Still stumped about umami?

Fear not! Now you have a chance to take the super-hyper-crazy-easy way out and purchase it straight out of a tube! That's right, meet Taste No. 5 Umami Paste, on sale now in your favorite British supermarket chain!

An excerpt:
"Americans are familiar with the four primary tastes we've known since childhood: sweet, salty, bitter and sour. But the fifth taste -- the taste associated with savory things called umami -- has been less familiar. Umami is an earthy flavor foods get from amino acids in meats, some cheeses, fish and vegetables including mushrooms, ketchup, oysters, steak and sweet potatoes. It also gives food-additive MSG its allure.

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"Umami is part of our everyday eating lives, it is just that many of us don't know what to call it. It is what gives depth of flavour to food. Every food culture has its umami-rich ingredients, whether it is seaweed in Japan or Parmesan in Italy."

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Other foods that have umami flavor include: anchovies, Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce and Marmite."

via Serious Eats

Are you a food outlier?

I got a kick out of a blog post from Cheryl Sternman Rule describing her nearly out-of-body experience in realizing-mid gush about Michael Pollan gossip-that no one in the group of people around her had the foggiest idea who or what she was blathering on about.

The comments from other readers are also telling, with food-loving folks sharing stories of their loved ones' absolute confusion regarding these other food outliers' food decisions and choices.

I bump into this feeling regularly myself. I feel a little lost each time I try to explain to my gym friend that just because it is a salad at Panera Bread doesn't necessarily make it a "healthy" option. Or when I raise an eyebrow about "fresh" berries in the supermarket in the dead of winter. Or in justifying to my mom why I'd prefer to eat animal products less frequently but pay out the nose for organic/ sustainably-raised critters whom I will enjoy down to the bone and marrow without worrying about what bizarre byproducts I am also consuming rather than simply buying them more cheaply at Wal-Mart. Or why I'm a little bit scared of Denny's.

Recently, I was coming around to accepting the cold, hard truth: Simply put, I am a food snob. However, I am cheered after reading Chery's blog post! Not only can I rename and reclaim my shame (am I right?), but apparently I can also enjoy being part of a much larger community of folks who are just like me, proudly adapting the mantle of "food outlier." What say you, KTC peeps?

via Serious Eats

Bacon Cheese Turtleburgers

Just as soon as it gets warm enough (which, at the rate springtime is barreling down upon us, might be as early as next week or so), we should definitely try to make these little guys!

Serious Eats describes the bacony goodness: "...ground beef patties topped with sharp cheddar cheese and wrapped in woven bacon, impaled with hot dogs for the heads, legs, and tails..."

via Serious Eats

Seattle Knife Sharpening makes the cut - AND the Wall Street Journal!

Wow, I was tickled to read about our very own Bob Tate and his mail-order knife-sharpening service. And in the WSJ, no less!

Bob's shop was compared alongside four other knife sharpeners, and the WSJ's final summary comments were: "Lacks a user-friendly and uniform ordering and mailing system, but this cook-turned-sharpener has learned from a master bladesmith. Newer than other services we tested, yet it produced perhaps the sharpest knife edges we tested."

Neat!

Read about the knife sharpening face-off here.