UMAMI2U
Your UMAMI blog. On this spot of the umami universe you will find news, recepies, information, bookreviews and all you can imagine about umami, the 5th taste, the savoury taste crossing borders! Enjoy and join!
Jun 17, 2014
Jan 29, 2013
SALTED ANCHOVIES- MAGIC UMAMIBOMBS
Food is our common ground
A universial experience. James Beard
Salted anchovies contains a lot of free glutamate, the most important umami substance. This little magic fish is a very important ingredient in mediterranean cuisine, it is used as salt and in addition, you'll get the rich, complex umamitaste infused in your dish. Adding salted anchovies to a dish is an old european way of enhancing umami taste, similar to the use of fish sauce in asian food. And like fish sauce, It's not adding a fishy taste to your dish.
salted anchovies in olive oil, rich in umami! |
Many known, and even more unknown mediterranean dishes include salted anchovies: Bagna Caôda is famous piedmontese dip with an abundant amount of salted anchovies.You'll find them as toppings on pizzas and in the pizza sauce, in tomatosauce for pasta. Anchovies will be used in sauces together with capers, tuna, tomatoes, but seldom together with the parmesan cheese. The famous dressing for Ceasars salat contains anchovies and/or worchestershiresauce, the latter beeing an anchovy sauce. The provencal anchoide is another example. As the name imply, this paste includes salted anchovies!
The use of anchovies as a salty taste enhancer has ancient traditions in Europe. The reminiscences of content in old emphoras from roman time have been analyzed and findings show they were filled with garum, a precious sauce in ancient Roman and Ottoman Empires, and produced in an almost identical way as todays oriental fishsauce! For more information about the ancient Roman fish sauce, check this article.
Enjoy anchovies in your food!
glass of turkish made salted anchovies |
Labels:
anchoide,
anchovy,
Bagna Caoda,
ceasars salad,
dip,
dressing,
fish sauce,
free glutamate,
garum,
Italy,
mediterranean countries,
middelhaveslandene,
Provence,
salted anchovies,
tomatoes,
worchestershire sauce
Jan 9, 2013
GOURMET-SALTING -an easy umami enhancing method
Some claim meat should not be salted prior to preparation like frying, searing or braising. Some
claim it should be salted in advance while others say that it does not matter, but research
show it does.
Danske Slagterier (Danish Meat Research Institute) have tested the
different methods. Blind testing among professional tasters revealed that beef
salted at least 15 minutes prior to searing was regarded as more juicy, tender
and tasty than the other samples. They also found that the amount of salt can
be reduced by this simple method. This is good news; less salt in our diet
is healthy for us too.
Thus, gourmet-salting is the easiest way to develop good taste and more
umami in meat. You can actually salt any meat once you’ve brought it home and even
be confident your meat will be better preserved too.
Gourmet-salting is very easy: Use 3-6g (approx. 1/2 to 1
teaspoon) fine grained salt without iodine pr. 1 kg/ 2,2lb of meat.
·
- Rinse, prepare and dry the meat thoroughly with some paper towel before salting.
- Drizzle salt evenly on the surface of the meat
- Store chilled, but be sure to have the meat at room temperature before you start cooking.
Umami rich dishes and food are most popular!
Is it
only the flavors of a superb thai soup, and the balance between sweetness,
sourness, salt and bitterness that makes the soup delicious? Or is it the excellent
cooking skills? Do these factors explain
why we crave certain food? The answer is no. One more substance is important, the
amount of umami in the dish. Popular food and dishes mentioned above, are all rich
in umami and I have yet to find one single recipe from our common
ground of famous dishes that does not include ingredients and/or methods
enhancing umami taste.When you taste signature dishes of the world, you'll find umami.
FREE
GLUTAMATE AND PURINES
If you
study a fresh cut of parmigiano reggiano, you can see small liquid pearls on
the surface of the cheese. This liquid is pure free glutamate, the most important
umami tasting substance, an amino acid present also in soy sauce, cured hams,
fish sauce and tomatoes, especially sundried tomatoes.
