I recently tried Dim Sum for the second and last time. Between the fact that shrimp is in everything and the risk that you might accidentally order tripe or chicken feet, I feel like I can safely say I’m done. It did, however, make me realize Asian food of the Cantonese persuasion is literally the only type of Asian food I want to have nothing to do with, and I seriously love LOVE the rest of what the continent has to offer in the cuisine department. (Not counting India.) The first time I had Cantonese was the first time I had chicken feet floating in my soup, and the second time I accidentally ordered tripe (beef stomach). My last visit to Seattle, which was about a five day trip consisted of seven Asian meals: Thai, Sushi, Vietnamese, Sushi, Dim Sum, Asian Fusion/Flare, and finally Erica’s Thai soup and spring rolls. I also ate stuff other than Asian food, such as Kevin’s awesome chicken wings, a gross burger, baked Brie, and top pot donuts (to name mostly everything else I ate.)
This is all the Asian food in my house. Right Now.
This is just some of the Asian food I love, and why:
Sushi
From left to right, it was: The Best one, Salmon, Scallop, Some other Good one.
When you hear me say “Yeah, I like Japanese food” the translation is actually “I love sushi SO HARD.” This is two fold, I freaking LOVE raw fish and I don’t really eat Teriyaki chicken. I don’t understand why anyone would go for cooked chicken when they could be eating raw fish. I’m just like, “man, I could use some sticky rice and raw fish in my life right about now” and then I just think about it until I can fulfill that desire. I have a favorite roll and favorite sushi place, and they aren’t at the same location. My favorite roll is the Ichiban roll at Ichiban in Baton Rouge. The only reason why I haven’t replaced the roll with another is because I think I just have the fondest memory of this roll. But the point is that you can take raw tuna, avocado, snow crab, crunchy, and eel sauce, and do any variation of that being on the inside or outside of the roll, and you have my new favorite roll at any given sushi place. Ichiban in Baton Rouge did tuna and avocado on the inside, with the crunchy, eel sauce and snow crab on the outside. This place in Idaho did snow crab on the inside and tuna, avocado and eel sauce on the outside. No crunchy, but who really cares. The roll I get each time I go to any sushi place is the spicy tuna roll. This is the same at every sushi place, it’s tuna and spicy. Always. So. Freaking. Good. More recently I’ve come around to the California roll, not because I live in California, but because it’s the only sushi roll that I really trust at Panda Express.
Poke at Mashiko.
My favorite sushi restaurant is probably Mashiko in Seattle. This is simply because as much as I love sushi, I wasn’t overly adventurous about it and this place changed that. I was too paranoid to try raw fish that was not tuna or salmon. I think it was because as much as I loved raw tuna, I worked at a place where I spent a good portion of my work shift fishing out worms from various types of raw white fish. So, the idea of eating them raw was just not something I was wiling to do. Ever. I also didn’t care for rolls that were deep-fried, or ones that included shrimp or soft shelled crab in them, because it just a little too heavy for my taste. Needles to say, Mashiko changed all that. This was because I didn’t have a choice about what I was eating the first time I ate there, because I did the chefs tasting menu. The best thing I had during that 13-course extravaganza was the fifth course, which was just simple sushi. But it wasn’t tuna; it was some kind of white fish. Don’t remember the kind, but I do remember it being delicious. The second time I went, we got the sushi tasting, which was a lot more my speed in the sense that it wasn’t so much raw quall eggs and fried fish spine as it was rolls, sushi, poke and generalized raw awesomeness.
Panda Express and P.F. Changs
Mongolian Beef a.k.a. Nom Nom Nom
As much as I love all Asian food, I’ve learned some things about Chinese food in particular. One is that I can’t hang with the Cantonese side of things, so give me the Mongolian Americanized stuff and I’m happy. I’ll eat it with chopsticks just to prove I’m still hardcore.
I've got mad skillz.
I’ve heard enough people come back from a China vacation or after living there a year and just basically freak out in my general direction about how different everything is over there and how strange the food is, etc., etc. I’m like “I’ve had Dim Sum, so I GET IT.” So, just like going for the spicy tuna roll in the sushi department, I go for the spice when I eat “Chinese food.” Well, that’s a lie. When I eat at P.F. Changs I get the Mongolian beef, when I eat at Panda Express I get whatever spicy beef or chicken they have. I get the panda bowl, which is two or so scoops of rice, and one scoop of the meat. It’s awesome. It lasts for two meals. It’s a constant in my life at SDSU.
