I'm watching Molto Mario (YAY!!! I can watch a show with Mario Batali in again! turns out I always could since it was moved from Food Network to FLN, but I really had no reason to care about anything involving FLN except for seeing Emril Live! every once in a while listed while scrolling through the programming guide. Now it is the Cooking channel. I spent a fair amount of time watching it yesterday)

He was talking about chopping up stuff (In this case, mushrooms) and he said that he didn't like chopping up stuff into little bits. That way you can't see it or taste it as well (BTW. I'm paraphrasing here) Since he is making a more rustic dish from northern Italy, big chunks make sense.

Big chunks have their place. He is making a sauce that has bigger chunks and big big flavors and in this case, big chunks are a no brainer. But if you are making something that has a more of a blended flavor to it, then small pieces are a good thing. the flavors blend more and you get a little bit of each ingredient in almost every bite. In a Marinara sauce, I wouldn't mind biting into a big piece of garlic, but I would rather have small pieces and have the flavor mixed in through the whole sauce (plus, in the case of garlic, the smaller the piece, the stronger the flavor.)

There is a place for big chunks, there is a place for small chunks. It just depends on what you are making.


On the bright side, he was cooking with a lot of butter. That is never a bad thing :)