Submitted by a customer to info@ooohmami.com.

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 lbs chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
3 1/4 cups OoohMami Broth (I used 2 tablespoons for 4 cups of water)
1 box whole wheat medium shell pasta
Salt & Pepper

Heat the oil in a heavy large nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until tender. Add the garlic and sauté for just a minute. Add the cubed chicken and cook through. Add squash, rosemary and sauté for 8 to 10 minutes. Add the broth and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Decrease the heat to medium-low and simmer until the squash is tender and the liquid is reduced by about half, stirring occasionally. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring often. Drain pasta.
Toss the pasta and squash mixture in a large bowl until the liquid thickens slightly and coats the pasta.

On Saturday February, 13th the Louisville Courier Journal published an article on Ooohmami! written by local author Nancy Miller.

Chef creates ‘yummy’ flavor booster

After Rachel Colvin left Artemisia as pastry chef, she opened Dolce, where she makes desserts and breads for restaurants and deli foods for Rainbow Blossom. She also got married and changed her name to Torres, and attended a food-science class at a Women Chefs and Restaurateurs National Conference.

It was there that she had one of those ah ha! moments, and learned about umami. Her discovery led her to launch a new product and to start spewing words such as “glutomatic nucleotides” with enthusiasm.

If you thought there were only four tastes — sweet, sour, salt and bitter — Torres will set you straight with zeal. Umami, which means savoriness (and loosely translates to “yummy” in Japanese), is now considered the fifth taste.

Umami can be found in MSG and several artificial additives. Because Torres eschews the use of chemicals, she began testing and tasting natural ingredients to create her own umami product.

“I found a synergistic combination, my own blend of dried kombu, which is a kind of seaweed, shiitake mushrooms, tomatoes and nutritional yeast,” she said. “It brings out intense flavors without the use of any animal or synthetic products and adds incredible taste to a wide range of foods, especially enhancing vegetarian dishes. It’s an exciting addition to a cook’s flavor toolbox.”

Mix 1 tablespoon of her Ooohmami! flavor enhancer, 1 teaspoon of salt and 4 cups of hot water for a delicious vegetable stock, Torres suggests. She also adds the powdered mixture to meatballs, sausage, veggie burgers, practically anything that needs a boost of flavor.

Ooohmami! is available at Rainbow Blossom, Lotsa Pasta, Paul’s Fruit Market, Amazing Grace and Foxhollow Farm. It’s $8.99 for 4.5 ounces.

Louisville Business Releases Umami Flavor Enhancer

(Monday, June 01, 2009) Louisville, KY – Dolce, LLC, based in downtown Louisville, has released a new umami flavor enhancer and soup stock base called, Ooohmami!™. Dolce owner, Rachel Colvin Torres, hopes to use this new product to expand into the global marketplace.

Ooohmami!™ is a unique blend of all natural vegetable and nutritional ingredients that evoke the fifth taste called, umami: savory and meaty flavor sensations found most commonly in mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, and grilled meat. Ooohmami!™ utilizes synergistic combinations of organic shittake mushrooms, organic kombu (kelp), nutritional yeast, and organic tomatoes to bring out this flavor without the use of any animal or synthetic products.  Ooohmami!™  is a perfect substitute for monosodium glutamate for cooks looking for a flavor/savory boost. It is also a perfect substitute for chicken stock, helping cooks easily create soups and enhance flavors.  Each 4.5 ounce bag makes 85 cups of soup.

Owner and Executive Chef, Rachel Colvin Torres, learned about umami while studying synergistic glutamate compounds at the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs National Conference in Atlanta in November 2006.  She has been working on prototypes for over three years and has finalized both packaging and ingredient details to sell Ooohmami!™ in a variety of retail outlets in addition to the online store at www.ooohmami.com.

Dolce was formerly a single employee operation with a primary focus on selling desserts and baked goods to Louisville’s fine dining establishments. The operation has recently expanded to create nutrient dense deli items to local health food stores in addition to the production of Ooohmami!™ soup base and flavor enhancer.

Please contact marketing and sales director Adam Colvin at:
info@ooohmami.com for more information.