Umami
5 Spice Shitake Patties with Sunbush and Plum Puree, Toasted Sesame Baked Croutons and a Ginger and Plum Froth
03/04/10 03:28
5 Spice Shitake Patties with Sunblush Tomato and Plum Puree, Toasted Sesame Baked Croutons and a Ginger and Plum Froth.
This is a lush, umami rich dish with strong oriental influences and a couple of small twists on expected flavour combinations and textures. But vitally it tastes fantastic and is incredibly moreish (partly due to the umami taste) and has rich, very intense flavours, a beautiful mouth feel and makes an amazing main course with a clean, fresh finish provided by the plum and ginger froth that unites the various elements of the dish and keeps the course light but abounding with flavour.
Serves 2 with left over puree (which you will be happy for having in the fridge as a condiment)
The Shitake Patties –
25g dried shitake rehydrated in 600ml boiling water – reserve the rehydrating liquid
250g plain tofu
2 tsp finely diced plum
3 garlic cloves chopped
2 shallots chopped
1 deseeded chopped green chilli
1 tsp smoked chipotle Tabasco
2 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tsp Ume plum seasoning
2 tsp 5 spice
4 spring onions diced
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
2 egg yolks
1 whole egg
Mushroom salt for seasoning
Sunflower oil for frying
First rehydrate the dried shitake mushrooms by pouring 600ml of boiling water over them and leaving them to soak for about half an hour. Drain the Mushrooms and squeeze out any excess liquid then strain and reserve the liquid they were rehydrated in, this liquid is rich in umami, especially so when reduced and concentrated, and will be used later. Now fry the mushrooms in a little vegetable oil for 2/3 minuits and set to one side.
Now drain the tofu and squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Fry the garlic shallots and chilli for 2 mins on a medium heat then crumble the tofu into the pan and cook for a further 2 minuits. Place the mushrooms and tofu in a blender and blitz for a minuit to break down.
Now combine in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients (the diced plum, diced ginger, Tabasco, soy, ume plum seasoning, 5 spice, spring onion lemon juice and egg) and 2 table spoons mushroom salt (use normal salt if you can’t get mushroom salt), and check seasonings.
Bring the mix together and form into small patties and fry in a little sunflower oil on a medium heat for about 2 minuits on each side until just crisp on the out side. Rest on kitchen towel, to absorb excess oil, for a minuit before serving.
Sunbush tomato and plum puree –
Reduce 200ml of the reserved shitake liquid to 25ml
150ml red wine (I use merlot for this)
2 cloves garlic roughly chopped
3 plums chopped
100g sunblush tomatoes roughly chopped
1 tablespoon smoked salt
1 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 ½ tablespoon red wine vinegar
1g citric acid
1 tablespoon tomato puree
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
4 drops Tabasco
Tiny pinch smoked paprika
In a small pan bring it all to the boil for a couple of minuits until the liquid reduces and begins to thicken, lower the heat right down and cook for a further 20 min, blitz with immersion blender, pass through a fine sieve then blitz again until you have a smooth puree. Allow to cool before serving
Ginger and plum froth –
2 tablespoons dried lemongrass
150g water
35g lemon juice
60g ginger juice (extracted by grating ginger then squeezing out the juice through muslin)
100g plum juice (puree chopped plums and squeeze juice through muslin)
20g caster sugar
4g Lecite (soy lecithin)
Pinch salt
Add the dried lemongrass, 15g lemon juice and the sugar to the water and bring to the boil, simmer for about ten minuits until the liquid has reduced to 140g. Set aside to cool and infuse, then strain and remove the lemongrass.
Mix the Ginger juice, plum juice, rest of the lemon juice and a pinch of salt with the infused water and mix the liquids together with an immersion blender. Add the lecite and froth with the immersion blender in a wide shallow bowl. Collect the froth from the top of the liquid.
Sesame toast –
White bread – sliced about 1 ½ cm thick
Toasted sesame oil
Sesame seeds
A little warmed honey.
Cut 6 7cm circle of the bread with a pastry cutter. Coat each side of the circles with toasted sesame oil and bake in the oven at 200C for 5 minuits. Remove from the oven and brush with a little of the warmed honey on the top side of the disks and sprinkle with sesame seeds and return to the oven for two minuits.
Garish-
One bunch spring onions
One bunch coriander
Top and tail the spring onions and cut in half length ways. Slice into thin strips and immerse in iced water and leave to curl up.
Wash the coriander and keep fresh in cold water.
Putting it together –
For each plate place three of the shitake steaks ontop of a sesame crouton each and lay them overlapping in a row in the centre of the plate. Place drops of the sunblush tomato and plum puree around the edge of the plate and sit a spring onion curl ontop of each one. Place a little of the fresh coriander over the shitake steaks and finally delicately spoon a little of the ginger and plum froth over the coriander.
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Umami
19/01/10 00:24
S
o, where to start with Umami, I suppose where it was discovered, Japan. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of spending some time in Japan visiting my little brother. Anyway, whilst I struggled with the language and jet lag, I did eat some amazing vegetarian food over there, including dishes I’ve not tasted anything similar to anywhere else. One of the things key to some of the brilliant and unique Japanese food was the understanding and use of Umami, which goes back centuries in Japanese culinary culture, and which has been at the centre of much discussion and research in recent years in both the east and the west.
