Adam wrote on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:58:06 +0000:

>> Elder wrote on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:28:31 -0000:
>>
>>> Yes, seen on the BBC breakfast news this morning, from next
>>> week, people in the UK will be able to buy tubes of Umami
>>> paste like you can with tomato paste and garlic/ginger
>>> paste. --
>> Is this for real? Umami is the fifth sense of taste and is
>> usually increased with MSG. However, I have heard that there
>> is paste made from special mushrooms that is supposed to
>> impart umami. Probably the mushrooms are high on glutamate.

> You can sometimes buy MSG itself retail. (Well, I've seen it
> in Chinese groceries.)

I can and do buy MSG, usually as Japanese Aji-No-Motu, in my Chinese
supermarket. I believe it is made in factories by fermentation of fungi
(possibly) and the process was invented at the beginning of the last
century.

--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not