With the risk of sounding trendy, like "black is the new black," let me just make the statement, umami is so hot right now. By that, I mean there is resurgence in Western interest in the sensation of and flavor profiles associated with umami. If you are drawing a blank as to what umami is, no it is not a name for a fish that you would potentially order at a Japanese restaurant, it is described as savoriness. A taste that has been adopted from Japanese culture and is considered the fifth taste, after sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, and sourness.
In a Sake and Food Pairing class I assisted in Monday night, we had a sake and grilled shittake mushroom pairing which was described as umami so I got to thinking, ding, that was what I was going to do for Marriage Mondays! Shittakes paired with three different cheeses, one of which will be a match made in Umami heaven and one of which will be on the road to Umami divorce and the last of which is a possible match, left for you to decide whether or not it is a success.
So lets get going with our Shittakes, Cheeses, and Umami!
Let me first discuss how I envision the shittakes to be prepared. They should be roasted with some olive oil, fresh rosemary, garlic, a little shallot, and salt and pepper. I recommend placing the mushrooms in the oven for around 20 minutes at a medium heat.
So now that the shittakes are out of the way, lets get onto the cheeses:
1. Match made in Umami heaven - Roasted Shittakes topped with melted shavings of aged Parmesan, the quintessential umami pairing. Umami is recognized and achieved by the taste receptors on your tongue, identifying the presence of a naturally occurring amino acid typically found in meat, cheese, broths, stocks, and select protein rich foods, typically known as glutamate. When you taste the mushroom with the cheese, you get that puckery, salty, savoriness on your tongue that characterizes that certain "je ne sais quoi" of umami. This pairing is excellent as an hors d'oeuvres, or as an appetizer on a bed of greens or as a main tossed with pasta. The thing that makes this a successful pairing is the fact that both of the separate ingredients have an umami quality on their own and when put together, you get an aha moment. I would pair this with a nice spicy Tempranillo or a smooth Malbec, you need to have a red wine with character to go with this pairing.
2. Potential Match - Roasted Shittakes topped with Roquefort cheese. A favorite of Charlemagne, this King of Cheese, has been made for centuries from sheep's milk in the caves of Combalou in Auvergne in the midi-Pyrenees in France. It is the quintessential blue cheese, spicy, pungent, puckery, sweet and sharp all at once. Most people find blue cheese to on occasion give you that umami taste on its own - savoriness all rolled up into a ball of one cheese, I find this in say Rogue Creamery Smokey Blue for example. However, it is sometimes found in Roquefort as well, it does have the highest level of glutamates of any cheese. Roquefort and roasted shittakes is a potential match pairing for our Umami Matchmaking. Why you might ask? If Shittakes definitely have that umami quality to them and Roquefort can have that same quality, then why wouldn't this pairing work? You might disagree with me and think this pairing works excellently, and most times, it does work quite well, however I think it depends on the season in which you are eating this pairing. I find it best to eat in the springtime and early summer, then I think you will find this to be a successful match! Not that it can't be a successful match in fall and winter, but the sheep's milk that is utilized in the cheese at the time of year tastes somewhat different, I find it becomes a more accentuated version of the spring and summer Roquefort and in doing so, the cheese overwhelms the mushroom and the sense of a successful Umami match is somewhat lost. So see, it can go both ways.
3. Match destined for divorce: Roasted Shittakes and Delice de Bourgogne. Delice de Bourgnone is a standout when it comes to French bloomy rind cheeses, because it is one of the few of its kind produced in the Burgundy region of France, a complex little cheese! The bloomy rind exudes a mushroomy, moldy aroma that cuts through the creamy unctuousness of the interior. An awesome mouth-coating creamy cheese! Great with a medium bodied white wine like a Chablis. However in our umami marriage pairing, the creamyness of this cheese overwhelms the savoriness of the mushrooms and therefore masks the flavors of the mushrooms, so that the pairing becomes more about the cheese than the mushroom and we all know that a relationship where it is all about one person is not successful!
I hope you guys enjoyed this week's dose of Marriage Mondays and that you learned something about how to pair mushrooms with cheeses to attempt to achieve umami.
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