Said to be the fifth flavor...Guyanese?
It all started with a bottle of chilli sauce. It was so fiery it makes my eyes water just thinking about it. I had bought it in 2014 from an old woman in Paraitepuy, a Venezuelan village near the base of Monte Roraima. It was the end of a seven-day hike up the table-top mountain, a sacred place for the local Pemon people, from which waterfalls spill over the edge in dizzying vertical drops. The sauce came home with me where it stayed, lurking unused in my kitchen cupboard for the next four years as it was far too hot for my palate.
A couple of years later, I discovered that this sauce was in fact black tucupi, a thick, dark sauce rich in the satisfying savouriness of umami, the so-called “fifth flavour”.
A couple of years later, I discovered that this sauce was in fact black tucupi, a thick, dark sauce rich in the satisfying savouriness of umami, the so-called “fifth flavour”.
