The mug tree.
I’ve shown you photos from my sister Ehva’s kitchen again, but it’s worth showing a new batch just because it’s so incredibly cosy.
She’s using sheer silk scarves as curtains – I think that’s genius!
And open shelves. Note the small muffin jars above the stove – she uses them for different kinds of salt.
Umami was discovered by a Japanese researcher one hundred years ago. Dr. Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University recognized that certain foods like asparagus, tomatoes, meat and cheese all shared a common taste. It’s a bit hard to put your finger on, though it’s often described as “savory.” I think it’s easier to think of it as the taste that makes your mouth water. It also has a distinctive mouth feel, it lends a fullness or roundness.
One of the first things I learned at a recent Umami Symposium is that while taste and flavor are often used interchangeably, they are not the same thing. Flavor is determined by taste and smell. There are only five tastes–sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Just as sweetness is imparted by sugar, umami is imparted by glutamate, a type of amino acid, and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods. It is also manufactured in monosodium glutamate. It is added or occurs naturally in products with hydrolyzed soy protein and autolyzed yeast such as Marmite, Vegemite, Maggi, and Kewpie mayonnaise. It also exists in most cheese flavored snack foods.
I’m not going to talk about the myths surrounding MSG in particular “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” but I will say that I particularly like cooking with the naturally occurring sources of umami. Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce, dashi broth, fish sauce, bouillon, tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms and even potatoes are all sources of umami. Mixing and matching is fine. I sometimes add Asian fish sauce to chili and while not perceptible, I find it helps to round out the flavor.
Scientists and chefs alike are interested in umami. While the isolated glutamate does not taste very good on it’s own, research shows that it enhances the taste of many foods which is why umami was considered a “flavor enhancer” for so long before being recognized as a taste. It makes food taste better and can be used in making healthy foods more palatable for people who have a decrease in their ability to taste due to health or age.
One of the symposium panelists, author and scientist Harold McGee mentioned that the chef Heston Blumenthal found the flavor of umami to be stronger in the seeds and surrounding juice of tomatoes than in the pulp. Coincidentally, he pointed out that Ferran Adria had created a dish using the seeds and surrounding liquid instead of the tomato flesh or pulp. The dish served at El Bulli was Blood Orange Foam with Tomato Seeds and Sorbet. Even if you aren’t thinking about umami, you might be using it to make dishes taste good. In case you missed it, check out the2008/07/umami-symposium.html”> amazing lunch served at the symposium, prepared by chef Kunio Tokuoka, chef Hiro Sone and chef Thomas Keller.
If you’d like to learn more about umami, register with the Umami Information Center. You’ll receive both newsletters and a free copy of a book called “Umami The World” which overs both the science and culinary aspects from both a Western and Eastern perspective.
We set up shop in Ann Arbor, Mich. nearly two years ago. And we’ve been so busy, we’ve barely had time to say hi. But before we tell you about the interesting things we’re doing in our new location, we figure you might want to know a little bit more about our state and our town.
Sandwiched between two Great Lakes, peppered with forestry, and teeming with kindhearted Midwesterners, Michigan is the kind of place you’d be lucky to visit and we get to live here. Not only that, but we’re located in Ann Arbor, a town with a great progressive story:
Forgive us our moment of boosterism, but there’s more:
Inside our walls, you’ll find a team that’s committed to our AdWords advertisers — from identifying potential advertisers, to assisting current ones with day-to-day challenges, to strategizing with others for the future. That’s who we are. We’d love to have you join us.
Google Apps is rapidly gaining momentum in education. We now have more than a million people on campuses worldwide actively using Google’s suite of email, calendar and docs to share information and study. This makes perfect sense. Schools have always been a proving ground for innovative ideas. And as we prepare for the new school year, we are happy to welcome more than a dozen universities across the U.S., joining the thousands of other schools that have already embraced cloud computing in education. Here are the new additions:
This is really just the beginning. As we continue working to make it easier to communicate and collaborate online, we are going to meet with some of the top technology experts — the students themselves. For the entire month of September, we are heading “App to School” by embarking on a cross-country bus tour to visit campuses, listen to students and learn more about how cloud computing is helping education. Please check out our Enterprise blog for more info.
Jeff Keltner
I’ve never understood how there could be only four tastes–sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It just didn’t and still doesn’t make sense. But there is a fifth taste which is particularly intriguing, it’s called umami. I recently attended an Umami Symposium called New Frontiers of Taste and learned even more about this mysterious flavor.
The following was the menu served at the symposium after a panel discussion. It was an event sponsored by the Umami Information Center which is funded by a variety of food and ingredient companies. And yes, the first course was served by candlelight that came from a daikon wrapped tea light!
