Layering Flavor
“It takes time and effort to layer flavors,” Chef Tyler Rogers said with a glint in his eye. He was sitting kitty-corner, sort of across the table talking in his new restaurant, Stonebreaker. And, one of his newly crafted dishes was on the table for tasting.
The moment food left the fork and entered the mouth it became difficult, if not impossible to see the Chef, even though he was so close. The reason is simple. One cannot look straight ahead with eyes rolled way back into their sockets. The taste was exquisite!
Chef Tyler’s smile simply widened as he watched. “It’s all about layering and developing flavors,” he said. Then he launched into a description of some of the steps he took to create the squash mole sitting on the plate. “The nuts have to be chopped and then cooked for several hours, or the mole will taste gritty. It takes a long time to cook nuts for this use.”
It also took him a long time to find local farmers he could count on for food quality as he started building his planned-for Stonebreaker Restaurant menu.
“I wanted to do something to highlight what is grown right here,” he explained. “Most of the food used in the restaurant is from around here, within a three-hour drive from where we sit. It took me a little more than one year to source the producers for the menu I was creating for Stonebreaker,” he continued
It was worth the effort! The depth of the flavor in every dish is astonishing. If you take a moment to savor each bite you can begin to ferret-out the unique taste of each ingredient. And, you’ll discover that they don’t detract from each other at all. The combined, unique flavors build each bite into a crescendo of perception.
Such a result also happens with the separate components of the entire plate and its carefully curated combination of foods. There is no fighting between ingredients, just taste jubilation. With experiences such as this, it becomes easy to assume that the final outcome tells the whole story. Yet, it doesn’t.
Chef Tyler Rogers began his career in the kitchen as a short-order, line-cook in what could be classified as a greasy, fast food restaurant. But, he had a more expansive vision of who he could become personally and professionally. So, he left his home town of Magnolia and accepted job-after-job seeking more knowledge. Until after years acquiring experience he became a saucier.
A saucier is not only responsible for sauce preparation, but they are assigned as the sauté person stationed on the hot-line in a classically organized kitchen. The sauté station is usually the most prestigious position on the hot-line due the volume and character of the dishes. As a saucier, he not only developed character of dishes, he developed his own character in restaurants such as the “The French Laundry” in Yountville, California.
Chef Rogers’ career-story is more than one of jumping from restaurant to restaurant and place to place. It demonstrates the way every person develops personal character. It illuminates the special nature of life’s schooling process. We are all schooled through a combination of desire, effort and lessons accumulated and learned over time. A lifetime.
And, components of a lifetime create what Chef Tyler Rogers calls the layering of flavor.
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I’m Lynn Butterfield, Real Estate & Lifestyle Expert and Television Host for American Dream TV in Northwest Arkansas. I’ve helped hundreds of Buyers and Sellers, as a real estate agent and Associate Broker with Coldwell Banker, to discover where and how they want to live and work; to achieve what I call Realesation™. That’s why I bring you American Dream TV, Both Sides of the Fence, About the Dish, Monday’s Warm Cocoa and Home by Design Magazine to stir your heart and mind. Contact me so I can join you along your own unique path of discovery.
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