BWW Cooks: Umami, the Japanese Word for Italian Flavors

If you watch Food Network regularly, or sit through episodes of TOP CHEF that are sponsored by Kikkoman, you've memorized the word "umami" through its constant repetition. And you've learned that it means "fifth taste," or "savory," that it's the savory or meaty sort of flavor one detects, the one that isn't sweet, salty, sour, or bitter. We taste it in meat, we taste it in soy sauce, we taste it in certain produce. We think of it as Japanese. It is a Japanese word, after all, and the flavor was first isolated by Japanese scientists.

Umami is also the flavor that made the word "glutamate" fit for polite conversation after decades of avoiding it. Monosodium glutamate is the isolated presence of glutamic acid, the chemical that produces umami flavor in certain foods. The foods we consider to have the greatest umami flavors all have strong free glutamates present in them.

What's interesting is the list of non-meat foods that have the highest presence of umami flavor. That Japanese concept isn't a bastion of Japanese cooking alone; in fact, some other traditional cuisines have higher umami content than Japanese cuisine does. What's high in glutamic acid? Tomatoes, which aren't associated with Japanese cooking. Aged parmesan cheese - not exactly a popular Japanese ingredient. Other high-level sources of glutamic acid, the umami taste, include mushrooms, anchovies, and olives. Balsamic vinegar is another. Umami is also strongly supported by the allicin flavors - onion and garlic.

Those flavors - tomato, mushroom, olive, parmesan, anchovy, and onion and garlic? Balsamic vinegar? If you were asked to name a cuisine that featured them as regular basic ingredients, you'd no doubt pick Italian foods. You'd be right, for they're the classic basics of Italian cooking. They're often used as main flavors, but some of them are also used where their actual flavor is unidentifiable. The fact that you hate anchovies on pizza doesn't take away the fact that the tube of anchovy paste in Nonna's refrigerator has been used in a thousand of your favorite meals with her. Anchovy, tomato, and mushroom, especially the porcini mushroom, are frequently cooked in tiny amounts in dishes that do not feature them, not only in Italian cuisine but in the cuisines of regions not thought of as umami powerhouses. Tomato paste shows up in chicken paprikash. Anchovy is featured in the Scandinavian "Jannsen's Temptation," a potato dish, as an underlying flavor. Potatoes themselves are high in glutamic acid, and the anchovy kicks that umami up another notch in the dish. Mushrooms show up, in small quantities, in many cuisines, not to taste the mushrooms but to underscore the flavor of the main foods. And olive oil is the basic vegetable fat of most Southern European and northern African and Middle Eastern cooking styles.

However, let's look at Italian cooking, possibly the most popular food style on earth judging from the places where pizza can be obtained (including in Japan). The tomato-based sauce is a frequent southern-Italian-based item, whether made as a lighter sauce or cooked down into a rich, thick, dense sauce of weighty properties. Mushroom is a frequent accompaniment, and Parmesan or other hard, aged cheese a regular ingredient or garnish. It's Italian cooking that came up with saving that Parmesan rind for the soup; it's Italian cooking that tosses the tomatoes and mushrooms together with olive oil and sprinkles Parmesan on the finished result. If your interest is the greatest umami "bang for the buck," you're likely to order a meat pizza with a deep, rich tomato-based pizza sauce, with additional mushrooms and some onions, and no matter how junk-food you think it is, deep inside you admit it's a craving and not just a convenient food to have delivered to your door.

No wonder the original Japanese version of IRON CHEF ultimately added "Iron Chef Italian." The people who isolated the taste of umami love cuisine that emphasizes umami.

And so do Americans. Fresh tomatoes and mozzarella cheese in a caprese salad, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar? South Philadelphia's "tomato gravy" loaded with mushrooms and onions, served over spaghetti and meatballs at Sunday dinner? Pizza in almost all of its forms? Caponata, the Italian version of ratatouille, full of eggplant with tomatoes, olives, capers, and mushrooms? Umami, all of them, as is a tomato-based minestrone, full of vegetables sautéed in olive oil, cooked with a Parmesan rind, served with sprinkled Parmesan cheese.

Umami. It may have been discovered by the Japanese, but it's most at home in the Italian kitchen. Whether meat-based or vegetarian, Italian recipes form the basis of America's food cravings and childhood food memories because they're rooted in a cook's grabbing flavor with both hands and cooking it in the pot. It's why pizza is as popular as burgers, if not more so, as America's fast meal and junk food craving. And now we have a scientific excuse for it.

A tip for those craving Italian pasta sauce or "tomato gravy" who want something lighter or lower in carbohydrates than pasta: Use freshly steamed cauliflower as your base, with sauce over that. For umami's sake, try mushrooms and olives, or vegetarian sausage and olives, as the heavy ingredients for your tomato-based sauce, and, if you like, mix a few tablespoons of cheese directly into the sauce, or use a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar for some snap.

Mangia!

Photo Credits: Freeimages/Pietro Giordano