Category: Food and Culinary Studies

May 21, 2014

Why Umami is Good For You and 12 Ways to Add it to Your Diet

In Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Taste, Ole Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbaek explain the health benefits of umami: Food with umami can often be prepared with significantly less salt, sugar, and fat without sacrificing the delicious taste of...

May 20, 2014

Interview with Ole Mouritsen, Coauthor of Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Taste

“Knowing about umami will not only help us to produce better-tasting meals but will greatly contribute to re-establishing a culture around the communal meals.”—Ole Mouritsen The following is an interview with Ole Mouritsen, co-author of Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of...

May 14, 2014

Arnold van Huis Discusses Eating Insects with Nature

In a recent interview with Nature, Arnold van Huis discussed eating insects and the recently published The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet: Question: How did you get involved in entomophagy? Arnold van Huis: I’m a tropical entomologist, very...

April 21, 2014

Upcoming Umami Events

Over the next week, Ole Mouritsen will be appearing coast-to-coast to talk about his new book: Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Taste. Below is a list of upcoming events for Umami, a book which Harold McGree calls “a...

April 7, 2014

Fashioning Appetite — Joanne Finkelstein

The following post by Joanne Finkelstein, author of Fashioning Appetite: Restaurants and the Making of Modern Identity, was first published on The I.B. Tauris Blog: Evaluating one another’s taste is an ordinary aspect of everyday social life. We look for...

March 28, 2014

Insects: A Sustainable Alternative to Meat

The following news report (see video below) includes interviews with coauthors of The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet, scientist Arnolds Van Huis and chef Henk Van Gurp, in which they consider some of the environmental benefits of eating...

March 27, 2014

Cooking with Insects — Recipes for Hopper Kebabs and Buglava

In addition to explaining the nutritional and environmental value of eating insects, the authors of The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet, also provide dozens of great recipes. Below are two such recipes. Hopper Kebabs (see image above) use...

March 26, 2014

TED Talk from Marcel Dicke on the Nutritional and Environmental Impact of Eating Insects

In the following video taken from a TED Talk , Marcel Dicke, coauthor of The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet, discusses the environmental and nutritional importance of eating insects:

March 25, 2014

"There’s no reason we shouldn’t be eating insects. They’re much better for you than regular meat."

In recent interview with the Boston Globe , Marcel Dicke, one of the coauthors of The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet, discussed his new book and the benefits of eating insects. Dicke concedes that there continue to be...

March 24, 2014

Book Giveaway! Win a Free Copy of The Insect Cookbook

This week we will be featuring The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet, by Arnold van Huis, Henk van Gurp, and Marcel Dicke on our blog, twitter, and facebook. We are also offering a FREE copy of The Insect...

December 6, 2013

The Westernization of Chinese Food

In the epilogue to The Land of the Five Flavors: A Cultural History of Chinese Cuisine, Thomas Hollmann concludes with a look at the changes in Chinese food and eating habits. In the following excerpt he discusses the introduction of...

December 5, 2013

The Long History of the Noodle (plus a Dumpling recipe!) via The Land of the Five Flavors

As Thomas Hollmann suggests in his book The Land of the Five Flavors: A Cultural History of Chinese Cuisine, the noodle looms large in Chinese food. Below is an excerpt from the book in which he examines some of the...