Ratios and Realitivity

Cooking is akin to doing lab chemistry. It involves amounts, temperatures, chemicals (ingredients) and a sequence of events. Maybe that's one of the things I love so much about it., Back in the early 1990's I worked as the manager  in a mobile lab running high performance liquid chromatography and infrared spectraphotometry on environmental samples during the hayday of the Texas Superfund. Monitoring samples from contaminated wells on old gas stations in the Rio Grande Valley...but that's another story, and one far more boring.

So I approach cooking as an art in that manner. Like a chemistry process, start to finish. Oftentimes people will ask me "how do I make" such and such....and as I was instructed by my mentors, I always oblige, because recipes are really public property and after all.....that's how fusion occurs, when recipes pass hand to hand. But, my answers are always sort of nebulous, to the point of (I'm sure) maddening abstraction...

You see, I view any recipe as ratios of ingredients, rather than a set amount (i.e. 6 tablespoons of this, 2 teaspoons of that) a ratio of ingredients. It is far easier to scale any recipe that way. In other words I would try and see a recipe as the sum of the ingredients. For example 1 part ingredient X, 1/2 ingredient Y, 1/3 ingredient Z and so on. Doing this allows me to prepare any amount of any dish. Very useful for the home cook too. So I encourage you, see your recipes as ratios rather than amounts.

I've introduced y'all to atsarang dampalit, a Filipino pickled dish. The primary ingredient is Sesuvium portulacastrum (sea purslane). It's the tangy in our slaw that we dress out our Fusion Fish tacos with. Sersuvium grows all around you here on the shoreline margins of the coastal bend, and is easy to identify. You should make this dish and serve it with your other favorites. Here's how we make it:

Atsarang Dampalit

Ingredients

• i
• 3 cup dampalit (sesuvium) leaves
• 1 onion  thinly sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 thumb-sized ginger thinly sliced
• 1 pc carrot, cut into flowerettes
• 1 pc red bell pepper sliced
• 1/2 cup sukang paombong (filipino palm vinegar. hard to find. Cane vinegar works well)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Instructions

1. How to make Atsarang Dampalit:
2. Wash dampalit leaves very well. Mash leaves thoroughly and squeeze juice.
3. Add onions, garlic, ginger, carrot and bell pepper. Mix very well.
4. Boil together vinegar, sugar and salt without stirring. Cool. Pour over the mixed vegetables.
5. Store in clean bottles. Serve after three days to allow pickling solution to be absorbed by the vegetables.