Satay
Not sure where I figured out that satay was awesome, or what is meant by “satay” because one part of me thinks it means some kind of meat on a stick, and another part of me thinks it might mean served with peanut sauce and there were no sticks to be found, which happened to me one time. The lazy part of me is too strong to look it up on wikipedia. The majority of the times I have ordered satay, it’s on a stick and comes with peanut sauce. So, let’s say for the sake of this entry that we’re talking about meat on a stick that I can dip in peanut sauce. With that being said, the first time I think I remember trying it was at my Step Uncles wedding, and I was 17 or so at the time. Other memorable satay moments:
- This one time I went with my dad to my favorite Thai place in New Orleans and I ordered my usual “cashew nut chicken” and he ordered beef satay. When the food came out, the server put my dish in front of me and then put some kind of liquid on dad’s meat skewers, put a flame to it and set it down in front of him. The flames were high and dad was looking equal parts confused and worried, not really being prepared to deal with a literal flaming plate of meat. When the fire started going down, dad stated blowing to help it out and eventually the flames subsided, but it left the parts of the skewers sticking out of the meat completely burned and charred, turning to ashes upon touch. Dad had to now figure out how to eat his plate of meat that had sticks in the middle without any visible way to pull them off. He grumpily said the food was good, but that he could have done without the fire.
- The second most memorable satay moment was in Amsterdam with Kevin. The waiter brought out a little satay sampler plate and put it between us. We each had an empty plate in front of us to negotiate our serving. Not sure what we did in the “legal in only Amsterdam substance” department that day, but I do remember I wasn’t so much interested in eating the food as I was in making a figure eight on my plate with the meat and peanut sauce while giggling. Kevin goes “this chicken is juicy” and I just nodded. Two British ladies right next to us start joking around about if they should just leave the money on the table or if they should wait for the waiter who was MIA at that point. This was an outside table, so leaving the money on the table un-attended was not the wisest thing due to all the foot traffic. I look over, and go “I can keep an eye on it for you” then there was just stunned silence and Kevin holding in laughter. I didn’t mean to sound like a sketchy creeper, but it somehow came off that way. We also thought maybe the term “keep an eye on it” didn’t translate very well from American English to British English. The British ladies got awkward and were like ‘noooo thanks’ and then became in even more of a hurry to leave. I went back to my figure eights; Kevin went back to eating. He got food poisoning; I didn’t.
Yellow Curry
This is what the stuff I get looks like. Little red pepper flakes for spice.
I used to think I didn’t like both Curry and Indian food, but that’s because the first time I ate an Indian dish was at the grossest place ever, in Baton Rouge. I went with Pat, my step mom, and then we proceeded to have a four-course curry extravaganza. I remember the choices being like various meats in various curries. They were like ‘in your second dish you choose what kind of meat you want in THIS curry, and for the third you choose what kind of curry you want slathered over THIS meat.” Maybe even they incorporated curry into the dessert. It was… intense. And I still, to this day, have no desire to eat green curry. Which, I should have stuck with because after almost five years I decide to eat green curried mussels at Stone Brewery. I went straight for a “carrot” that turned out to actually be an orange “Thai red pepper” and then I went on a roller coaster ride of intense fucked up pain. I’m… never eating green curry again. That was a large enough sign from the gods.
That was the evil little carrot looking fucker. Stephanie, who was with me at the time, said I handled it with grace. However, internally, I was just trying not to accidentally blow snot bubbles, and/or sob and/or run away screaming.
Red curry is also something I avoid not because I don’t like it, but because often if I have a choice between yellow and red, I’ll pick yellow because YELLOW CURRY IS MY JAM. Most of the time, you walk into a Thai place and your choice is usually like “yellow curry” or “yellow chicken curry.” The most consistent items in this dish are:
- Curry
- Coconut Milk
- Chicken
- Potatoes
Variations may include, but are not limited to:
- Carrots
- Onions
- Bell Peppers
- Pineapple
That last one is usually a surprise, and I’ve only even experienced it at the Thai place near my house in San Diego. The first three times I had the dish I totally forgot about the “pineapple surprise” most of the time I’m just like “nom nom nom WHAT IS THAT SWEET AND SALTY SENSATION” and then I realize it was not a potato, but a pineapple. Fool me once: shame on you, fool me twice: shame on me, fool me three times and I just need to learn what a GD curry covered pineapple looks like and internalize that it will give me a different flavor sensation. And now… I do. Somehow they make it so that there is only one Pineapple piece per serving and now I look at it, go “that is a pineapple” and then I eat it.
Pretty good, even in Curry.
I also love curry chicken soups. These are just a more soupy version of yellow curry dishes, but with lemon grass flavoring and usually the only ingredients in it are mushrooms and chicken. I’ve had them at restaurants, and homemade and they are all excellent excellent excellent. It’s like you know how people say when something weird or bad happens they die a little bit on the inside? If you could imagine the happy version of that, like the rainbows and kitten cuddles side of that. That’s how yellow curry dishes make me feel.
