just long enough to become crisp and mellow
their flavor.
Flavor Extraction
For herbs and spices to provide us with flavor,
cooks must find ways to liberate the flavor
chemicals from within their tissue and convey
them to our taste and odor receptors. For
fragile herbs, this may be as simple as
strewing the fresh leaves on the dish, as in
Vietnamese soups: the eater liberates the
aromas by chewing on the leaves, and enjoys
them at their freshest. But if the flavors are to
be incorporated into the dish, then the flavor
compounds must somehow escape from the
herb or spice. The cook may leave the
flavoring intact and use liquids and heat to
encourage the flavors to seep out gradually, or
he may break it into particles — chopping
fresh herbs, crumbling dry ones, grinding
spices — to expose the flavor molecules