- In the port city of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, there is a museum devoted entirely to noodle soup. It may be Japan's favourite foodie day out: one and a half million ramen fans visit the museum every year, and even on the wintry morning that I went the queue wound 50 yards down the street - young couples, mainly: cold, hungry and excited.
I was reading something about this the other day. The article I read linked a common bacteria prevalent in rice that's kept in a rice cooker to keep warm to the headaches that people experienced. I don't know if I can find the article again, but if I can I'll post it. EDIT: Here it is, under the section "Interview Highlights" I haven't checked this against other sources though. In any case, I've only met one guy who was truly sensitive to the stuff and there was a long list of foods he had to be careful to avoid, much longer than the list posted in the article.
I went out and bought a jar of Aji-No-Moto after reading this, because I remember using MSG years before in homemade stir-fry and what a huge difference it made. My first bottle of the stuff was found in a discount store on a shelf of generic-branded spices, simply labelled "Flavor Enhancer". I picked it up and cackled with glee, like I was subverting the public consensus. The bottle would later disappear, probably tossed by one of my more Woo-oriented housemates. Yesterday I was in a warehouse-club store and noticed enormous 2-lb canisters of Ac'cent on sale, and the label prominently noted that it had less sodium than table salt. Monosodium Glutamate was not anywhere near as prominent on the same label, though. Aji-No-Moto works in some foods, not in others. You also want to make sure you wash your hands after each use, because I must have accidentally got some in a cup of coffee and it made it taste different. Hard to describe. As if the sharpness and bitterness of the coffee had been slurred and smoothed over, but not the way sugar does it. The effect can be good if you're using cheap coffee that comes out too bitter, but this was already a decent quality bean.
Interesting MSG enhanced coffee...mmmm. Who am I to judge though.. I put so much sugar in my coffee it's ridiculous. I love a lot of sugar and a lot of cream. -sacrilege to most connoisseurs. What types of foods does the Aji-No-Moto work best at enhancing?
Soups and most meat-n-veg based dishes that don't have a lot of dairy, which is why it's so popular in stir-fry. Also works when added in moderation to lettuce-free salads. I like to chop up cucumbers and tomatoes and mix them together with whatever else is on hand to make a non-leafy salad, and a dash of MSG does alright. Italian food doesn't seem to need it because it already uses lots of glutamate-rich tomato and cheese. Coffee certainly does not need MSG. If you're trying to find a way to use up some nasty supermarket-brand pre-ground coffee that always brews too bitter, the trick is to sprinkle a couple of "stars" of salt--less than a fraction of a pinch, just a few grains--onto the grounds before brewing. It neutralizes the bitterness and makes it more palatable. MSG has a very similar effect, but because of the glutamate it adds the "umami" that... eah... isn't quite a good match for coffee. Like I said, the coffee thing was an accident.
There must be something wrong with my tongue. I don't particularly find any of those appetizing and actually don't eat many of those listed.Almost all foods have some naturally occurring glutamate in them but the ones with most are obvious: ripe tomatoes, cured meats, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, Bovril and of course Worcester sauce,
More accurate to say that it doesn't have a nice flavour, by itself. In combination with other flavours, it certainly does change the overall. In this way it is somewhat akin to table salt.
That probably explains it. I prefer simple food and don't enjoy intense bursts of flavor. But still, isn't the context of the sentence suppose to mean that those foods are more enjoyable because the higher levels of glutamate that make it more flavorful?
I think the author is writing from the bias that more flavor = more enjoyment, which many people will agree with. There are however, many like yourself who don't find intense flavors to be enjoyable. I would guess that the type of people who would read the Food and Drink section of The Guardian would predominantly be those interested in lots of flavor in their food and so the writer is pandering to them.