asian food

So this is a major point of contention for me - Asian food. Or rather, what Texans deem 'chinese food'. After two painful trips to said 'excellent' chinese restaurants I've had to start making excuses just to weasel myself out of these lunch outings.

It's rather intriguing actually, how a whole culture of excellent food variety becomes reduced to this. Bastardized spellings. Heavy handed salt and sugar. And an overload of peppers and broccolli (I'm pretty sure back home I've never seen brocolli used so often in dishes). I can't eat it. Overcooked rice, sauce that tasted like they dumped the entire stash of condiments in a pot and stirred it blind... But the funny thing is, americans love it. And so every time the whole team troops out to that most disgusting place, I stay in or run to the nearest fast food joint. Because, yes, even MacDonalds is better than the farce they serve in that restaurant. In any case I expect I'll be extremely horrid lunch company since I wouldn't be able to stop myself from critiquing the food at every turn. Best for all parties involved to leave before it gets ugly, as they say.

I think asian food is all about the flavour. Japanese food tends to concentrate on the natural taste of ingredients. Chinese on the other hand, depending on where you come from, can range from the bland to the extremely flavourful. But there's this je ne sais quoi in the mix of ingredients. Everything's recognizable. But it all comes together in this excellent melding of separate condiments and ingredients to make something truly tasty. Unfortunately, the subtle play of flavours tends to get lost in translation. Moo shu pork tastes like General Tso's chicken which could probably taste like Egg Fuyong. It's almost as if the stores here take one sauce and dump it over every dishes, varying slightly in vegetables or meat so it appears as if you're eating something different. And it seems the average american consumer doesn't really have a problem with that. Might this be a type of arrogance? That authentic chinese food is just not edible until it's translated to american 'sensibilities'? Perhaps this is why 'american-chinese' food exists now. And it upsets me when people eat this and proclaim it the 'best chinese food' ever. I think it's a tragedy they will never know what truly is the 'best chinese food'.

And perhaps the most blasphemous are the set lunch menus. I find it extremely stupid, and not to mention just plain WRONG that a plate of fried noodles could be served for lunch together with the usual deal of rice, spring roll, and soup. Fried noodles = main dish on its own. I'm not sure one would need rice in addition to that. And this is what i mean by total misinterpretation. I don' think i know any asian dishes which serve noodles with the rice in one whole SET as a lunch offer. You'd eat the meat or tofu things with rice as an accompaniment, but you would hardly do the same with noodles would you? It's like serving a side of plain pasta together with a plate of lasagne. And even now, after seeing it on so many menues, I still can't seem to get my head around it. Weird.

the bombastic inaugural post

So. New year, new blog, in all its tacky, self-important glory. This blog will be about food. Predominantly. And pretentious, of course. Because hey, I'm a snob. I like my food authentic. If it ain't pure, I ain't eating it. Which is of course, a pretentious statement in itself since I have enjoyed new-fangled fusion fare before. I just pretend I don't. And pretentious because even though I proclaim that I'm a conoisseur, I do not know half the terms that Anthony Bourdain rattle off in his shows. I've not eaten half the things he has. Nonetheless one can always aspire to great things, and perhaps in this blog I will occasionally try too hard and end up with some badly written farce.

Or on other days, I will talk about the mediocre cooking attempts as I try to tough it out in what I call a foodie desert (*ahem*Houston*ahem*). Perhaps I will pick at the meagre pickings in interesting/good cuisine. Occassionally I will gripe about the appalling standard of Asian cuisine here because any southeast asian who knows his/her salt will tell you that asian cuisine has depth and is not just Chinese or Japanese etc. There are variations. There are subtleties. And it matters. Or maybe I'm just homesick.

So, what would it be tomorrow?