Maybe you’re just having issue pairing down what umami is. Most of your umami bombs are kind of salty because they’re processed products that are heavily reduced and shelf stable. But dried mushrooms aren’t. And caramelized onions are loaded with umami. Sweetness and all. A fair number of the things you list are fairly umami heavy. Rosemary, tarragon, nutmeg.
Go sear a piece of meat. Then taste it next to a poached piece of meat. Or if you’re veg/vegan roast or saute some mushrooms real dark. And taste them next to a raw mushroom. Umami is a fair bit of the difference in flavor. Its kind of vague and hard to put your finger on. But its there.
Adam Smith was a goddamn commie, if you actually read it - like Marx did.
(To be fair, a lot of economists are actually honest about stuff that does and does not work in real markets. Those people don’t run for elections though, nor write for newspapers with wealthy owners.)
Well, I did read it and he is not a communist. He is in favour of strong state regulation in an otherwise free market. Like his Scots contemporaries, I suspect he would prefer the EU over the crony capitalism of the British Conservative Party,
It was a joke. What I was getting at is that the current ideological climate is so overwhelmingly dominated by hardcore right-wingers, even a moderate and rational thinker like Adam Smith today would be shouted down as a British-hatin’, latte-drinkin’, euro-lovin’, anti-business leftie.
Actually, in re-reading the section on “Menu French” in Peg Bracken’s etiquette book "the early 1960s, “I Try to Behave Myself”, “petite marmite” is listed under “Potages” as “reasonably hearty beef and vegetable soup served in individual casseroles”.
But it still sounds like the name of a small furry creature. That would groove in a cave with a Pict.
Of course. In the Asterix books Panoramix prepares the magic potion in a marmite. It is all too typical of perfidious Albion that we confuse the pot with the contents - though Marmite is hardly a magic potion, more a potion that is totally devoid of any trace of magic whatsoever.
This is unlike the Australian Vegemite which is truly magical - it tastes totally disgusting but, magically, people continue to use it.
To be precise, it refers to the pot in which it is served and, by inclusion, the soup. The British (actually now I think Belgian) Marmite comes in a pot which is vaguely marmite-shaped, but it’s still an example of cultural appropriation which, I think we all agree, est une chose mauvaise.
