Fat Girl Gone Thin

In 2007 a 500-year flood struck the community I was raised in. It was like the Ninth Ward after Katrina. At its highest point, the river had risen more than 75 feet.

Flood waters filled houses four feet deep in muddy river water. The interstate was closed for over a week and families moved from house to house in motor boats collecting friends and neighbors.

Saying you should plan for a 500-year flood is like saying you should plan for an earthquake at every fault line or that you should expect the mountain 100 miles away to erupt. You know it could happen, but no one could expect it.

In truth this flood had nothing to do with Mother Nature but everything to do with the over forestation that lead mudslides and abandoned logs to strike the neighboring dam so hard it destroyed it. It wasn’t a gentle river rise that destroyed the Chehalis valley. It was a five-foot wall of water that swept through like a sea-side wave.

At the time the Black Sheep Creamery had a 100 ewe. By nightfall of December 4 they had less than 25. Most farmers lost everything.

On Monday I took a tour of the creamery where the owners shared their experiences of rebuilding their farm and business.

We started our tour in the barn, built just after the turn of the last century. It had served as the safe-haven for the few sheep that survived the flood by climbing to the small upper loft. Today it is the sleeping quarters for the farm’s 80-plus sheep and two Australian Shepard dogs that guard the flock like mother hens from the area coyotes.

Out back we watched as the adult sheep marched off for their afternoon milking and the newborn lambs took cover from the rain – except for one, who had broken his leg and had to be carried from pen to pen.

As our last stop we crowded into the “cave” -  a refrigerated building where the creamery’s hard cheese waits its turn to be cut and sold at the local farmers market.

In 2009 Black Sheep won third place at the American Cheese Society annual competition for their feta – and sadly, it’s resulting popularity meant none was left by the time we arrived.

As a fallback we filled our arms to the brim with fresh, soft cheeses of every flavor – from dried tomato basil to garlic rosemary. Back in the car, I succumb to temptation and scooped a fingerful of the dried tomato basil variety directly into our mouths. Next time I’ll know to come with crackers at the ready. Absolutely delicious.

Yes, I know it’s been a while. My bad. But it’s been a bad week and sometimes all you want to do is eat microwave popcorn under a blanket on the couch instead of cook and write. Can I get an amen?

Anyways, enough time dwelling on how the universe has conspired against me and more about some deliciously good eats…

Last week the good weather got the better of me again and I decided it was time to dust off the smoker. What is it about the smell of fresh cut grass and spring flowers that makes my mind wander to thoughts of seared meat infused with some delightful smoky carcinogens?

Dreams of juicy chicken danced in my head all afternoon, but when I got to the store they were… out of chicken.

Yes – I said out of chicken. How this happens at a large grocery store chain in modern-day America is beyond my comprehension, but alas, it did.

I liken this situation to the gym being out of water or an espresso stand running out of fresh coffee. True, it could feasibly happen, but you still have to stop and wonder “what the hell?” when it actually does.

Thus forced by the cosmos into devising something more creative for my afternoon meal than chicken legs, I decided to grab a handful of brown meat – also known as mushrooms. This, plus a loaf of fresh crusty bread, some soft cheese, and I could make it a meal with an old favorite – smoked mushroom pate.

This of course was before the skies parted like Moses and the red sea with what I personally believe to have been millions of gallons of rain drops and a righteous wind to accompany it. Ten minutes into the ordeal, I turned off the smoker, grabbed my mushrooms and ran indoors.

Out with the Cuisinart, in with the mushroom and cheese. Fry pan with with olive oil. Toasting of the bread shortly after that, and poof! It was yumminess.

The next morning at work, my boss stopped by my desk and asked how my evening was, what did I do … all the usual niceties. So, as any foodie worth they stuff would do, I began to explain how I had stopped for chicken but there was none, that the rain had been so frustrating, and that I had spent nearly an hour smoking mushrooms and that my evening was quite lovely after that.

Again, my bad.

The silence that ensued for several awkward  moments after that was first confusing then mildly humiliating with just a pinch of humor. I will allow your mind to imagine the look of confusion on my supervisor’s face as I spent the next few minutes  explaining that I had in fact smoked mushrooms, like the kind from the store, in a meat smoker… not the kind that would likely have me packing my things into a small box and heading to HR.

