Recipe Rock Star Lesson 3: Quality is delicious.

Arguably...

The Recipe Rock Star tutorials continue. We've covered mise and one focused minute. Now let's have a look at those ingredients....

Lesson 3: Quality is delicious

There's a reason packages of Doritos have an ingredient statement the size of Oklahoma. There's a reason top chefs increasingly choose to cook seasonal produce. And there's a reason why you should seek out the best possible ingredients you can find.

The reason is simple: fresh, seasonal ingredients taste better. Furthermore, delicious components make the meals you serve more flavorful.

At risk of offending anyone who's ever studied virtue ethics, let's compare a delicious appetizer to Plato's concept of the ultimate happiness: eudaimonia. To achieve ultimate recipe happiness we combine virtue (aretē) and knowledge (epistemē).

Let's examine bruschetta, for instance. It's thin slices of high-quality bread that's grilled or toasted, rubbed with the cut side of a halved clove of garlic, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and topped with some freshly diced garden tomatoes. Maybe you toss some chopped basil on there. Maybe a sprinkle of salt and a fresh grind of pepper. Maybe you gild the lily with a pinch of grated Parmesan. Regardless, it's tangy, crunchy, juicy, luscious wonder. In season, bruschetta is simple, delicious and perfect.

Now imagine the same preparation, but substitute slices of lightly toasted Wonder bread, drizzle it with vegetable oil, top with a shake of garlic powder, a supermarket tomato like the ones you get in January, a sprinkle of dried basil and a pinch of Kraft Parmesan Style Grated Topping shaken out of the little green can. Revolting. And yet, what's the difference, really?

The difference is quality. This is why bruschetta should not be attempted in the winter. You achieve something close to an appropriate look for the dish, but it tastes nowhere near as wonderful as it should.

The downside? Fresh, seasonal ingredients are more expensive and tend to go bad rapidly. They don't ship well. They don't stay "Good Thru 2009." Because the packaged foods business requires low cost and long shelf life, those products don't generally use the highest quality ingredients, so they tend to lack flavor balance and subtlety. Manufacturers end up compensating for the natural flavor dimensions with long lists of salts, sugars and nitrites.

But you're not a manufacturer and you don't need to produce food that will survive twenty years past the apocalypse. You're making good food for yourself and those around you. And you achieve that recipe awesomeness by hunting down the best ingredients and preparing them with your excellent cooking skills. Voila! Edible eudaimonia.

In Lesson 4, we'll pick up some tips from the pros.