Our sense of taste is not very refined. Not as refined as our sense of smell. But mess up the taste of your dish and the flavor is gone. In trying to get the flavor right, one has to start from the taste.

Getting a dish to taste good requires craft, but to ruin it, just make it bitter. Just like we are born liking sweet, we instinctively dislike bitter tastes. Poisonous plants tend to be bitter, so it seems a natural adaptation.

The bitter we must learn to like. Kids don’t go for collard greens, or olives, or coffee. Just like we retract our hand from a flame, our taste buds will forces us into faces or spitting actions with certain tastes. The faces inform our friends not to eat the white from the pomegranate, and the spitting will hopefully save us from a tummy ache. We are hard wired to do this, so it must be basic for our survival. The signals from our taste buds go directly to our brainstem, that primitive part of our brain, before being distributed to other parts. Taste is basic.

Bitter flavors are particularly challenging for a dilettante cook like myself because most aromas come from bitter ingredients. Fry your garlic just right and your dish has that great flavor; do it too long and it goes bitter. The same ingredients that are bitter are often the source of aromas. Bitters also help balance flavors and when used in small quantities can add complexity and depth.

Cooking is a balancing act.