Taste is one of the important aspect of cooking,food is not about presentation,or a complicated long name of a recipe…but its all about the taste.but dont just put lots of butter and cream on your dish l or a handful of herbs to make it flavorful ,.ill list the basic and advance taste.
Basic
Sweet: Favorite taste of Filipino,no doubt about it,but do you know that besides fruits(fructose) ,sugar( sucrose) some vegetables contains natural sugar like carrots and onions specially when it is cooked
Sour: Our national dish Adobo is a sour dish,Sour is the 2nd favorite taste of filipinos. vinegar,calamansi,pineapple,tamarind are the souring agents used by filipinos to enhance the flavor,and its locally available
Salty: also known as sodium chloride but I wont tackle the other topics of salt, for me there are two kinds of salty flavor which is Wet is seasoning the food,the flavor of saltiness is outside,second is Dry the saltiness of more compact and you can feel the dry saltiness when you eat it dry and cured,best examples are tinapa,dried squid and prosciutto ,
Bitter: I think eating bitter foods,has lots of process like the brain is sending us,that a bitter taste is toxic and rejects it.thats why lots of people dont like this taste,but how about Beer??,best example for this ampalaya(bitter gourd)
Umami: they said its the 5th taste,a savory dish but not all the umami flavors comes from MSG, as my real experience I tried using truffle oil I can say that the distinct flavor is savory(YUMMY) or Umami
Intermediate
Sweet and Sour:Ice tea,Lemonade,some of the examples asian food usually has sweet and sour dishes
Salty and sour :Imagine our dried tamarind coated with white sugar
Sweet and salty best examples are breads for me…this category has more balance of flavor
Advance
for me these are some new flavors that dont fall on the categories above with added good sense of smell you can distinguish the taste
Herb = you can easily say that dish has a herb on it.
Earthy = you can taste the earthy flavor like mushrooms,unpeeled potatoes
Sea Flavor = can taste the freshness of the fish
Roasted =you can taste the burnt flavor ,science behind it?? Maillard reaction
Nutty=you can taste the nutty flavor
Spicy =some people think that this is part of the 5 basic taste..for me there are 2 kinds of spicy Hot (comes from chillies) and Cold(comes from mints)
Metallic = usually when you braise or stew too much.you can taste the metallic flavor of the pot,this one is wierd but this happens to me like three times while doing nilaga
Some of the schools today wont teach this stuffs.
Press It !! 