Two posts ago I wrote some of my thoughts on the importance of acid in food, sometimes in the form of pickles. Acid is great, the first thing people think of when you need to cut fat, to cut richness is definitely acid. But why only acid? I think lots of flavors are able to cut through richness, an intense burst of freshness from fruit, or maybe sweetness from a vegetable, or the refreshing qualities that certain ingredients like a water chestnut can refresh the palate against something rich and cloying. And this is what I love about food, that it is dynamic, there is not only one path to achieve a certain end result. And in my opinion, there are no right or wrong answers, no right or wrong ingredients to use, the bottom line is that you have to make it delicious, not just the individual components separately, but the entire dish when eaten together, it has to make sense and taste good cohesively.

Aged pekin duck wood roasted on the bone, quandong, dried liver

Dish from Brae in australia, the dish comes together really nicely, the duck is beautifully cooked, the jus lends just enough moisture, the roasted flowers(I cant name them) add a really surprising element of spiciness, almost like eating a subtle szechuan pepper, and the dried liver powder gives the dish intense bursts of offal flavor. But the whole dish is “cut” or balanced out by the use of quandong, a fruit native to Australia, according to wikipedia, it has the flavor reminiscent of “Peach, apricot, or rhubarb”, it is this intense burst of sweetness that really awakens the palate