recipes and shapes have produced untold thousands of options with this – Rotini, vermicelli, rigatoni, penne, capellini and more than I could list here ever. 

Oh, and then the cheeses.  With options of fresh, aged, skins and rinds, dry and soft, and curds and herb/spice flavored – there are more cheeses than meats, I’m sure.  In Paris, I could eat a different cheese every day and never taste the same cheese twice in a year.  And I tried.

But finally, I’m stressing equally important here, the idea also of a ‘liquid dente’.  Even wines have a ‘tooth’.  Yes, milk, tea, broths, soups, anything that you can pour should also refer to texture – a resistance, the personality of a ‘feel’ in the mouth.  Processed foods have a shallow go at this base gratification; and although they try artificially to create a mouth feel, in my opinion, they fail to meet the reality mark. 

Open up the creativity in your kitchen and explore what this wonderful world of foods has to offer.  Tastes, textures, nuances, they’re all there waiting to be discovered.