Season To Taste - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather".

Three little words. They sit at the end of nearly every savory recipe. After slicing and dicing and roasting and blanching and braising and basting and sweating and resting, after you've exhibited every ounce of cooking prowess you possess there they sit. Dainty as a demitasse spoon, quiet as a quail egg - season to taste.

Ho Hum, just season it to taste, as if it's been flippantly tossed into the recipe. But beware this task.

Do not trust the seeming ease with which television cooks fling their salt, the two or three power turns with which they crack pepper. Seasoning to taste is an art.

The task is also known as add salt and pepper. But the phrase season to taste gives the cook such grandeur, as though at the end of the process you, the chef, will confer your special magic on the dish. And that is not far off from the truth. Salt and pepper are magic ingredients. Wars have been fought over both. They are nearly universal in cuisine.

The reason is that salt and pepper have a unique ability to highlight the flavors in food. They are like a giant spotlight that make your food shimmer. No matter how carefully you have painted your portrait or sewn your costume it is only when you turn the light on that people can appreciate it. So it goes with salt and pepper.

And so it is very easy to use too much or too little. One of the secrets is to add salt as you go. Just a little bit to each part of the recipe. It will add up so be sparing. But incorporating it into each part of the dish you will begin embodying each of the ingredients as you go. That way, when you reach the end, you need only add a tad of salt and pepper to bring that final light to your dish.

Another secret is to learn the size of your hand. How much salt do you hold in that pinch of your fingers? You will start to learn how your body measures food.

And finally, never, ever, ever, pour salt from the box. One oops and your dish is ruined in a cascade of white.

As for pepper, a little often goes a long way, though you can add more if it has been ground fine.