Taster's Choice

It’s that something you love: the inexplicable oomph that makes wild mushrooms or a ripe cheese so satisfying. But it’s hard to put a word to. All you know is that it’s delicious.

The word is umami. It’s the fifth taste, a savory, meaty one as ancient and important as its better-known siblings: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Long accepted in Asia but only “discovered” recently by American scientists, this taste comes from amino acids found in meats, mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, and fermented products such as soy and Asian fish sauce.

You’re about to start hearing a lot about umami, thanks to local husband-and-wife team David and Anna Kasabian. Their new book, The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami (Rizzoli), has set the cookbook world afire. “Umami is exciting because it’s in the foods we’ve always loved and craved, but we never knew why,” says David Kasabian. And, adds Anna, “we explain how to turn it up a notch.”

David himself had never heard of umami until, after 28 years in advertising, he decided to change careers and enroll at the Culinary Institute of America. “I still have a note from my first gastronomy lecture with ‘umami’ written in big letters and circled with a big question mark,” he remembers.

After graduation, he and Anna, a longtime food writer, decided to compile an umami cookbook. To their surprise, it wasn’t only Asian chefs using umami; French, Italian, even southern chefs use it instinctively. Rialto’s Jody Adams contributed a corn-and-chive panna cotta with an anchovy-laced tomato salad that rocks any umami-meter, while Lydia Shire of Locke-Ober localizes Greek soup Avgolemono with umami-rich lobster, tomatoes, and egg yolks.

Understanding umami will change the way you cook. Case in point: The Kasabians now make pasta sauce with slow-cooked tomatoes, pork, Parmesan rind, and a dash of Worcestershire. The new name: ragumami.