the role of glutamate crystals in deliciousness

at the american table, lunch was a pizza of roasted mushrooms, parmesan, spinach, and a white cream sauce, some field greens with a balsamic vinaigrette, and a creamy sweet corn and crab bisque garnished with garlic shrimp and truffle oil. on the way out, i picked up a reconstructed s'more: a house-made graham cracker smeared with a bitter chocolate ganache and topped with a small piping of marshmallow fluff that had thereafter been thoughtfully bruleed. the pizza was thin and chewy-crusted, and the mushrooms, sauce, spinach, and parmesan came together beautifully. the parmesan was the unidentifiable element that made the pizza noble, adding the rich savouriness that you also get from seaweed, miso, tomatoes, some of the hard, proteinaceous cheeses, and MSG. the reason for this is glutamate, and parmigiano reggiano (the good stuff anyway, that comes in big wedges with the originating producer's code number printed on the outside in dot-matrix) is so full of it that it forms into long, needly crystals. you'll also have noticed these in pecorino romano. these are long, needly crystals of deliciousness. but i digress, for the reconstructed s'more was also marvellous, and the crab and corn soup remarkable (there was brandy in there, and a smoky kick from perhaps a roasted poblano or some such).

at dinner, the chefs at no name served up a panoply of delights. it was one of those fridays when all the flavours came together: muffuletta sandwiches, tube pasta in a roasted pepper cream sauce, carved turkey, smoked sturgeon. all these were john the chef's brainchildren, and they show traces of the six years he spent in new orleans before coming to cook for us. the turkey had been injected (using an enormous, 2 foot long syringe) in multiple places with cranberry juice, leaving the breast meat striped with rosy bands and juicy. the food infrastructure here in mountain view also includes a hot smoker, hence the slab of flaky, hot-smoked, caraway crusted sturgeon, sliced finger-wide and served with creme fraiche. and then, back at the desk, there was, in a small cup, a baked white peach filled with a maple-pomegranate reduction, whole roasted unsalted pistachios, and mint.