Umami Bomb

It's time for vegetarians (and pescatarians) to enjoy the deep, soul-satisfying fifth taste of umami. Discovered in Japan in 1908 and accepted as a verified taste in the West in 1985, umami is the savoury dimension that makes food truly delicious. And though it's most naturally found in animal proteins - hello, bacon - it turns out there are umami-rich, non-meat ingredients that have the power to transform the ordinary into the amazing. Ingeniously built around the use of eight flavour bomb ingredients - hard cheese, tomatoes, miso, mushrooms, soy sauce, caramelised onions, nutritional yeast (don't know it? you're in for a treat) and smoke - from Raquel Pelzel, these 75 recipes are so surprisingly rich and tasty you'll do a double-take. Here's how to turn mushrooms into "lardons" for an authentically Southern-tasting dish of black-eyed peas and greens. Caramelise onions to use in the best grilled cheese ever. Add a secret spoon of soy sauce to the batter of your next chocolate cake - the soy taste disappears, but leaves behind an unexpected depth of flavour. Author Raquel Pelzel brilliantly combines umami flavours and techniques, doubling and sometimes tripling the umami bomb effect - adding miso to cacio e pepe sauce results in a vegetarian pasta on steroids. And she brings umami into a surprising direction - grilling the fruit first for an otherworldly Banana Split. Where's the beef? Not here, and definitely not needed.