How to Build Flavor like Daniel Patterson

"So, this is it?"

Daniel Patterson, of San Francisco's Coi and a host of other places, is an eminently gracious chef, but you can't shake the feeling that he's just slightly disappointed in what passes for hyperlocal produce here on the MUNCHIES rooftop. He's made several very thoughtful rounds of the garden with noted perfume genius Mandy Aftel, the co-author of his recently-released book The Art of Flavor: Practices and Principles for Creating Delicious Food, and has finally, after much contemplation, selected a couple of eggplants, a few scallions, a handful of tomatoes, and a heap of edible flowers and herbs.

Aftel and Patterson's collaboration is less a cookbook—though it's also that—than an extended meditation on the principles of flavor, based on their collective decades of experience layering tastes and smells. Their process is completely collaborative, and they build on each other's thoughts while finishing each others' sentences and anticipating each others' reactions.

Once back in the kitchen, Aftel's on herb-and-flower-duty while they bat ideas back and forth about where they want to take the dish: "Mandy, you want to do any spices? If we have tomato, sour gherkin, and a bunch of herbs on top, we can make it slightly spicy, because of the chiles. Maybe the roasted eggplant pulp gets mixed with chile, chard, and scallion, and then we'll need some kind of spice. Maybe something that speaks to that."

Aftel's thinking about warm spices: "What would you think—you're not going to like this—about cinnamon and honey? You wouldn't do nutmeg, because I know you hate nutmeg."

Patterson's skeptical: "That's not what I'd normally do but let's do it. If you say cinnamon, maybe we need to round that out, with more savory spices? What if we do anise under the cinnamon?"

Aftel: "I don't want to be doing cinnamon if you don't think it's a good idea. I don't want to be leading the charge."

After much back and forth, they eventually settle on cinnamon, cardamom, cayenne, and ginger, and set to work.

The eggplant and scallion both hit the grill. The eggplant is then pulped and mixed with the scallions and aforementioned spices. The slight wrinkle emerges that the eggplant is bitter-er than anticipated (NYC produce strikes again), so the vinaigrette they'd originally thought of gets an emergency boost of honey, plus the one-two punch of both vinegar's sharp acidity and lemon juice's sweetness. A couple of diced fish peppers get folded in to bring the heat as well.

Halved tomatoes and gherkins follow. Patterson and Aftel approach all their dishes as having a base, a middle, and a top; in this instance, the eggplant puree, with it's salty-acidic-sweet vinaigrette, is the base. The middle notes are the sweet tomatoes and sour gherkins, along with the weight and mouthfeel brought by the olive oil they've been tossed in.

The top notes are provided by a pile of herbs and flowers and a drizzle of olive oil to finish: Patterson describes his approach here as "lots of fresh acidity and a lot of bright herbs on top." The finished composition makes you understand why these two literally wrote the book on flavor. It's fresh, bright, and—bitter NYC eggplant notwithstanding—everything you'd want from a late-fall lunch.