Chef Kunio Tokuoka
Appetizers
Kombu Broth-Simmered Beef Shabu-shabu
with Red Pepper Dipping Sauce
Seared Japanese Spiny Lobster with Tosa Vinegar Gelée,
Fried Rice Grains, Ginger and Bonito
Broth-Simmered Onions with Chicken and Pickled Plum Gelée,
Seaweed, Shiso and Sesame
Cubed Potato Frites with Salt-pickled Vegetables
Steamed Savory Egg Custard with Japanese Pepper Leaf Bud,
Smoked Chicken Mousse and Parmesan
Chef Hiro Sone
Salad
Ginger-Poached Georgia Shrimp
and Watermelon Salad with Lemongrass Vinaigrette
Chef Thomas Keller
Entrée
Rib-Eye of Elysian Fields Farm Lamb “Cuit sous Vide”
with “Confit Byaldi,” Roasted Fennel and Pickled Shallot Sauce
So what is umami? Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you more…
In the meantime, head over to GlamDish for a chance to win a pasta prize package.
As we continue to refine our search algorithms to deliver more relevant results, we strive to be as open as possible about how we use data to improve your search experience. Today, we’re rolling out a new feature in Google Web Search that will help you better understand how your search results are already customized. Over the next few days, you may start to see messages like this in the upper right corner of your search results page (click on the image to view larger):
You can click the “More details” link to get to a page like this:
You’ll see these new messages whenever your search results have been customized based on one or more of the following types of information:
This new feature doesn’t change anything at all about how you search on Google and the results you get; it just gives you more of a behind-the-scenes look at how we customize your search experience. We consider this to be an important step in our commitment to transparency, and we hope you find it informative and useful.
My dad and his birthday cake
Filbert Gateau. A what gateau now? Filbert? What’s a filbert? Google, as always, is my friend, and told me that a filbert is basically a hazelnut. Oh – alrighty then! A hazelnut cake! Sounds good to me! Thanks Mele Cotte for choosing this – I happen to be a big nut fan. And as this cake had chocolate too, seriously, heaven. It did, however, have buttercream as well. And here my enthusiasm faded. See, buttercream is not at all traditional in cakes here in Sweden. It’s really uncommon, actually. And I can’t say I care for it much. So, what to do? I substituted something else – milk chocolate ganache. And was promptly punished for it, as you’ll see later on.
I’m also quite thankful for my dad having a birthday this month – the perfect occasion to make this! And a big heartfelt thank you to my lovely kitchen equipment. Without the proper tools, this cake would have been so much harder. I particularly thank my Kitchen-Aid mixer, my Bosch food processor, my Demeyere sauteuse, and my Tupperware silicon spatula.
Now, for the actual parts of the cake:
Cake: This was to be a hazelnut genoise, and it had a few steps that was definitely new to me. I beat egg yolks really fluffy, gradually adding sugar, and I don’t think I’ve ever made yolks that fluffy before! After adding vanilla (I didn’t add the lemon zest – oops!) the batter was delicious! I then beat egg whites into meringue. But after that cake a scary step – combine the two. Really? I thought that would take all of the air out of the whites, but turned out it worked out nicely.
After that, though, I was to fold in my nut-and-flour mixture, while sifting it. I don’t know about you, but I definitely needed an additional hand for that to work – one to hold the bowl, one to sieve the nuts, one to fold… Finally, adding clarified butter. I’ve never made clarified butter before, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy. I just melted it and let it sit, skimmed the surface, and carefully poured into a measuring cup. Huh! Oh – and I used ready toasted and skinned hazelnuts. It’s recently become available here (at Ica!) and since skinning nuts is really my idea of kitchen hell, I’m thankful.
Syrup: Oh, simple, just boil sugar and water. I didn’t add any alcohol since the guests for this particular cake don’t care for any alcohol at all, but instead I poured it over a few vanilla beans to make vanilla syrup.
Praline paste: Oooh. Scary. First, making caramel – not very hard, but still scary. After that, I was to use my food processor to grind it into a paste. I thought for sure this would kill my poor food processor, but.. surprise, surprise – it went perfectly! Some daring bakers mentioned in the forums that they don’t have a food processor, and were going to try grinding this by hand. Good luck to you.
Buttercream: Well, I admit that I just made a little for the decorations – for the filling, I instead made a whipped milk chocolate ganache with praline. (300 ml heavy cream, 200 g chopped milk chocolate, pour the hot cream over the chocolate, stir stir stir, chill overnight, whip, add praline paste.) However, it turned out a little thinner than I had planned, possibly due to overbeating the ganache. It was still delicious though. And the buttercream? Might be the very best buttercream I’ve ever had. I used my trusty method – beating egg yolks, adding hot sugar syrup and then butter – rather than the one called for in the recipe, and then added praline paste. It was nothing short of amazingly tasty. And now I wish I had made more!
Apricot glaze: Straightforward – I used a cheap brand, but it turned out fine.
Chocolate ganache: It seemed a little thick perhaps, I think most people had runnier ganaches which made for a shinier, more mirror-like surface. But I don’t really care, it turned out fairly pretty and was tasty.
Decorating: Since it was my dad’s birthday, decoration was a given. I really, really need to get a large coupler and some large tips though, it’s no fun just working with tiny tips.
All in all, I loved this cake. It was fun to make, and very tasty. Thanks to Chris of Mele Cotte for choosing this one! For the recipe, please go here. Don’t forget to visit the Daring Bakers forums, even if you’re not a Daring Baker. And of course, the blogroll, to see how everyone’s cake turned out!