To be extra certain, I felt compelled to bring some of the mushroom pate and bread to the office for a “tasting” the next day.

And this kids, is why you should never play with food. Because if you eat boring stuff, like potatoes and macaroni from a box, things like this don’t happen.

My bad.

Recipe for the pate is, as always, over in the corner – or at least it will be soon as I finish typing it up. Enjoy!

I’m not sure what it is that makes neurotic animals cute but neurotic people annoying.

Case in point: My mother’s cocker spaniel, Katie, has what can only be clinically defined as a “licking issue.” Often after a long nap, or simply while sitting on the couch, she will begin to lick the roof of her mouth, while simultaneously lifting her head, in an effort to remove some unforeseen food particle or perhaps merely to draw attention to herself.

This will continue for ten or fifteen minutes, at which point she will fall back asleep – only to wake up and begin the roof-of-mouth licking again.

In an effort to characterize this obsessive behavior, I have taken to calling this the “peanut butter syndrome” in relation to the human tongue-thrusting movement that often occurs after one has over-filled their PB sandwich and mouth-to-tongue gluing action has resulted.

This, of course, is not Katie’s only special attribute, as she is also prone to stealing socks from the laundry then running around the house, tossing them in the air with her nose, then pouncing on them like a cheetah. She also likes to wiggle across the carpet like a worm.

But because she is a dog, this is cute. Not weird.

Needless to say, when I decided to make a chocolate cake for my grandfather this weekend, and decided to use a peanut butter frosting, the result made me think of Katie and name this item the Rooftop Peanut Butter Cake.

In order to add some dramatic flare, I used four 6-inch cake pans to make this – with the result of a petite-sized high stacked cake. For some crunch, and the salty-sweet mix, I added crushed peanuts to the edges and drizzled chocolate down the sides.

Making the Cake:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup cold coffee
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vinegar

Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the eggs, coffee, milk, oil and vinegar. Mix until smooth and creamy. Pour into four 6-inch pans (make sure these are greased heavily).

Bake about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

The Frosting:

• 1 cup peanut butter (crunchy kind is the best)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup half-and-half
• 4 tablespoons of soft butter

Cream all ingredients together in your mixer and set aside. Keep at room temperature.

Putting it all together:

When the cakes have finished cooking, remove them from the pans and wrap in plastic wrap. Pop them in the freezer for two hours. When the cakes are almost completely frozen, remove them from the freezer and take off the plastic wrap. Place paper towels on the four corners of your cake plate and set one of the cakes in the center, making sure that no part of the plate is showing on the bottom (you will pull these sheets out after you have frosted the cake and added the peanuts, so you don’t have to worry about making a mess).

Place a large scoop of frosting in the center of the first cake and use a knife to spread it evenly across the top. Add another cake and repeat the process till all four cakes have been stacked. Now begin to SLOWLY spread the frosting over the top and sides of the cake tower. Because the cakes are partially frozen, you don’t have to worry about them crumbling as easily, but still be gentle. Don’t worry about appearances though, the peanuts will cover all of that up.

Using a rolling pin or food processor, crush a 12-oz. can of salted cocktail peanuts. Press these into the side and top of the cake, using your hand to press them firmly into the frosting so that they take hold.

Using a double boiler or a bowl over the top of a pan of simmering water, melt 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips. When melted, pour the chocolate into a sandwich-size Ziploc bag and use scissors to cut one corner of the bag. Make sure to keep this cut small. Gently tip the cake to the side and drizzle the chocolate down the sides, going in a circle, until you have gone around the cake.

Allow another hour for the cake to defrost completely – then serve it up with a big ‘ole glass of milk. Enjoy!

The Oscars are just a few hours away and in the spirit of the evening, I whipped up a few treats to make it painfully clear to my friends who I think should win best picture.

Chocolate coconut bird nests. In honor of Kevin from UP…

Now I’m off to watch the show.

This Tuesday was my father’s birthday. Sixty-five. A “big one” he tells me. So I invite the family over for dinner, on a week-night, which I know is a mistake.

But this is the least of my worries. What worries me are the varied palates that I have invited to my table.

I know my father’s food habits well. Nothing spicy, no bell peppers, no olives, no tofu. My sister is easy – no cake. For the most part, everyone else will eat anything that’s hot and put in front of them.