In
addition to the content of free glutamate, where parmagiano reggiano has most
of all known cheeses, there are a few other chemicals in food that are responsible
for the savoury taste, namely inosinate, adenylate and guanylate. Even in small amounts they will make a dish
taste more delicious as long as the free glutamate is present already.
THE
TASTE
With a little training, you'll
be able to feel the umami taste as a pleasant savoury sensation in your
mouth. Once identified you’ll learn to
taste the difference between a creamy dish from an umami rich dish, the latter having
a watery complex mouthfullness that lasts longer than sweet, salt, bitter and sour and fatty.
A FEW
GUIDELINES
To know how to work with umami in your kitchen, you'll need some knowledge of umami enhancing methods and which ingredients and condiments you should choose. Here is a few tips:
Umami taste is potentially present in protein of foodstuff. The taste develops when proteins are subject to i.e. drying, curing, fermenting,smoking, brining,salting, marinating, braising and cooking.
- Homemade stock is excellent umami and should be used whenever called for in a soup and sauce recipe, and for braising and poaching as well. (Dashi serves the same function in asian cooking.) Stock and dashi cannot be fully replaced by water and industrial made bouillon cubes.
- · Gourmet salting is scientifically proved to enhance umami taste in meat. Fresh meat should always be gourmetsalted for better taste.
- Fish sauce, salted anchovies, soy sauce, shrimp paste & sauce, worchestershire sauce are examples of umami bombs. They are often used because of their saltiness, but that is only partly true. They add lots of umami taste, more than you realize. If a recipe calls for one of these condiments, it is critically important to use them, you cannot replace umami by fat or spices, bouillon cubes or any other flavor.
- Meat should be matured naturally, not by mechanical methods.
- · Sun riped tomatoes, grown in natural soil in temperate climate are rich in umami, cherry tomatoes have most, romano tomatoes (San Marzano) comes next. Use good quality canned tomatoes if the fresh tomatoes are not in season. Sun dried tomatoes and tomato paste can also rescue a bland tomato dish.
- Fresh cheese has little umami. Matured cheese has more umami with the parmesan on top.
- Dried fungi has more umami than fresh, with shiitake being most precious. Dried shiitake has 10 times more umami substance (guanylate) than any other dried fungi.
- Umami synergy is superbly created when combining proteins from vegetables, fish/seafood and animals in the same dish (beef in oyster sauce, miso soup, thai shrimp soup, spanish paella, norwegian bacalao and japanese sushi.
Jan 7, 2013
Korean style BEEF TARTARE - "yokhoe"
Beef Tartare is a dish consisting of raw beef and various garnishes, i.e.
raw egg yolk, onion and pickled vegetables. In Norway we eat beef tartare with egg yolk, onion, pickled red beets, capers and pickled cornichon. Usually the beef is added some worchestershiresauce, salt and back pepper to taste.
This Korean style beef tartare is
marinated and suitable as a first course or as a perfect lunch in a lowcarb diet, or why not when you're craving some proteins!
You get umami from the meat, soy sauce and fish sauce. Garlic and
vinegar enhances development of free glutamate in the small meatstrips as well.
This is a recipe for 4 persons as a small appetizing first course.
Use best quality fresh ingredients, preferably sirloin beef, cut in julienne (matchstick
sized strips).
INGREDIENTS:
250g ½ pound sirloin beef from grassfed beef
1,5tbs soy sauce
2ts fish sauce
1 ts fluid neutral tasting honey
2tbs sesamy oil (roasted)
1/2ts rice vinegar
4 cloves garlic, crushed and finely minced
Pinch of chilipepper to taste
Pine nuts or sesame seeds- roasted
Crunchy lettuce as plates
(4 egg yolks from quail with some added salt, optional)
METHOD:
Roast pine nuts or sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat.
Rinse salad leafs to use as plates and keep chilled in frigde or ice
cold water
Chop beef in matchstick sized strips
Mix ingredients of marinade and add beef, seeds/nuts and serve
immediately with a raw egg yolk as topping.
Enjoy!
COMMENTS
If you have to roast sesame seeds yourselfes, be patient. It might take you 10 to 15 minutes so why not roast a bigger portion. You can store them in the frigde for later use anyway!
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