Food is not my normal beat. Usually I write these  funny, quirky little things about Hugo Chavez hate plates and the sad futility of George Michael.  Scroll down for yourself to see my catalogue of  observations. What the Gut rarely offers is an interesting cooking feature. Until now.

 I recently met up with Ken (not his real name), a guy who wanted to show me the pictures of a gourmet  meal in the middle of preparation: "I marinated
it in a cream béchamel sauce with a tomato paste.  Very f*cking nice." It looked like something  right out of the pages of Bon Appétit, America's  Food and Entertaining Magazine. "I still have  another one in the freezer if you'd like it."

No thanks, I told him.

Although it looked delicious, I knew it wasn't Kobe beef, or even liver and onions, but an  actual human kidney taken from a Chinese prisoner  who didn't need it any more because he had been executed.

"It's absolutely no secret that Chinese penal authorities sell organs," says Ken. Until last year, the Chinese Government had denied that organs of executed prisoners were sold to foreigners for transplant. In December 2005, Huang Jiefu, the Deputy Health Minister, acknowledged that the practice was pretty much widespread. In fact, the practice is so ubiquitous in the People's Republic that the normal method of execution - a single bullet to the head or the heart - was replaced in the late 1990s with lethal injection to make the organs usable.

Ken is a tough-as-nails, mischievous ex-member of the British military, and one who prefers to  remain anonymous because "my mates would kill me." His 'mates' were the ones who, as a prank, procured the kidney last month from Chuandung Prison No. 3.

"We prank each other constantly," Ken says.  "Last year, I was sent a coupon for a free colonic irrigation  which I reluctantly accepted."  That's the rule: each prank must be accepted by the pranked. So if someone sends you a human kidney, you better sign for it.

How'd you get this? I asked.

"DHL," he said. "My friend is a doctor, and he ordered the kidney, and had it sent over for £345," which is roughly $700. "The organ sellers knew it couldn't be used for transplant – as did I -   it wasn't suitable for some reason - hence the price was £345 not £20,000, the usual going price for a healthy organ.

"The kidney came 4 weeks later in a huge frozen box, imported as a car battery. We have the documents for import, and they include the routing from Hong Kong." Ken shrugged and drank from his pint of beer.

"Once they showed me I decided to eat the f*cker."

And he did. "It was delicious."

The human kidney caper comes from a long tradition of birthday pranks that a core group of  military servicemen perform on each other. The pranks are designed to test your mettle, if not make you sick to your stomach.  "We have done do-it-yourself nipple, ear- and belly button piercing, usually while drunk," he tells me.  "We've canulated each other with bags of saline, usually when hung over." He laughs.  "For a stag party, we left a mate in Bosnia and he had to extract himself naked with £50 up his ass."

But, by far, the most insidious prank has been the human kidney.

ORGANS-R-US

Ken's friend, the physician who ordered the kidney, also asking to remain anonymous, explains how he did it:  "A month or so before (Ken's) birthday I posted a request on matchingdonors.com/ for an oriental kidney, posing as a US citizen of Chinese origin who needed a kidney transplant. The site matches donors with recipients. I merely waited until I received the inevitable e-mail from China offering to procure a kidney at some cost. This was not until around July. After explaining the situation that I needed a non-working organ for other purposes, the 'donor' explained to me the procedure for procurement in China and that it would be possible."

It appears  that the kidney was extracted and posted quickly.  "It was sent late in August. I do not know the full extent of how it was shipped, but it was done over no more than a couple of days and was kept refrigerated before being packed at the last moment in foam and ice. First the package was posted internally [in China] as a car battery, then routed through Hong Kong. It arrived in a styrofoam box sealed in paper.

"When it arrived, we cut it up with medical scalpels, since it's only right and in keeping with the theme," Ken says. (See the photos that accompany this story.) It took him a few hours to prepare, and he had a lovely dinner.

  "You know that makes you a cannibal," I tell him. It didn't seem to bother him -  in fact it made him smile a bit. "The crime is how easy you  can get an organ from  China,  not that I ate it!" He adds: " I was satisfied the organ could not be used for any other purpose."

Ken passed along some emails to me, showing me how to develop a relationship with the organ sellers. A recent email from a seller reads: "Yes (name redacted), we can if it is for your research. Sometimes when our donors release organs they are not acceptable for transplant and are used in China/HK for students learning doctoring. If you want one let me know, it' is 5100 in Hong Kong dollars for donation, handling and shipping. Pay by money order, I will give you address to send to if you want to go ahead."

And judging from more recent correspondence, they are willing to sell Ken another one, for about $40,000.

"How f*cked up is this," says Ken. "My mates are utter c*nts. They have given the f*cker my email address and now he's hounding me to buy another
kidney. Utter wankers, the lot of them!"

Ken sends me the email, written in a clumsy but polite tone:

"Dear (Ken), I have been contacted by your dear friend (name redacted) who tell me that you too have been suffering with kidney problems. I am glad that you have someone who you can talk to it can be hard if alone you suffer. I can help you in your search for a donor, as I can talk with Chinese official to help you find it. I know in America there are not many donors from China, here we have people who want to make it right for the things they have done wrong and will donate their kidney before they no longer can, so that they can find peace? It is likely I can help you. Please let me know what blood type you have so I can inquire. If successful, we can arrange for you to holiday in a country where very good doctors can put the kidney in you, all for normal US healthcare prices..."

I read it again: "They have done wrong and will donate a kidney before they no longer can."  Apparently, the organs are being harvested for the transplant market well before anyone is  actually executed. It is apparently common knowledge that  there is no waiting list for transplants in China  because the intended recipient is actively matched with the donor while the donor is still alive. The exact number of death row prisoners in China is an official secret, but Amnesty International believes around 3,400 were executed in 2005. At an average of $40,000 an organ, that's big business.

Ken laughs and he suggests we should hook up later to harvest a dinner in Soho.  "And not a f*cking human kidney."