The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami - Hardcover

The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami

See how easy it is to make the most appetizing, delicious and satisfying food ever by including ingredients with umami, the fifth taste.
What is umami? It's another basic taste, like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. But it's not an ordinary taste. Umami is that rich, savory, extra-satisfying taste of mushrooms, steak, cheese, oysters, and red wine — just a few of the many foods loaded with umami. Umami is a quick and easy way to boost flavor dramatically by waking up taste buds you never knew you had.
Science only recently proved its existence, and the world of food and cooking is catching on fast. In the last year, reports on umami appeared in the New York Times, Saveur, Wine Spectator, Food and Wine, The New Yorker, and numerous other publications. And every day more chefs and home cooks are wowing guests, family and friends with fabulous-tasting umami-rich food.
The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami is the first book ever to tell what umami really is, which foods have it (and which don’t), and how to use umami every day for some of the best meals you’ve ever had.
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With more than 50 umami-rich recipes from 25 top American chefs.

Advance Praise for The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami

“Anna and David Kasabian have not only written a scientific tell-all book about this mysterious ingredient, but they have also included amazing recipes - revealing a new genre in cooking and exciting new tastes for the palate.”
Mario Batali, chef and author

“Great cooks throughout the centuries have spontaneously understood the essential quality of individual ingredients and have instinctively combined these to create superlative concoctions. In this fascinating book, the Kasabians argue convincingly that this intuitive knowledge of cooks has a name: Umami.”
Jacques Pepin, chef, author and educator

“Finally a cookbook I've been waiting for-one that explains the elusive qualities of umami. Anna and David Kasabian are trailblazers. Not only do they explain and describe this mysterious element of flavor, they show us how to use its power in our cooking. An important and original book."
Michael Ruhlman, author, The Making of Chef, The Soul of a Chef and Charcuterie

“I found the book to be an excellent synthesis of what umami IS with its practical use in cooking. I believe it will be a milestone in the deliberate incorporation of umami  into western gastronomy.”
Dr. Robert L. Wolke, author, What Einstein Told His Cook and What Einstein Told His Cook 2, The Sequel

“As exciting and intriguing a read as you’ll find in any cookbook published this year. Then there are the recipes. If umami is a good taste — and it is — what better than a cookbook to showcase it?
Mark Bittman, author, How to Cook Everything (From the Foreword)

Over 50 delectable umami recipes, for every occasion and for every level of cooking skill, such as:
·Spicy Chipotle Pork Tacos with Sun-Dried Tomato Salsa from Rick Bayless
·Sea Scallops with Mashed Potatoes and Red Onion Confit from Daniel Boulud
·Cornish Game Hens Braised in a Pot with Summer Vegetables from Bradley Ogden
·My Father’s Famous Shrimp Hors d’Oeuvres from Lydia Shire
·Lamb Shanks with Tomatoes from Christopher Kimball
·Spicy Sour Botan Shrimp from Nobu Matsuhisa
Plus more everyday umami recipes, including
·Maxed-Out Meatloaf
·Ragumami Tomato Two Meat Pasta Sauce
·Asparagus Frittata
·Coq au Vin Nouveau
·Please-Pass-the-Umami Toasts
·Vegetarian Muffaletta Roll-Ups
·And more