One of things that I really like to encounter is when one cuisine influences another cuisine, similar to what we encountered of our San Francisco Food Tour of North Beach\Little Italy and Chinatown. In Chinatown, one of our stops made a special soup. It was not any kind of special occasion, it was just that they managed to get some Thai Basil. It has a similar flavor to the basil that we get, however it is not as sweet and has a really nice anise, almost licorice, flavor. They put it in at very end after they made a rice noodle and chicken soup. The result was delicious.
On our San Francisco Food Tours, it is always interesting how people mix cultures and cuisines without really thinking about it very much. They just happened to find a really nice ingredient and they thought it would taste good with something that they were making. And the result is almost always something really tasty.
It always inspires me to go home and try to make something similar at home. Most of time it works, sometimes not so much. I think that’s the nature of a home cook. We try cooking something and then see what happens. More often than not, when we try something new at home, we find that it really was not as hard to make as we originally though that it might be. The other great thing is we can do those little things that we personally like. For example, I like to add white vanilla to omelets. It’s made from the flower of the vanilla plant instead of the pod. It has this really nice perfume like flavor, almost like lavender. That’s the fun part of cooking at home and mixing cuisines and food. I end with something that is really good, just the way that I like it.