The only question left is my four-year-old nephew. Making something that passes his taste tests is more stressful, and might I say, more unpredictable,  than a visit from a New York Times food critic.

I started my grocery list with a text message to my sister:

“Do you think Kai would eat chicken?”

“He’ll eat it but only if there is no yucky stuff on it. Yucky stuff includes anything and everything. I’ll bring a bottle of wine.”

Later in a phone call, she added peeled cucumbers to the ok list.  I saw visions of a candlelit table with plates of unseasoned chicken, white rice and cucumber slices with candles stuck in them. Yumm.

As a general rule I try to make birthday dinners more exotic than the likes of the early bird special at the retirement home, but things were looking questionable.

At the store I scanned the isles for white food. Potatoes are white. Eggs are white. White cheese is white. But potatoes are boring if you can’t do anything to them and eggs have yolks, and those are yellow. I grabbed the cheese, a box of cous couse (it’s off-white, right?)

In the produce department, I went crazy. An eggplant, red onions, portabello mushrooms. It’s not a grown-up dinner if there isn’t at least one thing on the menu that gets rejected – so I decided to funnel all my crazy cookery into that.

Back in the meat department, it was cornish game hens. This because, (1) it is impressive to give everyone their own bird, (2) they’re easy to cook and (3) it’s just like a tiny chicken.

Home from work at 5:30 and dinner at 7:30 – I ran, literally ran, into the kitchen and turned on the oven. A gentle dusting of salt and pepper, and off they went to cook while I multi-tasked hiding unfolded laundry in my bedroom and washing dishes.

As the witching hour arrived, I sliced the veggies and threw them in a bag with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Grill, on. Off I went to set the table.

All told, dinner was ready 15 minutes late. In my mind it was a miracle. More of a miracle was that my nephew left with a tummy full of apples, “chicken” and, as he said, kookoo (this is cous cous in English).

As for my 9-year-old niece. Well, that is a different story. When you’re a bit older, old enough to know that chicken isn’t supposed to look like that and balsamic glaze isn’t exactly a regular in your lunchbox, cous cous seems like the only safe thing on the plate.

Oh well. You win some you lose some. As for the vegetable stack. It got hot praises from the adults at the table. Some even asked for seconds. If you’re interested, here’s the recipe:

Vegetable stacks with herbed ricotta

Slice one eggplant and two red onions about 1/2 inch thick. Place the slices, along with 6 portabello mushrooms (stems removed) in a Ziploc bag with a cup of balsamic vinegar and 1/2 cup olive oil. Allow them to marinate on the counter for two hours.

Grill the vegetable slices and mushrooms on each side for approx. 3 minutes. Just enough to caramelize the vinegar mixture and soften the veggies.

While the veggies grill, mix a small container of ricotta (10 oz.) with 1 tbl. basil and two gloves of minced garlic.

Arrange the mushrooms bottom-side up on a plate, place a dollop of ricotta on top. Add a layer of eggplant and another dollop of ricotta. Finally, add a layer of onion and a final dollop of ricotta.

You can continue to stack these as high as you like, but I stuck with one round of each vegetable.

There is a coffee company near my house, Batdorf & Bronson. The place is as iconic as the city itself in many ways – like the fish throwers at Pike Place Market – anybody who’s worth their snuff in these parts has been to this place.

Outside their orginal cafe, affixed to the windows, is an image of a dancing goat. Easily two feet tall, the picture is a throw back to the company’s roasting division which goes by the name (you guessed it) Dancing Goats.

Why goats? And more importantly, why are they dancing? Good question. Millions of people drink cup after cup of coffee each day and I would venture to guess that all but a handful are unaware of the origin of coffee – a.k.a. the legend of the dancing goats.

Coffee has been around for nearly 900 years now. It was first brewed in open pits with crushed beans and boiling water in the area that is now Ethiopia. In the high mountain regions, a goat herder by the name of Kaldi discovered that his wandering animals had returned from the fields with an extra spring in their step. When Kaldi searched the area he found his herd feasting on red berries from a patch of bushes and gathered some for himself to try. Later, he dried and ground the berries and made a tea of sorts. The result was the first cup of coffee … and presumably, the first recorded caffeine high.

Now you know about the goats, but are wondering why are they wearing grass skirts -right?

The answer to that has to do with pizza. Confused yet? Hehe, I’m getting there.

