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A Story of Umami
“I thought umami only came from meat!” In one of our workshops on umami, we witnessed a vegetarian tasting her way into the umami joy that can be found in so many vegetables and vegetarian dishes.
Umami is the fifth taste, the “delicious savory taste,” as it translates from the Japanese. Our mouth has Umami taste receptors based on our need for and recognition of glutamates, a necessary neurotransmitter for the human body. These glutamates, regardless of source, have a place in our diets and how our bodies and brains function. Every culture in the world has found a way to bring them into our food systems, like many variations on fish sauce, whether rakfisk or lutefisk in Norway, garum from anchovies in Italy, or nuac mam in Vietnam. Just by reading about it, your mouth is probably watering, which is the idea.
Umami inspires digestion and appetite, readying the body for the food it needs.
The Power of Sour
A pickle. Lemon. Vinegar. That’s what we think of when we think of sour. Your mouth just watered, didn’t it? When we taste sour, our mouth signals the brain to pay attention! Sour is also a conversation about preservation. Most of the ways we preserve food involve acids, creating that pickle, sauerkraut, sourdough, using those acids to transform and preserve (even enhance) the value from the ingredient.
The right acid balance enlivens our food and captures a moment in time, the essence of the experience. The science of culinary acids is fascinating, and their intersections with salt and fermentation create some of the most amazing foods we eat and flavor we build. Citric, malic, and tartaric acids show up in so many fruits and vegetables. Acetic acid, familiar to us as vinegar, comes fresh in some fruits, but also joins lactic acid as by-products of fermentation. All the acids contribute to our digestion, appetite and appreciation for a balanced diet, inspiring health.