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Man Examining Ingredient Bottle While Cooking

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One of the most signature indications of COVID-19 infection is losing your senses of taste and smell. But with the new free cookbook Taste & Flavour, UK chefs Ryan Riley and Kimberley Duke provide recipes that can bring some of that joy back to eating. Hey, maybe it can even help that one coworker who always comes with her bland potato salad to every party, too.

According to an article from US News & World Report, studies show anywhere from 86% to 98% percent of persons who contract the bug temporarily have a diminished ability to smell or taste things, which can have a psychological impact on COVID sufferers. But while its recipes are not a cure for symptoms, Taste & Flavour leans on science to use the sense of touch, incorporate your nervous system, and play with food textures so eating can become pleasurable again.

“We know things like potatoes are really good for that, pasta rice, quite simple flavors,” Riley said in an interview with ABC News. “So then we then use the life kitchen principles, looking at using a lot of umami, which is our fifth taste or soy sauce, mushrooms, parmesan, and trying to add in all of that as the depth and the base that you would originally get from things like garlic and onions to create delicious tasting food.”

The publication is the second one from Duke and Riley through their not-for-profit cooking school, Life Kitchen. Their first book was Life Kitchen, inspired by Riley’s mother and her loss of taste food during her battle with cancer. “Both me and Kimberly lost our mothers to cancer when she was 15, and I was 20,” Riley explained. Last year, Life Kitchen became the number four bestselling book in the UK.

Life & Flavour is available in both hard copy and digital formats, and you only will have to pay for shipping and handling if you want the physical version. But act quickly – quantities of both types are limited and running out fast.