Palette Cleansing

flyinglentris

flyinglentris

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This thread is a spin off from my recipe for Salmon Net Allumette https://www.cookingbites.com/threads/salmon-net-allumette.11619/ as the challenge to use celery in a recipe leads into the topic.

Celery is very conducive to palette cleansing in a couple ways - it is neutral in flavor and can be mixed in with certain things which are definitely powerful palette cleansers. I first learned about palette cleansing while wine tasting in the Sonoma and Napa Valleys in northern California where pieces of cheese are offered to winery visitors to help them cleanse their palettes prior to tasting another different wine. I later found it referenced elsewhere, most especially in multi-course meal preparation. An interesting application of palette cleansing is the use of tomato to ameliorate the bite of chewing a raw Jalapeno pepper.

The Salmon Allumette recipe I posted is a small part of a multi-course I have planned for New Year's Evening. I was influenced to use celery for this recipe, but at the same time recognized its capacity for applying palette cleansing. I will refer to this thread from that thread.

My plan was to have a steak with mushrooms and onions supplemented by salmon and some snacks and a desert. As I became exposed to the celery challenge, I was influenced to alter my planned meal to go multi-course with the Salmon Net Allumette as a follow-on to the steak. In between, influenced by Greek festival food, I planned a Tzatziki like sauce over gnochi or spatzle. Instead of using cucumber, I would use celery in plain yogurt. After serving and consuming the Salmon Net Allumette, I planned yet one more palette cleansing by using celery sticks to spoon the same sauce out of a bowl. This would be followed up by desert in the form a baklava.

I had not intended originally to share my New Year's plan in this forum, but with folks asking for photos of the Salmon Net Allumette, I decided to concede and include this discussion of palette cleansing as it applies.

Please post your thoughts and experiences with palette cleansing. I'd love to hear about them and learn from your experience as you might from mine.
 
flyinglentris said:
I planned a Tzatziki like sauce over gnochi or spatzle. Instead of using cucumber, I would use celery in plain yogurt.
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What a lovely idea - you could include that in the challenge too!

Some of my favourite palette cleansers are the traditional 'sorbets' which can be made as light as you like and can also be slightly sweet, citrus or savoury. Hmm...celery sorbet?
 
I'll make this palette cleansing New Year's Eve multi-course even more of an interesting experiment by choosing something bitter for a beverage with the steak, mushrooms and onions - raw cranberry juice. This is not the cranberry juice blend which is sweetened by at least a good percentage of apple juice. It is tart. If the celery Tzatziki can handle that - it's a potent cleanser. I'll report my findings. I'll enjoy the Baklava with Martinelli's Champagne Apple Cider. :)
 
@flyinglentris
You have a very thoughtful approach to multi course dining. I am familiar with sorbet's or ices and parsley as pallet cleansers. I never considered celery. DUHHH! A wonderful option.

Not a pallet cleanser but a scent cleanser - perfumeries will use coffee beans to cleanse the nose between smelling perfumes.
 
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Happy New Year! I had a very enjoyable time fixing up my multi-course and the only issue was all those dishes, pots, pans, utensils and so on that needed to be cleaned up. I will photo-document that multi-course here as I have plugged in some palette cleansing through-out. That's what spun off this thread, was my placement of Salmon Net Allumette in the stream of courses, 6 in all.

I began the day before by preparing the Gnochi and the celery/yogurt sauce.

The Gnochi had had to be simply boiled and ladled off into a `container to be cooled and refrigerated over night.

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For those unfamiliar, Gnochi are a sort of potato dumpling which can be served covered in gravy, in soups or in other creative ways as I am doing here.

For the Salmon Net Allumette, the salmon needs to be precooked and similarly cooled, flaked and refrigerated. Salmon Net Allumette is served cold.

On the night of the meal, the main entree is a steak with mushrooms and onions. The whole affair is cooked as a composite where Julienne ring slices from a sweet yellow onion and sliced brown mushrooms are combined in one deep dish cooking vessel to produce the following result.

PaletteCleansing02.png

What I call composites or mixtures include things like stews, pizza and other meals where flavors are merged in one identifiable item. Before moving on to the Salmon Net Allumette, this first entree's flavor mix must be neutralized.

The next course is then a palette cleanser, Gnochi covered in a celery/yogurt sauce similar to Tzatziki. I use a trick to enhance the celery flavor by cross slicing the celery onto a microwaveable plate and heating it for about a minute and a half. I then put those slices along with about a cup of cold plain yogurt into a blender and puree. The flavor of foods can be altered by heating. Flavor can also be altered by other methods such as pickling, aging, drying or compositing with spices, herbs, salt or other ingredients. Heating can do wonders.

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Put the Gnochi into a small bowl.

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Cover it with an adequate amount of the celery/yogurt sauce.

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It's a small course which is not filling and serves to cleanse the palette prior to moving on.

The Salmon Net Allumette recipe can be found in the referenced thread and will not be repeated here.

SalmonNetAllumette09.png


The sweet snow peas and sun dried tomato are an embellishment and are better consumed last to prevent their impinging upon the subtle flavor of the Salmon Net Allumette.

There is no need to palette cleanse before the next course which is a desert, Baklava.

PaletteCleansing05.png


I have a good friend whose family runs several Greek restaurants in the area and the Baklava originated in his restaurant, not my creation. Yiassoo!

The final course is a snack course to be eaten while waiting for the New Year to ring in, a vegetable and cheese platter and a separate cheese platter.

PaletteCleansing06.png


The sharpest flavor on this platter is held by the cucumber slices and the sweetest, the snow peas, followed by the Roma tomato. Cheese is provided as a palette cleanser. A separate cheese platter includes Swiss, Extra Sharp Cheddar, Monterey Jack and Brie. Are they all capable of being palette cleansers?

Oh, remember that celery yogurt sauce?

PaletteCleansing07.png


This sauce can be used as a salad dressing, a chip dip, a veggie dip, a sandwich condiment and many other uses.

Happy New Year!

Please share your thoughts on palette cleansing in multi-course meals.
 
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I eat a lot of middle eastern, Greek and southern Asian food, so palette cleansers for me are usually plain yoghurt, or a cucumber raita. Freshly grated raw carrot is good too. And of course there is always the occasional cup of saffron tea.
 
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