Something about the idea of Hawaiian pizza being Hawaiian simply because it has pineapple on it has always struck me as funny. Same with those yummy little chocolate covered macadamia nut things. If you go to Hawaii, people always ask you to bring those back, like you can’t go to Walgreens and buy a box yourself there. Something about the macadamia nut and the pineapple seems exotic to people.

So when the urge for a strong cup of coffee and a cookie hit me in the late hours last night, I decided to pull out some coconut, macadamia nuts, dried mango, almaretto and make biscotti instead. Then I decided to call it Hawaiian biscotti because it seemed like the appropriate cliche at the moment.

This is why I should not be left alone in the kitchen. With a coconut. And Jimmy Buffett CDs.

Anywho, I threw the basic of the thing together -the flour, butter, egg stuffs – then went to town with every Hawaiian-inspired ingredient I could think of along with some white chocolate chips … because those just sounded good.

The result was a lightly sweet, entirely delicious biscottini* (that means oops, I made the biscotti too short so I changed the name to something small and cute sounding).

I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did along with a fresh cup of java. The recipe is over in the sidebar.

A few months ago a friend of mine decided that she wanted to make it rich by creating some fabulous contraption that she could sell on late-night infomercials. Like the microwave bacon cooker.

Hasn’t everyone wanted to invent some never-before-thought-of contraption at some point in their life … something that everyone clearly needed but had never realized was missing. Like one of those cup holders that sits on your dash and swivels when you drive so that you never lose a drop of coffee. Yes, capitalism at its best.

Which brings me to cheese foam. Yes, I typed correctly. Cheese + foam.  As in, “apply a liberal dollop of cheese foam to your asparagus.” This is apparently the newest trend in restaurants and cookbooks. It is also, apparently, the sign that people are running out of new ideas for what to make with food.

But the airy, cloud-like cheese idea got me thinking. Everyone has some recipe that is inherently odd. Something that is fantastically delicious to them – presumably because it has a myriad of ingredients that they love and smooshed together in varying combinations, became some sort of personal homage to deliciousness.

This is how I feel about green tacos.

I should point out that when I say “taco” I don’t mean the kind with ground beef. I mean the kind I started making during my brief vegetarian phase in college. The kind with faux-meat. Also known as veggie grounds. Its made with soy and is actually full of yummyness in its mildly nutty flavor… so it only seemed natural that my favorite vegetable, the brussel sprout, would be a valiant addition.

Topped with an onslaught of alvocado, cheese, sour cream and salsa from the garden, I find the meal finger-lickin’ good.

This is the kind of food that tastes good because it’s exactly what you were craving and full of the things you love… the thing that doesn’t really translate as scrumptious to anyone else but you. The kind of dish you eat alone in your kitchen, when no one else is looking.

The joy that comes with the freedom to create something like green tacos, just because it sounds good, is mostly what makes them delicious. But cheese foam – that’s just wrong.

How To Make A Green Taco

Roughly chop a large handful of brussel sprouts and toss them in a skillet with a package of veggie grounds. Add between 1/2 to 3/4 of a package of taco seasoning and a cup of water. Cover and allow to simmer for five minutes. Remove lid, turn heat to high and allow excess liquid to boil off.

Spoon as much of the green goodness into your tortilla or taco shells as you like and top with all the regular burrito/taco goodies. Enjoy! (See, wasn’t that easy…)

I rarely find it as a harbinger of good things when I begin a story by saying, my fridge smells like a small furry creature curled up in the corner and died.

But this is only about half right. The dead things in my fridge are not, nor were they ever fuzzy, small yes, but not fuzzy. And they didn’t crawl into my fridge on their own accord. No, in fact, they arrived from the local asian grocery in a gallon-sized bag. Dried shrimp. Thousands and thousands of baby dried shrimp.

Happy Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the Tiger and I’ve decided to mark the occasion by blockading my fridge as a bio-hazard smell zone until I have time to cook something both fabulously Chinese and New Yearsy.

Until then, I am haunted by the millions of tiny beady eyes starring out at me, trapped behind a curtain of Ziploc plastic. This is why Americans don’t eat things with the heads still attached. We don’t want our food staring at us. Especially as we stick a fork full of it into our mouths. I just want to say “sorry” every time I open the door and there they all are… Watching me.

