Puttanesca Potato Salad
A texturally delicious salad inspired by the Italian coast + Why Kipfler potatoes are salad gold + Are anchovies really the pinnacle of umami?
A quick roast potato salad inspired by the coast of Italy! This Puttanesca Potato Salad has crispy golden potatoes, fresh chopped salad veggies, punchy pickled deli ingredients and a delicious dressing created straight off a really good Puttanesca pasta recipe. Oh and if you are constantly seeking the holy grail of umami, this is a great contender.
What is umami?
It was not until my late teens in a world devoid of internet (yes, I might be that old!) that I first discovered the term umami in an old Japanese cookbook.
Umami is one of the five core tastes. Umami is savoury. Umami is characterised by a combination of sweet, salty, sour and bitter. It is literally the “taste of deliciousness” and teeters between the savouriness that comes from meaty broths and mushrooms to the pungent tanginess that comes from fermented foods and cured salty fish like anchovies.
We taste umami through taste receptors that respond to glutamates and nucleotides (in case you have ever wondered why the controversial monosodium glutamate or MSG enhances the flavour of your Asian dishes.)
You see, you might already be a huge fan of umami without realising if you love olives, capers, parmesan cheese, porcini or shiitake mushrooms, dried tomatoes, fish sauce, shrimp paste, seaweed, anchovies, nori, miso and kimchi. All of these ingredients have a super high umami factor and are from the five most umami-rich cuisines in the world - Japanese, Korean, Italian, Thai and Chinese.