Umami Bomb: 75 Vegetarian Recipes That Explode with Flavor

Umami Bomb by Raquel Pelzel 75 (Mostly) Vegetarian Recipes that Explode with Flavor As I move more and more toward vegan eating I am always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to make meals interesting and perhaps to change things up a bit. This book has some intriguing ways to add flavor intensity that I may and may not have explored before. The Introduction explains Umami as “the fifth taste” and mentions that is provides “meaty or savory” to the dish. It then lists eight items to use to create umami with each one having a chapter of its own and recipes that include the item the chapter is named for. The ninth chapter deals with fish...not vegetarian at all. So...here are the eight umami items mentioned in the book. * parmesan and aged cheeses * soy sauce * tomatoes * mushrooms * carmelized onions * miso * smoke * nutritional yeast As I looked through the recipes again I realized that I use most of these items to provide flavor without realizing that I was adding umami. I didn’t really see anything new I would want to try...soy sauce in chocolate cake? Tomato with olives and hot peppers in a paste? Cheese waffles? Just not sure many really caught my fancy. That said, I do think using caramelized onions with beets on toast with a smear of labne or cheese or bean paste and something green might be tasty and using mushrooms more in cooking is something I look forward to doing. Some of the recipes sound like something I might be willing to try while others sound rather bizarre. The chapters that intrigued me the most were the ones on mushrooms, caramelized onions and smoke. I just received my first gift of nutritional yeast and do look forward to trying it at some point in the future. Thank you to NetGalley and Workman Publishing for the ARC – This is my honest review. 3-4 Stars