Also, the peanut butter I put on my toast this morning didn’t have the lid on tight and now tastes like a nutty ceviche. Which is never a good way to start the day. So, long story short, it’s time to use up my fishy little friends and welcome in the Tiger.

In addition to the dead baby fish in my fridge, I decided I should try my hand at making egg rolls. This is a food that can be found on the menu at not only Panda Express but also Jack In The Box, so I assume this will not frighten my culturally repressed friends. It is also a dish that is actually very easy to make but seems to inspire awe in the eyes of the average dinner guest.

A few greasy egg rolls, some shrimp artfully disguised amid some Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms. LOTS of rice, and it was a meal.

I had great plans of making turnip cakes as well, but if I had read the recipe all the way through, I would have realized that you need more than the two hours I had allotted my self to make up a batch of those. Something about grating, straining, seaming, simmering, and marinating… no, two hours was definitely not enough time to make those.

Back to egg rolls. I am saddened to say that I posses only a small hand grater that was acquired at a dollar store during college. Why I have not remedied this situation yet is beyond me. It seems weird to buy a new one when this one still works, and I have a Cuisinart for when I need to get down and dirty, so alas, the sad little grater remains in my collection.

Three carrots and half a cabbage of grating later, my arm was tired but my dried mushrooms were done soaking. Time to cook up some ground pork and get this party started. It’s important to remember here that when preparing exotic food stuffs for friends you must use extravagant hand motions and employ flipping action whenever possible, especially when using a wok. Also, I suggest using many more spatulas then necessary as well as many, many little bowl full of different ingredients – like on the Food Network. This ads to the Merlin like mysticism of the meal as a whole.

When the pork and veggie filling is all sauteed together, drop a spoonful in the corner of those store-made egg roll skins, fold it like an envelope and roll. Literally, it is that easy.

For the final touch, I added some fumi furikake to the rice. This essentially is Japanese for rice seasoning and is little more than sesame seeds and dried seaweed, but you will want to use the fancy name to further entice your friends. Also, use lots of the little bowls here too… for the various rice toppings. This will also make it look like you tried harder than you actually did.

For dessert, I wanted something Valentine’s Day-ish, so I went the red/purple forbidden rice route, cooked it in some coconut milk for added flavor, mixed in some stevia and cooled it in the fridge. Dropped in a shiny martini glass with a splash of cream, it was the perfect combination of creamy sweetness, if I do say so myself.

And this, my friends, is how you make a fancy-shmancy dinner in under two hours. Rachel 30-minute Ray would be proud.

There was a recipe that ran in the New York Times in the mid-1880s. It was for a recipe known simply as Chocolate Caramel.

“Take of grated chocolate, milk, molasses and sugar, each one cupful, and piece of butter the size of an egg …”

Hardly New York Times material these days, but at the time the recipe was a novelty. Like a 21st century duck confit, the use of chocolate in this dish was something that the ordinary housewife would have made a special trip to the store for – perhaps even ordered specially from the grocer.

Fast forward a century or two and the presence of chocolate has become a mainstay in our daily diet (well, at least in mine). Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas. Take a trip to Costco this week and you can find an isle devoted entirely to chocolate – five pound heart-shaped boxes of the stuff to be exact.

Like a metaphor for love itself, chocolate is both bitter and sweet. And for me, when I want it sweet, I want it artificially-flavored mouth numbingly sweet and when I want it dark, I want it as bitter as an unripened lemon.

Tonight I will be attending a fundraising dinner for the Chamber of Commerce in my hometown. As with most small towns, Friday night gatherings are more like family reunions and the food plays second-fiddle to the people. Conversation will be hearty, pictures of children and grandchildren will surely emerge from many purses and most of all a sense of community will be fostered during an economic time when extra shoulders need to be leaned on.

Everyone was asked to bring a treat for the bake sale table in hopes that enough money will be raised to replace the city’s aging Christmas decorations – and with Cupid’s big day just hours away, it seemed only fitting to break out the chocolate and the red food dye.

Something about this holiday causes a gravitational shift in the universe that seems to draw Hershey’s Kisses to my mouth like a chain-smoking European, so it seemed only right to make sure whatever I made had a heavy dose of cocoa.

You can find the recipe for the brownie topped velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting to the right under the recipe section. I hope it makes your Valentine’s day as sugar-induced as mine.

