Sating the Umami craving

The summer rolls on. The house tank is now under a third full, we haven’t had any rain in Jamieson since before Christmas. The sun has burned the grass to a straw colour. The temperature has been sitting in the thirties for weeks. In the afternoon the birds seem dazed, wandering around with their beaks open as if they were panting like my dog, who spends the days lying in the courtyard, prostrate on the cool terra-cotta tiles beneath the grape vines.

For some reason last night I came down with an insatiable craving for Umami, the so called  fifth flavour (after sweet, sour, bitter and salty). Umami was enjoyed by the Romans, who used their Garum (fermented fish sauce) to add Umami and salt to thier dishes, and given its pungent odour, imposed strict sanctions under law against the indiscriminate placement of Gurum factories. Escoffier was famous for his use of Umami, although he was conscious of the flavour, but not the science.  Kaiser Wilhelm was reputed to have once said to Escoffier, “I am the Emperor of Germany, but you are the Emperor of Chefs.”  But I digress gentle reader.

In 1866, a German chemist named Karl Heinrich Leopold Ritthausen uncovered Glutamic acid. In 1908 Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese chemist discovered the component that produces the flavour of seaweed, tomatoes and meat, which was glutamate.  He detected the chemical root, named the taste sensation Umami and patented Monosodium Glutamate. Yes, good old magic powder, MSG. Business boomed, and the resulting commercial empire, the Ajinomoto Co. today produces 33% of the worlds MSG.  As a sideline they acquired the rights to Aspartame from Monsanto in 2000 for $67,000,000. The company is active in 100 countries, employs nearly 25,000 people and earns around $9 Billion per anum.

Soon after Ikeda uncovered glutamate, a student of his, Professor Shintaro Kidama was fiddling around with dried bonito and uncovered another umami chemical, the ribonucleotide IMP. The great leap forward came in 1957, when Akira Kuninaka discovered  another ribonucleotide, GMP in shitake mushrooms. He studied the synergy between IMP, GMP and MSG and came up with TASTY.  It was basically a scientific explanation as to why some things taste so good when combined. For example Parmesan with Tomato, tomato sauce with beef, the classic mirepoix with beef stock, dashi, swiss gruyere with beef stock in french onion soup, anchovies with parmesan in Caesar salad. The list goes on and on.

Why I had such a craving for umami is more complex. Other cravings are easier to explain. For example, humans are hardwired to crave sugar, which along with other carbs stimulates the release of the feel good brain chemical seratonin. Salt carvings are curiously often caused by dehydration, not drinking enough, or perhaps too much…Sodium aids the body in fluid retention. Psychologist and author of “The Shangri La Diet”  Seth Roberts, who is also an obsessive blogger http://blog.sethroberts.net , reckons that Umami is the minds way of healing the body. He hypothesises that our bodies naturally crave umami in order to tricking us into eating bacteria -that we need regular immune stimulation to be in optimal health and long ago, when we evolved, we got that stimulation from bacteria in our food.

Whatever it was I went into overdrive in the kitchen, and last night as the cool air flowed down the valley extinguishing the heat of the day we dined on Portugese Grilled Chicken, a chili tomato and roast capsicum salad and a white anchovy and white bean salad.

Quick Grilled Portugese Chicken Recipe