Saliva is the first point of digestion. The moment we see, smell and desire food, our mouths begin to water and our body starts preparing to eat. It’s evolutionary and I can see this happening when I pull out the dog food container and Pickles, my Jack Russell, starts licking her lips.
A head chef once taught me to reference this as a test for seasoning. While tasting a dish, he asked, “Is the saliva in your mouth running?” It seemed like a strange question at the time, but it was another way of knowing whether a dish was balanced. Salt, acidity, sweetness and umami should make the mouth salivate and keep you coming back for more.
Vietnamese cuisine perfects this balance. Traditional dishes combine salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami flavours using things like chilli, herbs, fish sauce, lime, sugar and aromatics to create layers.
For me, taste goes further than what happens on our tastebuds. Texture plays a large role in how I taste and create a dish. Crunch, chew, silkiness, tenderness, temperature and the way something changes in my mouth enhances flavour. Sometimes it extends even further than that and foods appear in my mind as shapes and colours; a circle, square, straight line or something less easily defined. Sometimes a dish screams, Yellow! More recently, I have noticed food becoming connected to music. This is where synaesthesia comes into the picture, the phenomenon where one sense can trigger another. This venison “la lot” feels like the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song “Breathless”. Not because of the lyrics but because of its rhythm, layering and energy.
Bò lá lốt, a Vietnamese dish, is traditionally beef wrapped in betel leaves then grilled over coal. This recipe uses venison instead. Venison is leaner than beef, so I have added chopped macadamias to bring richness and chew. The spiced, aromatic meat is rolled, then wrapped in betel leaves and grilled until charred. Once it’s cooked and then dipped into the lemon aspen and finger lime sauce, the mouth-watering symphony begins. There are a few ingredients, but it’s so worth it.