How To Taste

You love to eat. But do you know how to taste? Now award-winning expert certified food and beverage taster and lifestyle journalist Mandy Naglich gives you a seat at the table beside the best of the best in the fascinating world of tasting—and reveals how to hone your tasting superpowers like a pro. This instant classic is both a sumptuous behind-the-scenes tour and a fun, appetizing, and informative how-to that covers everything from wine and cheese to ice cream and honey, tea, chocolate, and even water, to the science within your taste buds. Whether it’s a meaningful meal or a favorite nostalgic road trip snack, we know what we like to eat. But even when it comes to the most vivid and memorable dishes it’s tough to say what exactly makes them so delicious.Now award-winning expert certified food and beverage taster and lifestyle journalist Mandy Naglich reveals how to hone your tasting superpowers like a pro. Take a seat beside highly-trained cheese analysts, world-class sommeliers, competitive whiskey tasters, internationally recognized chefs, and sensory scientists as experts divulge the secrets to discerning the notes in a range of ingredients, from a dab of honey to a spoonful of olive oil—and even a sip of mineral water. Discover why a James Beard award-winner was visibly nervous before a blindfolded taste test on Top Chef Masters, and how coffee farmers base growing practices on the palate of one world-renowned authority. Learn why your taste buds respond to variables such as food temperature and background music. What the flavor distinction is between a pomme fruit and a stone fruit, how to judge the acidity of anything, from a cup of tea to a square of dark chocolate—and how understanding flavor can impact the way you understand the world. A rich journey for the flavor-obsessed, this instant classic is both a practical guide and a sumptuous meditation on how to savor all things delicious—on the plate and in life. Mandy Naglich is a food and beverage journalist, beer educator, Advanced Cicerone, AROXA Certified Taster, WSET Spirits, Certified Cider Professional, and National Homebrew Competition Gold Medalist. She chronicles her adventrues in the world of beer on her popular blog beerswithmandy.com and on Instagram @beerswithmandy. When she’s not traveling the world to follow a story or try a new restaurant, Mandy lives, writes, and brews in New York City with her husband, Wes, and their dog, Chewy.

This engaging and approachable (and humorous!) guide to taste and flavor will make you a more skilled and confident home cook. How to Taste outlines the underlying principles of taste, and then takes a deep dive into salt, acid, bitter, sweet, fat, umami, bite (heat), aromatics, and texture. You'll find out how temperature impacts your enjoyment of the dishes you make as does color, alcohol, and more. The handbook goes beyond telling home cooks what ingredients go well together or explaining cooking ratios. You'll learn how to adjust a dish that's too salty or too acidic and how to determine when something might be lacking. It also includes recipes and simple kitchen experiments that illustrate the importance of salt in a dish, or identifies whether you're a "supertaster" or not. Each recipe and experiment highlights the chapter's main lesson. How to Taste will ultimately help you feel confident about why and how various components of a dish are used to create balance, harmony, and deliciousness.

Offers a guide to vintages, grape varieties, and wine appreciation.

“A rich, engrossing, and deeply intelligent story….This is a book I won’t soon forget.” —Molly Wizenberg, bestselling author of A Homemade Life “Fresh, smart, and consistently surprising. If this beautifully written book were a smell, it would be a crisp green apple.” —Claire Dederer, bestselling author of Poser Season to Taste is an aspiring chef’s moving account of finding her way—in the kitchen and beyond—after a tragic accident destroys her sense of smell. Molly Birnbaum’s remarkable story—written with the good cheer and great charm of popular food writers Laurie Colwin and Ruth Reichl—is destined to stand alongside Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia as a classic tale of a cooking life. Season to Taste is sad, funny, joyous, and inspiring.

Master of Wine Jancis Robinson has created this wine tasting course based around practical exercises that will guide you from your first sips to confident, well-informed gulps. Clearly divided into theory and practise, this workbook first provides all the information you need before you put it into practise. Learn the correct way to taste wine and enjoy the tasting exercises specially devised by Jancis based on readily available and inexpensive bottle. Learn how to recognise the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay to Riesling, Pinot Noir to Cabernet Sauvignon, and why you should choose a good sparkling wine over cheap Champagne. There is advice on choosing from a wine list and how to match food with wine. How to Taste will awaken the wine connoisseur in us all.

"The science of taste and how to improve your sense of taste so that you get the most out of every bite"--

Who doesn't dream of leaving everyday life behind and really experiencing nature with an adventure in the wilderness... and a delicious campfire supper to round off a perfect day? Enjoy the beauty and stillness of breathtaking shots, taken on location in the National Parks of Vancouver and Banff, of the lakes, cascading waterfalls, rivers, canyons, mountains and deep, green, tranquil forests for which Canada is renowned. This is the stunning natural backdrop for recipes and short extracts from Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Chris Czajkowski and Anne Michaels inspired by Canada's incredible landscapes. Whether it's fluffy blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, or tender salmon fillet on a cedarwood board, hearty campfire stew with craft beer or the unique national dish of Canada, poutine, these ingredients and recipes evoke bounty, simplicity, campfires and wilderness.

Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses, which we often take for granted. Structured as a series of “small bites,” the book considers the ways that we ingest the world, how we come to know ourselves and others through the daily act of tasting. Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste. In a series of short, interdisciplinary essays, she blends personal experience with analysis of poetry, fiction, music, and the visual arts, as well as religious and philosophical texts. Dubrow considers the science of taste and how taste transforms from a physical sensation into a metaphor for discernment. Taste is organized not so much as a linear dinner served in courses but as a meal consisting of meze, small plates of intensely flavored discourse.