Understanding umami

Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and now 'umami' ASIANS are familiar with the savoury quality that umami-rich foods and ingredients impart (in Japan, the characters used for umami literally means "delicious flavour"). The Japanese have their dashi, a soup stock commonly made from konbu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes). Kelp and bonito are simmered in water and the broth is strained to form the base of miso soup, noodle broths and other dishes. Other types of dashi can be made with shiitake mushrooms or niboshi, which are small dried sardines. Umami is now recognised internationally as the fifth taste, a hundred years after Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University discovered that glutamate was the key to the taste of the Japanese stock, known as dashi. He named this taste umami, which comes from the Japanese word "umai", which means savoury or deliciousness. It is a unique taste deriving from glutamic acid or glutamates, common in meats, fish and cheese. In Southeast Asian cuisine, umami is most often derived from fish sauce. This russet-collared liquid is the result of fermentation after fish are packed in sea salt in earthenware jars or concrete baths, and allowed to ferment for six months to a year, or even longer. The fermented liquid is has a strong, pungent smell that is not to everyone's taste, but a few drops go a long way to rounding out the flavours of any dish. What fermented fish sauce - nuoc mam in Vietnamese, nam pla in Thai and patis in Filipino - has in common with dashi are its high level of free glutamates (glutamic acid), which are responsible for imparting the savoury taste sensation of umami. The Western world is of course familiar with fermented ingredients such as monosodium glutamate (MSG), which was developed by Ikeda in 1907. MSG and the nucleotides IMP (disodium 5'-inosine monophosphate) and GMP (disodium 5'- guanosine monophosphate) are amongst those that provide this fifth basic taste. Soy sauce is another fermented product that has umami, as do Westerndeveloped condiments like Maggi bouillon and flavouring. But it might be surprising to most that Parmigiano-Reggiano (parmesan) and Roquefort cheeses are amongst the fermented products which are also umami-rich. Amongst non-fermented foods, walnuts, grapes, broccoli, tomatoes, and mushrooms contain a significant amount of umami substances. Umami is going mainstream Although the concept of umami is accepted to be Asian in origin, trying to achieve a fuller flavour is a culinary practice that transcends geographical boundaries. Long before the term was even introduced worldwide, preparing stock using bones, marrow and offal has been common to both East and West, and its intent is to provide dishes with a full, savoury taste. Culinary history also tells us that fermented fish sauces and pastes as well as dried vegetable extracts and meats have been part of the diet for over two millennia. A similar fish sauce was ubiquitous in Classical Roman cooking, where in Latin it is known as garum or liquamen, and also existed in many varieties such as oxygarum (mixed with vinegar), meligarum (mixed with honey), etc. In English it was formerly known as fishpickle. The original Worcestershire sauce was a similar product, brought to England from India. The concept of umami, of course, is well known to today's flavourists ?developers of low-fat, low-sodium foods, for instance, know the value of flavour enhancers with umami ?but this fifth flavour dimension is finding its way into the mainstream. 'Developers of low-fat, low-sodium foods, for instance, know the value of flavour enhancers with umami' In the US West Coast, more and more chefs use fish sauce to add "body" to their cuisine. This would not be surprising if the restaurants were Asian, but the San Francisco Chronicle reports that even kitchens that are not into Eastern or even EaShop Women's Boots