Appears in
Fusion: A Culinary Journey

By Peter Gordon

Published 2010

  • About

I am a huge fan of the soy bean’s various guises, from the delicate subtlety of freshly made silken tofu, through to the rich saltiness of miso and the crunch and freshness of edamame (fresh soy beans). I drink soy milk more than I do regular cow’s milk, and I get annoyed with myself if I’ve run out of tamari (a wheat-free soy sauce, generally made by smaller producers) at home as I think it really does add a wonderful edge to food, especially stews and braises - fermented soy products are credited with being high in the Japanese fifth flavour sensation they call umami. When I was growing up the only soy product we knowingly ate was Chinese soy sauce, usually very dark, salty and quite bitter. However, what my family didn’t know, as food labelling laws were quite different then, is that soy is used in many processed foods, just like maize and corn, and so we were probably eating it unwittingly in ice cream and margarine, amongst other things, and it’s likely that the soap we bathed with may have contained it as soy bean-based oils are prolific in food and commercial usage throughout the Western world.