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Elements of good food

Have you ever wondered why a grilled cheese sandwich can be so satisfying?

Bread toasted with just the perfect amount of butter, golden but chewy. The crispy edges mellow with melted-but-not-runny cheese. It is so simple, yet still so good.

In her latest Netflix documentary, Samin Nosrat, who trained at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, explained the four basic elements behind good cooking: “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.” Nosrat brought chefs from around the world together to show viewers how using the simplest ingredients can make the best meal.

The documentary shared the same name with Nosrat’s new book, which was a New York Times bestseller, and was named the General Cookbook of the Year by the James Beard Foundation.

There are four episodes and each is dedicated to one of the elements listed in the title. Nosrat traveled to different regions of the world, accompanied with a local chef, to explore the varieties of techniques utilizing these components.

Different than other cooking shows, Nosrat believes everyone should cook with their senses and explains that cooking was never meant to be an exact science. She tastes everything on every stage and tweaks the seasoning until it tastes just right.

She digs deep into each of the elements to explain why salt can bring out the best flavor in a food, why fat can make food so tasty or the ways the acidic zing of lemon juice can make a dish so vibrant. Last but not least, she offers some tips on how to properly utilize different types of heat while cooking.

Her eyes widen when the raw fat of the Cinta Senese, a Tuscan breed of pig, dissolves on her tongue. When biting into the sour orange from Mexico, her face squints. Her nose crinkles when she tastes a stronger salt at a market in Japan.

Nosrat is the kind of person who wonders about everything. She is a deeply curious historian and an empathetic tourist. Her love of food and her passion for taste show up when she tries new things. She keeps the show fun and gets excited when listening to the bubbling noise in the soy sauce barrel, and giggles like a child when collecting olives in Italy.

Her unrestricted personality is inviting and makes you want to be her friend. It makes you feel like you are part of the show, investigating each of the flavors with her.

In the last episode, she sums up her journey in her home by preparing a dinner with her mom for all of her friends to enjoy, to show that food is always about joy and gathering. It is a shared happiness.

So why is a grilled cheese so good? Because a good grilled cheese sandwich has a layering of fat from butter and cheese, the right amount of saltiness and acidity in the bread and the perfect amount of heat to toast it.

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