other ingredients: November 2006 Archives

Miso is Japanese fermented soybean paste.  It looks like peanut butter and smells bad.  But don't let this put you off.  It adds an intense and savoury depth and complexity to many dishes.  

It is high in 'umami' - the fifth (and best) basic taste, after sweetness, saltiness, bitterness and sourness.  Other umami-rich foods are Parmesan, soy sauce, fish sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes and some meats.  They are all high in tasty glutamates (as in monosodium glutamate, which occurs naturally in seaweed and was isolated and developed as a food additive back in 1907).

It's good for you too, as it's very tasty, yet low in calories, and also full of protein, beneficial bacteria and B vitamins.

We all know that bees make honey from nectar.  But did you know that they ingest and regurgitate the nectar several times before laying it in the honeycomb?  Or that they use their little wings to fan the honeycomb to evaporate enough moisture from the honey so that it cannot ferment?  

Honey has so much sugar and so little moisture that you can keep it your whole life without it going off.  The sugar kills most bacteria and the lack of moisture prevents natural yeasts from reproducing.  Someone once found a 2000-year-old pot of honey in an Egyptian tomb and said it tasted great.