Umami : The Power of Fermentation and Fungus

The last category of umami ingredients from Asia contains what at first appears to be a disparate group of food items: wine, kimchee, pickled and preserved vegetables, mushrooms, rice and vinegar. Believe it or not, all of these items have characteristics in common–they all involve fungi or bacteria in some way, shape or form. Yeast […]

Umami From the Oceans of Asia

I think it may be the strong use of feremented condiments, sauces and flavor enhancers in Asian foods that first grabbed my attention. Of course, I didn’t have the knowledge to articulate that thought–I just was of the opinion, from the first taste, that Chinese food was “damned good,” and that I needed some more. […]

Got Umami? Soybean Ingredients of the East

Believe it or not, I did not grow up eating Asian foods. I was in high school before I ate at a Chinese restaurant. Thirteen years ago or so is when I had my first taste of Thai food. Korean–that was around a decade ago. Japanese and Indian–I started eating those regularly about a decade […]

Do You Know Umami?

When we were growing up, there learned that there were four basic tastes: salt, sweet, sour and bitter. We were told that our taste buds had special taste receptors in particular zones on our tongues that detected these four tastes and that all other components of flavor came from our olfactory sense–the sense of smell. […]

Raw Food is Often Good Food

When I wrote my somewhat cranky and very fiery post last week about all that is wrong with the “raw food fad,” Alanna of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade asked me if there was nothing redeeming about raw foods. She wanted to see me take on the other side of the issue and talk […]

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