Flavour on the ropes

In the left corner, umami - in the right, MSG

When a person has learned how to make rice-paper wrappers from scratch and to carve a rose out of a tomato, they can get a little above themselves.

These were only two of the tricks I totally nailed at Hoi An’s Red Bridge Cooking school in Central Vietnam, before we ate the lesson.

Hoi An lies inland, a mile from the coast on a river that also provides the historical town with a plentitude of fresh fish. Before the start of the class, Miss Thuan led our motley crew of Western greedies round the morning market, at a sunrise hour I was aching to languish in my bamboo bed. 

On sale inside the covered area that stretched for several muddy blocks was the ocean yield, netted far out to sea. Miss Thuan explained that these fish had been caught the previous day. Fresher fish, from the river and netted throughout that night, were sold outside along the quay. 

Her food tips were handy: “To test squid for freshness, roll body over itself. Hard squid, good. Soft squid, not so fresh.” Small heads of garlic are more pungent than large, it seems. Some tips were less useful for London: “Snakes in your garden? Plant lemongrass.” “Dragonfruit, not so flavoury. But crush with vodka - good.” What isn’t good with vodka.

Back at the school, Huynh Chau, our chef tutor, offered cooking advice with a charming turn of phrase. “Do not eat MonoSodiumGlutamate. You get kiwlled. Truss me.”

But I’m not sure I do. 

Glutamate is an amino acid found variously in human breast milk, several fruits and vegetables, Parmesan cheese, and other common sources. Kikunae Ikeda, chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo, created MSG in 1908 by isolating the natural glutamate from kombu seaweed and adding sodium salt from glutamic acid to create a salt that enhances flavour.

Yet when applied to food (Chinese food, in the main), MSG is claimed to cause headaches, numbness, asthma, even brain damage. 

In early studies to test its dangers, it was found that injecting huge doses of MSG into newborn mice did cause harmful neurological effects. Now, though, it’s been established that baby mice are especially sensitive to MSG. 

On the other hand, a mature mouse or rat needs a dose as high as 15-18 grams per kilogram of body weight before it risks dying from glutamate poisoning. Most people only get around 0.55 grams per day of MSG in their diet. 

Some people could respond badly to more than 3 grams of MSG - if it’s taken without food or water. But that’s not the manner in which it’s consumed. 

We’re still anti MSG. Yet fashion-zealots that we are, we’re really excited by ‘umami’, that savoury addition to the basic tastes of salty, sour, bitter, and sweet. 

And what is ‘umami’? It’s a natural glutamate. Remember glutamate? See far above. (This is a bit like a food version of Wagner’s The Ring Cycle…) It was Kikunae Ikeda (remember him?), who extracted it from seaweed and developed it into MSG. 

Umami and MSG both use the same molecule to activate our taste receptors. So are pretty much the same thing, though one natural and the other contrived - the Botox face of food.

Thinking it could be time to give MSG a break, I was curious to see what it might do to my cooking. This time of year being, in my view, prime Sausage Roll time, I subjected them to an ‘umami’ taste test, using MSG bought from my local Chinese supermarket to replace salt in this recipe. 

It absolutely pumped up their porkiness, and no-one suffered palpitations.

Our Minister For Bungling Covid Control should consider including sausage rolls alongside Scotch Eggs in the list of food that turns pubs into restaurants - if we’re ever let loose to eat out again.

Make them either in substantial pub-lunch size, or in self-isolation ‘At Home’ cocktail bites for Zoom parties, and reduce prepping palpitations by using a good brand of ready-made pastry.

2 ready-made sheets of puff pastry
600g/1lb 5 ounces pork sausagemeat
200g/7 ounces smoked streaky bacon, rind removed, finely chopped
½ teaspoon MSG - or salt, if you prefer
Zest of 1 large scrubbed lemon
Copious gratings of nutmeg and grindings of white pepper
2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon dried sage
1 egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F.

Dump everything into a large bowl and squidge well with your hands. 

Roll out the pastry on a floured surface to about a thickness of roughly 1/4cm/1/8in, and cut in half lengthways. Divide the meat into 4 and roll it between your wet palms to almost the length of your pastry, and place each sausage a little off-centre on each strip.

Paint one edge of the pastry with beaten egg and then bring the other side over to cover the sausagemeat. Seal by pressing gently with a fingertip then pressing the back of a fork along the seam. Paint with more egg, cut into the size you want, and prick each sausage roll with a fork. Repeat with the remainder.

Set the rolls on a greased baking tray and bake for 20 minutes or until gold. Cool on a rack and eat warm.