On 31 October, for the second time, GastroHub hosted the module of the training centre “Fontegro” under the name “How to Create New Tastes”.

Speakers:

- Yuri Priemsky (chef of Odessa and Spicy no Spicy)

- Ekaterina Avdeeva (co-founder of the Fontegro Chefs Congress)

The purpose of the training module was to explain how to create new tastes using spices, showing it by the example of various blends of spices in a single product.

It’s vital for a chef to understand that people have different sensitivity of taste buds. In general, it’s possible to speak about three types of people: supertasters, people with dull receptor sensitivity, and people with well-developed taste buds. Chefs usually belong to the third type.

With all the variety of spices known to us, only 109 spices around the world are recognized by the International Organisation for Standardization. Everything else is considered blends, that is, mixtures of spices.

According to Yuri, 80% of the success of a dish depends on the smell. If the taste is wonderful, but the smell is inexpressive, then the dish won’t impress the guest. That’s why Yuri shared with the participants the tactics used by him in the kitchen that allow you to get and maintain the rich aromas of dishes. He also spoke about how to achieve a stable taste of a restaurant dish and get a fragrant dish since pre-making ingredients. In addition, he talked about salt as a source of additional flavour. Participants tasted ten types of salt and understood how to choose and use it right.

The chef and Ekaterina talked about the compatibility of spices with meat and fish and revealed three crucial ways to help “reveal” the spices as much as possible. After the coffee break, Yuri talked about his signature blends and what to start with. He demonstrated recipes for major blends from around the world. Participants tasted his every dish and asked questions.

It was delicious and quite informative!