salted pork cutlet with avocado mung bean puree

This one should have been up a while ago, but you know, this led to that. Back when I was talking about yin-yanging food together, I mentioned the idea of putting two separate flavors together on the same plate so that they could be joined harmoniously together in the mouth.

This time, I decided to go with an interesting complementary pair - salty and soothing. The pork is slightly over-salted in this recipe, and to compensate for that there is barely any sodium in the rest of the meal. The salt drives you to taste the avocado and mung bean, which is soothing and refreshing to the palate. Mung bean sprouts are naturally filled with a large concentration of water, and blending them up with a tiny bit of oil leads to a smooth paste.

The pork is seasoned and left to marinate in sea salt with no additional flavors, so if you get a good cut of meat it will make a big impact on the end result here. We are showcasing the meat by keeping it simple. After-flavors from the soy sauteed Napa cabbage and the avocado bean sprout puree will then add complexity in the mouth. This is the basic idea behind the yin-yang approach.

I added little piles of Mothia - a favorite Sicilian sea salt of mine - in front of each cutlet so that diners could choose to give it an extra salty punch if they wished. I prefer it with the extra salt but this way I don't have to force it on anyone, and it makes the meal more interactive. If you're worried about sodium, compare this to any soup you may have made with one cube of bullion from the store and I think you'll be quite surprised at what you find. Also note to balance the overall salt concentration of the meal the avocado dip has only the slightest pinch for seasoning.

Tell me what yin-yang flavor ideas you can come up with!