[su_dropcap style=”flat”]T[/su_dropcap]here are tons of cookbooks out there ready to teach you how to cook. We probably have a half a ton in our kitchen bookshelves. But when we were offered a review copy of a book about how to taste, we were intrigued. This funny, smart, well-researched volume does just that, every time we open it.
Published earlier this year by Sasquatch Books, How to Taste calls itself “the curious cook’s handbook to seasoning and balance, from umami to acid and beyond.” It methodically goes through how we taste foods, the many sensations we experience and how each contributes to a dish or meal. Entire chapters are devoted to salt, acid, sweet, fat, bitter, umami, aromatics, bite and even texture.
If this sounds dry and theoretical, it is the exact opposite. Selengut’s writing is clear, engaging and genuinely funny—smartass, even, at times. And it is utterly practical. Each chapter tells you how to use the particular taste sensation covered. Why it works, how to balance it with other flavors, how to use it to fix a dish that isn’t working—and how to fix overdoing that taste. The book is filled with fun facts, simple experiments to show you how each taste works and recipes that make the most of them.
Based in the Pacific Northwest, Selengut graduated at the top of her class at Seattle Culinary Academy after bailing on pre-med. She then worked in some of the Seattle area’s best-known restaurants. She is now a private chef, cooking teacher, humorist and prolific author. In 2011, she wrote the highly regarded Good Fish, a sustainable seafood cookbook, with wine pairing contributions from her wife, sommelier April Pogue. An updated, expanded edition was published in March by Sasquatch.
You can find your own copies of How to Taste and Good Fish at Sasquatch Books or on Selengut’s website. And you can see more of photographer Clare Barboza’s work (she did Selengut’s portrait above and images for Good Fish) on her website.