This
lunch is made from some of the extra from my July 4th
feast. Being that I'm an American, and July 4th is USA's
birthday, more or less, I cooked my traditional celebratory
repast: Fish and chips,
just as I'd eaten them in England. Ahhh, deep-fried,
greasy food, mmmm! I did cheat on the fries, however
- they're baked instead
of fried because by that point I'd had enough of hot
oil. That turned out to be a good move, as I no longer
have the tolerance for fried food that I used to. A
little goes a long way.
With this is some steamed
broccoli, because I had to stick
something healthy in this box, and a piece of
Bánh in sâu* riêng, which is Vietnamese
durian cake. Durian is an interesting fruit. They are
huge, basketball-sized, weirdly-shaped, spiky, unfriendly-looking
things, and when ripe they smell... bad. Really bad.
99 Ranch Market sells them in the frozen foods department
so they can't ripen and chase everyone out of the store
with their stench. I've been curious about them, and
as an anosmic** I could deal with it, but I don't want
my neighbors calling 911. The cake seemed like a good
way to sample the fruit without the stinkiness. And...
well, it's distinctive. It's hard and crumbly, not at
all spongelike or cakey. And it tastes as if the baker
had previously been mixing garlic, and hadn't cleaned
the bowl before starting this. Which is, I understood,
how the actual fruit tastes. Hmm... I'll go out on a
limb and say that durian is probably an acquired taste.
* Sorry, can't find a way to get both
the ^ and ` accents above the A. ** Person with (almost)
no sense of smell
Wanna talk
about it?
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