I'm one of those people who tends to find a favorite dish (Pad Priew Wan, in this particular case) and stick with it, but I decided to peruse the menu a bit, expand my horizons, etc. I saw something on new on the menu - a salad with sliced steak on it - that looked interesting. Noting that the menu read "also available with chicken", and also noting that I prefer chicken to beef, I ordered it that way.
About five minutes after we placed our orders, "Mom" came out from the kitchen with a copy of the menu in her hand. She asked if I'd ordered this (pointing at the menu), and I said yes (smiling). Then she said, "But you wanted with chicken?!" I nodded and pointed at the line in the menu where it said "also available with chicken". She gave me a highly-dubious yet polite smile and went back to the kitchen.
This was a bad sign.
I knew it.
But I chose to ignore it.
Anyhow, she brought out our food a bit later, and I found my plate stacked with a salad that was topped with slices of chicken. How bad could it be, right?
It had an oddly pungent quality to it, almost as if it had parmesan cheese on it. Even though I have a helluva cold, it only took me a couple bites to figure out the problem: the salad was drenched in liquid with a LOT of fish sauce in it. Maybe beef could support this intense flavor, but that chicken just wasn't doing the job. Not by a long shot.
If you are unfamiliar with fish sauce, it's basically fermented sardine juice. When I cook with it at home, I use it sparingly and wash my hands after touching the bottle. That stuff lingers.
Fish sauce adds a nice salty flavor when used correctly, but this meal was far from correct. It was like eating a plate full of yeast infection. Extreme nasal congestion was the only thing that got me through enough of that plate to not leave an insulting portion sitting there untouched.
When the fortune cookies showed up, here's what mine said:
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
What shows?
The improvement?
Or that I'm struggling?
1 comments:
holysweetshitzomg couldn't you have said it tasted like a plate full of toilet or something?
June 26, 2009 at 1:54 PMand damnit you totally stole the thunder from my fish sauce post (which will be in the crazy-ass-mother-laws label some day)! well i'm gonna post it (eventually) anyway! fish sauce on that!
exclamation!!!
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