金錢雞

Later that week our Society hosted a dinner to say farewell to the man who used to have a moustache - he was about to retire. I had the chance to take part.

I shall not elaborate what happened that evening here. Suffice to say the menu was selected by the Godfather of medicine and had enough fat and cholesterol to block the aorta. For example, the starter was Gold Coin Chicken (金錢雞).

For those not familiar with Chinese cookery, this very dish has very little to do with chicken; it is actually a three-layer sandwich with no bread. The poor man's version consists of a piece of pig fat (marinated in sugar, wine, and soy sauce for a few days), another piece of lean pork, and a third one of pig liver. A better alternative uses Char Siu (叉燒) rather than lean pork, and chicken liver instead of the pig one. The most sophisticated one uses Yunnan ham (雲腿) as the lean meat, and put a tiny slice of ginger on the top to add to the flavor. But, whatever ingredient you use, these gangs-of-three are piled up like yakitori and barbecued.

You may ask: What's that so special with this tiny cholesterol sandwich?

Gosh, it is an excellent demonstration of food chemistry:

Ham is a rich natural source of glutamic acid. Yes, with sodium, it becomes monosodium glutamate. (Char Siu and simple lean port are, therefore, a cut lower because the protein is not fermented, and the concentration of glutamic acid is much lower.) In fact, ancient Japanese had the wit to call this excellent but poorly defined taste umami (旨味), which is what we now know as 鮮味.

Liver also stimulates our taste buds - by another receptor, via its rich content of inosinic acid and other purine derivatives.

How about that piece of deadly fat? Alas, recent studies just confirmed our taste buds do have specific receptor for fat, or, specifically, long chain fatty acid. (For example, see Gaillard D, et al. FASEB J 2008.)

A triplet of unconventional stimuli to our tongue.