Secret Weapon Ingredient #3: Dried Dashi Stock

09 Apr 2013 3 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Food, Humor Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Japanese were the first to describe and isolate “umami,” the fifth taste (“savory”). When professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University identified umami in 1908, he did so working from the ingredients in Japanese “dashi” soup stock, made from bonito fish and kombu seaweed. The key components, it turned out, were ribonucleotides and glutamates.

From there, the Japanese got industrious and distilled those ingredients into their purest form — monosodium glutamate. MSG. Which, if you’re like most people, you avoid like the plague. But which winds up in nearly anything processed you eat in less conspicuous forms (most often as “natural ingredients”). More

Anise, Sea Spray & Marseille

05 Apr 2013 16 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Like I’ve said before — when it comes to dinner, we’re a theme family. And often a theme evolves around random happenings on my shopping route.

Reading all the various comments to my recent post on oyster bars got me in the mood, of course, for oysters. So at my Wednesday farmer’s market, I picked up a dozen oysters from the (somewhat) local aquaculture guys as well as, among other things, a head of frisee lettuce, two duck eggs and a fennel bulb. I remembered that I had a nice chunk of stinky cheese in the fridge, and thought perhaps I had the makings of a French night, some night soon.

Frisee

Frisee

I eyed some beautiful fresh sardines at the Japanese market later in the day. But there was rain in the forecast, and sardines are a food best eaten fresh off the grill. So I passed. More

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