Care Tactics

What makes good food good, two chic sandwich tricks you need, delving into truly comfy interiors, and more, including a speedy chilled asparagus velouté in a glass to wash it all down.

Ever since doing all that cooking for my parents last month, as they were struggling to recover from being so sick, my mind has been gnawing away on the various aspects of what makes good food good. Obviously, the quality of ingredients makes a huge difference, because there’s nothing that even the greatest chef on Earth could do to inject taste into a tomato that’s the texture of a tennis ball. Equipment plays a role, as you quickly learn if you try to fry an omelette in a cheap, sticky pan or finely chop anything with a knife so dull it might as well be a spoon. Technique and skill affect results. Let’s face it: it takes repetition to perfect Hollandaise sauce or to assemble tight and neat Vietnamese spring rolls. But there are other secret ingredients to good food as well, which I became more aware of than ever as I cooked for those two people I love so much and kept wondering, “Why does this taste so much better than usual?”