Let's be clear about this, I am curry’s number one fan. It is rare that I sample a curry that I don’t like. I love them hot, spicy, smokey, sweet, sour, thick, thin, cheesy, and just about everything in between. I even carried home 40+ packs of pre-made, thai curry mix from my last visit. Consequently, I was elated when I kept running across food stalls with nothing but vats of various renditions of curry. Sounds like heaven, right?
Experience Number One:
My first sampling started well enough. I pointed at a yellow-green mixture that appeared to have two varieties of eggplant, substantial greens, a few onions, and only a hint of oil floating on the top. It seemed vegetarian-esq and healthy enough. I ordered a bowl full. The first sign that something was not quite right was a particular odor that emanated from my dinnerware. It was musty, unfamiliar, but undoubtedly of the flesh... the kind of odor associated with organs. Oh, no. I looked into my bowl, did a bit of prodding, and came to the conclusion that the white-ish, purple, marbled masses I presumed to be eggplant were, in fact, liver. Eek. I couldn’t just walk away from a freshly served bowl of curry since I was sitting in the vendors stall. Damn my avoidance of plastic take-out containers. Knowing I had no other polite option, I mustered my newly discovered iron stomach and picked around the liver, being careful to eat only the curried pieces I could identify as vegetable. I was left with an impolite amount of meat in my bowl. Luckily, the food stall owner was feeding the local dogs with her scraps... I disposed of my untouched liver bits directly into the mouth of a clearly malnourished stray. I didn’t even feel bad about not eating it. I walked away and made a mental note not to trust similarly colored mystery ingredients in the future. Lesson learned.
Experience Number Two
I had street-noodle varietals for lunch for 3 days in a row. All were tasty, filling, and filled with ingredients I could identify.... but a fourth rendition just didn’t appeal. So, I hunted down a curry cart near my apartment to add a bit of variety to my lunchtime repertoire. Keeping in mind my first experience I steered clear of anything with possible liver chucks. I selected a red curry that had bell peppers, carrots, sprouts, and small bits of meat. The cart lady dished up a heaping portion and even fished for bits from the bottom of the pan... ‘how kind’, I thought. The curry itself was quite spicy, enough to inspire moisture on my brow. I cooled it with bits of stick rice and a cool glass of water. I was about halfway through my plate when I encountered a large piece of fat... presumably the item she fished from the pot’s depths. ‘Umm’, I thought, ‘avoiding that.’ I made a motion to pull it to the side of my bowl so I could access the rice beneath it. In flipping it over I revealed thick, black, bristly hair on the underside. Instant gag induction. ‘Crap, crap, crap... this is NOT good,’ the last thing I needed to do was purge onto the table in front of the local motorbike taxi gang, the 7/11 owner, and the kind curry lady. That would work wonders for my reputation in the neighborhood.
So, I did the only sensible thing I knew how. I pushed the bowl away as calmly as possible, paid for my meal as though I had an appointment (little did she know it was with my bathroom), and darted across the street to my apartment complex. I skipped the elevator and dashed up the stairs to my 6th floor abode, my repulsion growing with each flight. I darted into the safety of my bathroom and lost it: the lunch, any remnants of breakfast, and my tolerance for mystery curry as a whole. After my purge session (for those of you who don’t know... puking is, by far, one of my least favorite activities in the world... right above breaking limbs and undergoing torture) I decided that my adventuresome eating would no longer include curry. No way, no how was I subjecting myself to that again. I detoxed for the rest of the day and into most of the next on fresh fruit and juices. That hunk of hairy fat still gives me the heeblies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment