Been thinking about umami lately

[conuly]

Not the taste, the word. I've seen the original Japanese glossed as "tastiness", "deliciousness" and "pleasant savory taste" (which seems to be what it means in English today anyway) but for some reason I don't often see it glossed as "yumminess", which means about the same thing and has the advantage of sounding intuitively similar.

This irks me a little.

Speaking of umami, I made spinach with raisins and anchovies yesterday. I'd made a test batch of an old bag of random heirloom beans to see if they would cook properly (they did!), so I made this dish with polenta, as suggested, because that was the first recipe to pop up where I had everything in the house already. Except I used smoked salt. And then I made my spinach using a recipe I'm sure I cribbed from the NY Times once, and I'll shove it under this cut: Sorry to say, there will be approximately zero precise measurements in this recipe.

Onion and/or a good amount of garlic
One, two, or a whole small tin of anchovies
A handful of golden raisins, soaked in hot water or stock
Plenty of spinach, chard, kale, or other good greens, probably chopped
Oil
Salt, pepper, and optional red pepper flakes
Edit: Optional half a lemon

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Once it's good and hot, toss in your aromatics and your optional red pepper flakes. If you're cooking both onions and garlic you'll soften the onion before the garlic goes in because garlic burns fast. Once your onions (if using) are lightly caramelized and your garlic (if using) has cooked a short while, add in your golden raisins (drain the liquid first!) and your anchovies, pulled apart. I'm sure the original recipe called for one or two, I didn't want to store them so I used the whole tin. The correct amount is probably somewhere in between the two extremes. You can skip the anchovies if you want, and if you do this I suggest you plan to slosh in some liquid aminos, worchestershire sauce, soy sauce, or fish sauce. Stir around a bit, eventually add in your spinach. Just keep tossing it in until the skillet can't take any more, then cover until wilted. This will happen pretty fast if you're using spinach or chard, and a little less fast if you're using kale or cabbage. You want it wilted, not soggy, so keep an eye on it! Add a small amount of salt - remember, the anchovies are very salty already! - and pepper. Stir to combine, serve. (Edit: Forgot to add that you can squeeze half a lemon over the whole thing at this point.) This is very intense to eat, so you'll want something a little blander to go with. I don't mean heat-wise, even with the pepper flakes, it's just EVERYTHING.

Comments

[alasse_irena]

I think what's happening is that umami is used for two slightly different things in Japanese. One is general deliciousness, and the other is that specific savoury flavour that's the "fifth taste"... And usually in English we're taking about the second one, because we already have plenty of words for deliciousness in general

[acelightning]

Exactly! In English, we use "umami" to refer to a specific taste sensation - we have sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and
umami taste receptors in our mouths (and in our stomachs). If we mean "that tastes good", we call it "delicious" (which I suppose a Japanese speaker would express as "umami") - which can apply to anything from a chocolate cake with whipped cream to a platter of spicy Sichuan chicken :-) (Give me the Sichuan chicken, with the cake for dessert.)

[conuly]

Yes, that's true, but not an answer to why a quickie definition of the word in Japanese is rarely glossed as "yummy".

[oloriel]

But can't "yumminess" also apply to sweet things ? The savoury aspect is kind of important in umami, especially in the way the word is used in English!

[conuly]

Certainly, which is why I said I was thinking of the word in Japanese and how that word is glossed when translated into English rather than what the word means in English. I mean "tastiness", a more usual gloss, can be applied to pastries and cakes as well.

[greghousesgf]

years before I heard it in a million commercials and things I was told umami meant savory but not salty.

[conuly]

But something can be savory and also salty, of course.

[greghousesgf]

well, sure, but I was told that umami specifically meant savory but not salty, which many foods are.

[conuly]

I think you misunderstood. In English, it means that your taste receptors are responding to the presence of a specific chemical. That doesn't preclude the existence of other chemicals they might be responding to. Just like a food can be both sweet AND sour, a food can be both umami AND salty, or any other combination of tastes.

[greghousesgf]

I'm only repeating what I was told.

[conuly]

I can reliably tell you that you were either misinformed or you misunderstood. At any rate - and I guess I was super unclear? - I was concerned about the etymology, not the current English-language definition.