Taste - Sybil Kapoor

"Taste" approaches cooking in a radical new way. It teaches the reader how to cook by using the five basic tastes - sweet, sour, bitter, salt and umami (savoury) - and reveals that anyone can make delicious food at home by simply understanding how these tastes react to one another. Each chapter is based around a different taste, and takes the reader on a gastronomic journey of discovery. Consider sour for example: the chapter begins with recipes for drinks and soups to demonstrate the effect of combining either salt, bitter, sweet or umami with sour; as the chapter progresses the dishes - and the variety of tastes found in them - become increasingly complex. By following these chapters, the reader learns how to create meals with complementary ingredients so that every dish tastes amazing. Two final chapters on chilli and flavours explore how ingredients such as dried kashmiri chillies, paprika, mint, saffron, rosewater and vanilla pod alter our perception of taste, and there are recipes for each of the ingredients featured.