I think one of the things that draws so many people to food – to good food – is how many facets of our life that is touches.

Meals are a sensory parade. Taste, smell, appearance. Few things engage us on as many levels as what we so haphazardly stuff in our mouths three times a day.

In truth, food is the stuff of legends. It has been the cause of wars, of love, of death … It has shaped history in innumerable ways. Think of the lasting cultural changes left in the ruin of the Potato Famine or the way Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, led to the transformation of working conditions for American immigrants. Food is such a part of our lives that we rarely step back long enough to recognize the ways in which it has transformed the world around us.

Yesterday at the grocery store I stumbled on an interesting package of rice. Forbidden Rice. A great marketing tool to be sure, but this package had more to it than shiny lettering  and glossy images. What caught me was the description.

 ”Legend tells us that this ancient grain was once eaten exclusively by the Emperors.” In fact, it is rumored that this black grain (actually dark purple) was so highly prized that for hundreds of years it was only grown on palace grounds and fed to the emperor and his concubines as an aphrodisiac.

This isn’t the kind of thing you find on the back of the Mac n’ Cheese box.

Back at home I scoured through the fridge in search of something to pair with purple rice and faced with the choice of a jar of green olives, some hummus or half a cabbage – the cabbage won out. A cut of wild Alaskan salmon from the freezer and the meal seemed complete.

Grabbing spices from the cabinet in preparation for some braised cabbage, I lamented the fact that I had run out of the beautiful red garlic from this summer’s farmers market. Instead I was left with the common-place silver variety that adorns the isles of every produce section from here to China. Why? Because it lasts the longest. Perhaps one of the most middle-of-the-road choices one can make when it comes to this world-renown food and yet it is the only one that millions of people have ever eaten.

But like my rice, there is more to the silver garlic story than it’s non-descript packaging reveals. When you love food and you love to try new things, it’s easy to wage war against the ordinary – but there is a reason that a nothing becomes everyone’s something. In the case of the silver garlic, for thousands of years this has been the variety chosen by mothers and grandmothers for inclusion in the family dinner.

Silver garlic was so esteemed for it’s longevity that ancient Egyptians placed bulbs of it in the tomb of  Tutankhamen so that the pharaoh would continue to have sustenance throughout his afterlife. When archaeologists found the cloves during excavation, it was still easy to distinguish the item – some 3,000 years later. This is the same food that Egyptian slaves were fed while they built the pyramids. Each time we cook with an ingredient like this we are unwittingly becoming a part of the past.

And that brings me to soy sauce. Such a demure little liquid and only a tablespoon in this dish, yet the essence of this and thousands of other dishes have been the point of argument between chefs, philosophers and even physicists for more than 2,500 years.

It was the Greek philosopher Democritus who first asked - what are flavors? It was also Democritus that decided that sweet, sour, salty and bitter were the only options out there. He believed that taste was based on the shape of the food molecule. Salty foods, when chewed, broke down into tiny isosceles triangles. Sweet foods became large and rounds atoms. Aristotle and even Plato agreed with Democritus and so for thousands of years, it was common knowledge that there were four, and only four, flavors.

In the early 1800s, a French chef (it’s always the French isn’t it?), Auguste Escoffier, the lead chef at the Paris Ritz, developed a veal demi-glaze that he said emboddied a taste all it’s own – not salty, sweet, sour or bitter. It was a fifth flavor. At the same time, a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, proclaimed that the tongue had receptors for another flavor – one that was umami, or “deliciousness.” The taste of dashi, a seaweed based soup, was deep and rich and could not be described by any of the other four flavors. Ikeda was mocked for his findings and his ideas were never accepted by mainstream chemistry.

Fast forward to the 1990s when researchers discover that the human tongue does in fact have five distinctly different flavor receptors – the fifith being a flavor reaction to the presence of glutamate, a substance that is present in almost all living things but which is transformed as it begins to die and the molecules begin to fall apart … think here of grilled meat or aging parmesian.

The fifth flavor has since been officially recognized and named umami (sometimes “savory” in the U.S.) in honor of Ikeda. One food that displays one of the strongest umami characteristics? You guessed it, soy sauce.

It was a simple Monday night dinner. No muss, no fuss. Salmon, rice and vegetables – but altogether amazing when you consider how it landed in one place, at one time, on the plate of a girl in a small town on the west coast of America.