Testing Your Taste Buds

Tonight we had our first class in the professional kitchen - fun!! We tested our taste buds by trying dried herbs, fresh herbs, cheeses and a range of liquids. Here's how the evening played out...

A tasting of sweet, sour, bitter and salty... We tasted each one at a time and then added sour to sweet, bitter to the sour sweet mixture and then a little salt water to the other three. It's amazing how the flavors meshed together once all blended.

• Sweet - sugar water
• Sour - lemon juice diluted in water
• Bitter - bitters
• Salty - salt water

We also tried four types of salt water - salt water x1, salt water x2, salt water x3, salt water x4. We tasted each individually and then tasted salt water x4 immediately followed by salt water x1. It was amazing b/c you couldn't taste the salt in the x1 cup. Tip: don't serve salty appetizers as they may 'numb' the palate from experience the flavors of your dinner.

A tasting of herbs...we poured small amounts of dried herbs on our plates and tasted them one by one. It's quite interesting to taste a dried herb on it's own. For example, the cayenne pepper, which was hot, but it tasted like a red bell pepper and had a hint of smokiness to it. The ginger - dry or fresh, is still an herb that I do not like. It tastes like soap to me. We only use fresh chives and parsley as the dried versions just have no flavor. Here are some of the herbs we tried:

• basil
• bay leaf - very strong, earthy flavor
• chives - better fresh, lose some of the flavor when dry
• cinnamon - savory and sweet to me, a little heat and a little sweetness
• cloves - heat on the tip of the tongue, reminds me of anise/black licorice
• granulated garlic - love garlic!
  
• ginger - not a fan, see note above
  
• paprika
• parsley - almost no taste, fresh is much better
• rosemary - too piney for me, fresh has a much stronger smell and piney taste
• tarragon
  
• thyme - enjoy thyme
  
• turmeric
  

The ginger was so strong, that it overwhelmed my taste buds and I couldn't really taste much below it on the list. Bummer!! I wish we would have tasted the dried herbs side by side with the fresh herbs. Overall, the fresh herbs were awesome and just have so much more flavor to them. However, if you want to challenge your taste buds and work on your vocabulary, try setting up a tasting of your own to see what characteristics shine through on your herbs.

A Tasting of Cheese... we kept it simple (well, we raided the fridge and grabbed the cheese we could find) and sampled blue cheese, feta cheese, brie, mozzarella, and regular Parmesan. Blue cheese has a strong, pungent, salty flavor that I can handle in small amounts. On the flip side, brie is creamy, soft and subtle. The mozzarella has a mild flavor to it as well. I always enjoy good Parmesan cheese and the feta wasn't bad.

Next class, we're making pizza basing on our herb and cheese tasting. Yum!!