Asian Sauces: Sweet Chili, Thai Peanut, etc, etc
I use to think Asian sauces were gross, but that’s because my first exposure to them was that red stuff that comes with gross egg rolls. I was wrong… so, so wrong. My exposure to delicious sauces opened up when I started eating at the Thai place in New Orleans and continued to expand from there. The sauces they give you at Thai and Vietnamese places tend to be some kind of light sauce, like a dressing of some sort for you to dip your spring rolls in or to dump on your noodle dish. Another good one is the sauce they give with goyza dumplings at sushi places. I like to dip my sushi in that as well because it has more flavors and less salt than soy sauce.
BFF's
I remember the first time I attempted to make some kind of Asian sauce. I was like “these taste so good, I want to do it myself!” so I googled some random recipe for some random sauce and the directions went something like this:
- Get all these weird and nearly impossible to find ingredients all together in one spot.
- Bury ingredient X underground with oil.
- Let sit for one year.
- Mix that with all these other ingredients.
- Let sit on sunny window ledge for another year.
- Serve chilled with spring rolls.
I think maybe I stumbled on one of those intense grandma recipes, but that was enough to send me straight to the grocery store and just hedge my bets on pre-made bottled sauces. I also realized that my aversion to cooking with fish sauce meant that I could never reach the right flavor profiles needed to cook good Asian food. I sort of realized at this point that this was not a genre of food I was going to get culinary mastership over, and I’m pretty OK with that. I ran straight to the store, and discovered some awesomeness called Sweet Chili Sauce. I think one time I drowned some spring rolls in this so much that I got Sweet Chili Sauce stomach, as in: Sugar Rush, Sugar Crash, discomfort. It was totally worth it though.
My Spice rack. There is a suspicious lack of Asian seasonings here, this is no accident.
As far as Peanut sauce is concerned, I’ve loved peanut butter since I was old enough to eat it, so my love for peanut sauce is a given. I mostly enjoy peanut sauce at this one stand at the SDSU farmers market. In which you can get a scoop of white rice, grilled veggies (zucchini, onions and sometimes red bell peppers), and grilled lemon grass chicken topped with your choice of Thai peanut or teriyaki sauce. I knew even before I tried this dish for the first time, that I wanted extra sauce. Lucky for me, the extra sauce made up for what stuck to the top of the container they put it in. More recently, they figured out to put it in a larger to-go container, so that extra .25 cents doesn’t end up smeared at the top of the container, but gets strategically portioned out with each bite, as it should.
The Lemon Grass Chicken: Before
The Lemon Grass Chicken: After
No wait, this is the real After shot.
Ramen
I’m not talking about the .10 cents a package top ramen you get at the supermarket, but ramen at Japanese Ramen houses. I’ve eaten my share of cheap top ramen, but it wasn’t in college, it was in high school. About a week before my first day of high school, my brother sits me down and goes “Amy, I’m thinking about eating this new stuff I discovered called ‘Ramen,’ but making it for breakfast, is that alright? Sound like a good plan?” I tried it, and being a teenager at the time was just like “yum! salty carbs! yumm!!!” so then that was my life the first few weeks of high school. Kevin would wake me up by barging into my room yelling “DOO! GRUB!” (Although, one time I distinctly remember him waking me up by playing a Hansen song. Another time it was a 98 degrees song. I think we thought the “DOO! GRUB!” wake up so so funny, that it turned into a thing.) Now, for some reason we would split one package of noodles between the two of us, and then for an even stranger reason we would sometimes end up with leftovers. We also got rid of all the broth, so the leftovers were just noodles. I think one time we took our shrimp, oriental, and chicken leftover noodles, mixed them together and then tried to convince ourselves that it was enjoyable. It wasn’t. I think shortly after that, we started going to Burger King for breakfast. So, to me this was “Ramen” not the awesomeness that you can find in authentic Japanese Ramen houses.
I’m not kidding when I say that Sacramento, Ca has exactly two redeeming qualities about it:
- It’s within driving distance to cool places like San Francisco and Napa
- It has this Ramen house.
The way I describe this place is: Heaven in a bowl in a really small house/shack where you get greeted in Japanese by the lively workers.
The one that I got the first couple times I went was just the regular ramen in the small or medium bowl. This was:
- Ramen
- One slice of meat, looked like pork
- Green Onions
- Seaweed
- Some kind of weird fish cake thingy that looks like an eraser
- Broth (that I would give up my first born to learn how to make)
See: Meat, noodles, seaweed, erasers, broth. SO GOOD.
One time we went with Sweet D, and her being a 5’2 blond from the Midwest decided she was going to get the super atomic spicy hot ramen. I tasted hers, and it was AWESOME. It was hot, but it wasn’t insane and I could even taste that it had a sort of smoky toasted thing going on with the spice, which was a flavor situation I had never been exposed. So good.
Asian Candy
