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I was in i due forni , which makes the best pizza in berlin yesterday. the discussion lead -don't ask me how, I guess I was too hungry- the 3 vegetables whose absence would make the world unbearable. I knew my answer beforehand, onion, garlic, and artichoke. What I was no sure about their order. After a quite some contemplation I have came up with the ordering in the last sentence. I want to praise this delicious vegetable which can render almost every type of food edible, with Pablo Neruda's poem "Ode to Onion"... Ode to Onion Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency, and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia, so did the ear...

I love fruits. My favorite fruits are peaches and water melons. Until recently I had to wait until its summer to enjoy the seducing flavor and consistency of these fruits. Luckily I have found the perfect winter counterparts! Persimmon is an East Asian fruit, related to which is known as Cennet Elmasi -Heaven Apple- or Trabzon Hurmasi -Trabzon Date Fruit, a misnaming as it is not related to date fruit at all- in Turkey. If should be eaten when it is soft. It is very soft and juicy when it is ripe. If the fruit is not ripe, you can leave it in room temparature for a few days where it softens. Sharon Fruit is a special type of Persimmon which is ripened with chemicals. Persimmon is my winter peach. Nashi Pear or Asian Pear has the taste of a pear, but the consistency of watermelon. Contrary to common belief it is not a cross between apple and pear, but an East Asian fruit. Nashi Pear is my winter watermelon.

I'll start with a question, a very basic question. How many basic tastes are there? Until last week I could come up with 4: Salty Sour Sweet Hot Which was not complete and also wrong. Hotness associated with chili is not a basic taste by definition. The complete taste list looks like this. Salty Sour Sweet Bitter Umami I am not joking. Umami is a relatively newly discovered tasting capability with humans, and associated with the amino acid glutamic acid, which is the building block of many proteins. however taste comes from the free form or the salt of glutamic acids. It literally means the "delicious taste" in Japanese. It is associated with fermented protein containing products, such as cheese, ham, East Asian Fish Sauce, and as well as vegetables like aspargus, sea weed and tomatoes. I came across this flavor, when I got interested in Old Roman Cooking. Back in the days, the Romans stored fish in salt, to prevent them from roting. After 4 months the fermenting bacte...