Building our Food Vocabulary

After tasting the herbs and cheeses in my cooking class, I realized that I need to build up my food vocabulary, specifically adjectives used to describe how food tastes. In addition, I may need to try more herbs and foods like currants and fennel that are often used to describe food and wine.

I always have trouble describing what food or wine tastes like without using the same term or using the actual ingredient. So, in addition to cooking class stories, I am going to try to introduce different terms to broaden our food vocabulary!

Check out this link of food and wine terms - pretty intense:

• http://www.world-food-and-wine.com/describing-food.html; or
  
• http://www.epicurious.com/tools/winedictionary/search?query=sweet&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=submit

Shannon's Words of the Day:

• Pungent: strong; sharp taste or smell; typically not sweet, but spicy or sour
  
• Ambrosial: wonderfully fragrant; offers a pleasing smell or taste
• Earthy: resembling smells of the earth (i.e. damp soil); simple in flavor
  
• Spicy: flavored with allspice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and pepper of all kinds; has heat; hot in mouth
  

What is Savory? What is Sweet? The photo below is definitely sweet!!

• Savory: not sweet; rich or bold tasty flavors; a group of herbs combined to make a flavorful dish; well seasoned food; describes sauces (like the meat sauce above), demi-glace, etc.
  

- there is also a mediterranean herb called Savory that belongs to the mint family

• Sweet: has the flavor/taste of sugar or honey; pleasing to the palate - not sour, bitter or salty; candies and pastries are considered sweet as well as sweet potatoes and some corn.
  

Stay tuned...