The 12 Tastes

[Alberta Louise]

The 12 tastes are useful to build a vegan pantry repertoire based on taste. They are: Bitter A.K.A. some lettuce leaves for salad, Sweet A.K.A. vegan cream and Sour A.K.A. balsamic and the vinegars, Astringent A.K.A. citrus, Spicy A.K.A. the spices, Salty A.K.A. miso, Hot A.K.A paprika powder, cayenne powder and chilli powder, Plum A.K.A. Japanese plum sauce, umeboshi plum, vegan plum wine etc, Pungent A.K.A. quinoa, mustard etc Tart A.K.A. tamarind, granny smith apples, the Aromatic Herbs A.K.A. cilantro, flat-leaf parsley etc and Bland A.K.A. tofu, vegan congees etc. The Bland category particularly suits digestion, the very young and the very old and people recovering from an illness. Bland is nutritive. This past fortnight I have been working on two new mango filet recipes. One dish is filet of mango with desiccated coconut (sweet), lime juice (astringent) and red onion (pungent), cilantro (aromatic herb), tamarind (tart) with added spices and seasonings (salt (salty) and pepper(spice)). The second mango filet dish was with fresh curry leaves (pungent), tamarind (tart), cilantro (aromatic herb) with added spices (spice), cayenne (hot) and seasonings (salt (salty) and pepper (spice)). Recipes as requested.