Isn’t it great that there’s a positive side to everything.  I’m talking about food of course. Many years ago food was very scarce and therefore became very precious, and most people were poor. It’s this poverty that has brought us so much to be thankful for in today’s modern cooking.  With a large shortage of food, people were forced to use the very few ingredients that they could afford and try to create meals that were palatable.  They needed it to store it without refrigeration.  Foods like pasta that could be stored for months or casseroles that tenderised the toughest meats were all developed because of food scarcity. In fact a lot of the tastiest recipes we enjoy today originated this way.  What was once known as peasant food has made its way onto the table of some of the finest world restaurants.

Nowadays we have such an abundance of food.  You walk into a supermarket and you couldn’t possibly try all the choices of food as there’s so much to offer.  In fact there’s just too much.  And too much choice is not always a good thing.  For this reason, many of us tend to use too many ingredients.  This can result in a concoction of flavours that become hard to distinguish. Just like a painter who mixes all his palette colours will always result in brown paint.  Food can also taste what I call “brown” if mixed with too many flavours.

That’s why you can’t beat a simply made pizza like the Margherita pizza for flavour and simplicity.  The flavours are perfectly balanced and work in harmony with one another.  Add more ingredients and the balance can easily be off.  We sometimes try too hard with too many ingredients, I mean seriously, cheese inside pizza crust?

It’s nice to sometimes step back a little and work with few simple ingredients and appreciate all their colours, textures and flavours.  Let’s try and keep things nice and simple.

less is not always less, sometimes it’s more