I was utterly enamored with Japan; it was a wonderfully bizarre culture shock for me, surreal and exciting. I loved how friendly and helpful everyone was, even if they didn’t know, due to my rubbish attempts at Japanese, what they we’re trying to help us with. Perhaps not the best example but illustrative of this, was when my girlfriend and me went into a building in the center of Tokyo that we thought was a shopping centre. We spent a few minuits going up and down in the lift, surrounded by flustered looking businessmen, trying to work out where the shops were and looking touristy and confused, until one bloke took pity on us. The guy, smartly dressed in his work suit, looked awkward while he watched us trying to work out where we were. He seemed to be briefly wrestling with a dilemma before he spoke to us in broken English, nervously explaining that the building we had wandered into was filled entirely and solely with porn theatres. ‘Is all … video of women … porn … all building’ he informed us, with much head nodding and a bashful smile. It might sound weird but both me and be girlfriend found it an incredibly endearing moment (we may have laughed abit about it though), but the poor bloke was clearly there on his lunch break to ‘relax’ and was embarrassed (especially due to the unexpected presence of a western girl), but was so compelled to help us out, because we were clearly lost, that he just about overcame his anguish to assist us. It was just one of many occasions when people when out of there way, in one way or another, to help us out.
Anyway back to food and away from weird porn theater encounters. We broadly have Japanese food culture and science to thank for our contemporary understanding of the fifth taste, Umami. In brief its a savory, moreish taste, that translates as ‘deliciousness’. I see it as really interesting, particually for vegetarian food. Its found in many food stuffs and meats, but luckily meat is far from being the sole domain of the fifth taste, and it is quite easy to produce Umami rich vegetarian foods, or simply to use it to create well rounded, taste balanced recipes. So I’ll try and give abit of info and background that hopefully will serve to provide a basic understanding of the often misunderstood taste.
I’m conscious that I don’t want to turn this into a huge essay and won’t go too deep into the science of taste here, as many people could do a much better job of it than myself but I recon its good just to give abit more info about it before I return to my more usual rambling for why I recon its such an important and cool subject and give you a recipe.
Right so, essentially Umami is one of the five tastes that we can pick up, through taste receptors on the tongue, independent of smell, along with the other four so called primary tastes Salt, Sweet, Sour and Bitter. These are incredibly important in dictating whether food will seem delicious to us. On top of this base of taste we have flavour, texture, temperature, presentation, sound etc which are all vital to our experience of eating something and how pleasurable it is. But even if all the other elements are exactly as we desire them, if somethings taste is not right (i.e. its too salty or under seasoned, not sweet enough or sickly sweet) it will not be delicious, however lovely the textures, smells and presentation etc are. This is the level of importance of taste, it is the base upon which we as chefs build. Interestingly often dishes rich in Umami require less salt to taste delicious.
Umami was identified as a distinct taste in by a Japanese scientist in 1908 but it wasn’t until much more recently that Umami became internationally recognized as the fifth basic taste when it was scientifically proved that we do have a specific taste receptor it. For hundreds of years, Brown alga kumbo has been used as an Umami rich base for Japanese stocks. In the early 1900’s it was discovered it contained large amounts of monosodium glutamate more commonly known as MSG. MSG became sold as a seasoning to the large scale food manufacturers, and has been surrounded by some controversy as to whether its detrimental to health. Although its now been shown that in the vast majority of people even eating large amounts of MSG has no ill effects. However I worry about the dependence on its use as a seasoning in the large scale low cost food industry, as its often used in the place of using real and diverse flavours and tastes. Its worth noting two things here, first that there are also other Umami substances (guanosine monophosphate – from shitake mushrooms, and inosine monophosphate – from cured fish) and it is also present naturally in many different foods. Secondly MSG is not the same thing as Umami, merely a chemical manifestation of it. In fact while commercially produced MSG, at least in the media, is treated with a certain amount of suspicion over whether it could be harmful to health conversely there are now in fact studies going on into using natural sources of Umami in hospital food, to encourage elderly patients to eat by giving them meals containing the moreish taste.
As I’ve said Umami is found in various meats and fish, but obviously vegetarian dishes don’t include these foods. But also luckily Umami can be found in plenty of vegetarian foods, I’ve listed just a few of those here –
Tomatoes, tomato puree and tomato ketchup, Shitake mushrooms, Mushroom Ketchup (you can make your own or buy bottles of it), Truffles, Carrots, Soy (soy sauce, tofu), Potatoes, Italian hard cheese (remember though that traditionally produced parmesan isn’t vegetarian because it uses calves rennet), Nori, Kombu and Misso to name just a few.
Anyway, I think the best way to get an understanding of Umami is to taste it, learn to be able to identify it and then be able to consciously pick it up in food and think about how to use it your own cooking. So here I’ve come up with a pretty simple recipe for an Umami rich broth. If you fancy trying it it doesn’t take long to make and has the savory, morerish almost meaty taste of Umami in bundles. You can play with the seasonings abit - the acidity, the amount of spice you want etc, although its unlikely you will want much salt. But basically its here as a recipe that will allow you to experience and identify the wonders of the fifth taste and, most importantly, tastes amazing.
Click here to go to the recipe
And bellow is a more complex Umami rich dish
5 Spice Shitake Patties with Sunblush Tomato and Plum Puree, Toasted Sesame Baked Croutons and a Ginger and Plum Froth.
Click here to go to the recipe
Enjoy yourselves
Ta
Eddie Shepherd