food

One of the signature foods from the region I'm from is a kind of a meat pie that is filled with either cooked egg or ham, or both. Nowadays there are similar pies sold all over Finland, but you can only get the real originals from Lappeenranta marketplace or harbour. The location definitely is part of the experience.

Earl of Sandwich sounds line a person that make such epic sandwiches they have been granted nobility. But it's actually the other way around. The 4th Earl of Sandwich John Montagu is the man who came up with the idea of stuffing some meat between two slices of bread. This invention is sometimes described as Britain's biggest contribution to the gastronomy. 

Lord Sandwich was an avid gamer and was often too immersed in his card games to have time for meals. The meat filled bread solved conveniently his problems enabling him to dine at the gambling table. 

Somehow, every time I make myself a sandwich an everything bagel comes to my mind. I didn't know exactly what it was so I finally had to look it up. Contrary to the name it doesn't actually contain everything. It doesn't even refer to fillings of a bagel. Instead it's just about the toppings, mostly a certain combination of them. But usually any multi-topping bagel can be an everything bagel. So it doesn't even have everything as a topping. 

Contrary to popular belief there are five basic tastes (and they are all tastes around the tongue, there are no specific parts for each taste). The familiar four being sweet, salty, bitter and sour and the fifth: umami.

Umami was discovered in 1908 by Japanese professor Kikunae Ikeda. In 1985 it was officially proclaimed as the fifth taste describing the taste of glutamates and nucleotides. The taste itself however has been recognized and used since ancient Roman and Chinese cuisines where glutamate rich ingredients were widely used.

Sodium glutamate is rather controversial substance. It is used to enhance the flavour of food, to bring out the umami. While it's not banned by any laws or even have any regulations from food and health authorities some organizations have banned it's usage in their food production and many food companies have been advertising eagerly their glutamate free products.

I have never been much of a cook. I can do alright basic dishes, but nothing too fancy or complex. It's one more areas I am trying to improve myself.

Cooking something new is always scary. There are certain list of foods we have used to eat in our household and deviating from those safe defaults is always a risk.

So it's not always easy to just try something new. It's not just the risk that I don't get everything right. It can also be just the fact that those new flavours don't satisfy our delicate taste.