Three Food Stories

Mandarins

When I was in Vietnam a shop keeper gave me a tasty little fruit which I have been seeking ever since. Only upon arriving in Cambodia did some one call it a name I recognized. This is a mandarin which I have only had in little cans from Goya when it is on sale at Walgreeens 3 for a dollar. There is so little similarity between the taste of fresh and canned that I had not made the connection. It is kind of like the difference between canned and fresh asparagus. I wonder if Florida grows mandarins. If so I have never seen them.

Running Amok

Yesterday I took a cooking class at Temple Bar which is really more restaurant than bar, but a very popular tourist spot with good food, pool tables, a nightly Aspara dance show and also cooking school. If I have not stressed it before, Cambodian food is the best I know in Asia and I hope that I learned enough to recreate a few Khmer dishes in my own kitchen.

I was able to select three items from a list so I chose green mango salad because it sounds good, green pea desert because it sounds intriguing and amok because it is one of the best things I have ever eaten, moving into my top three foods ever, the other two being my sister Eve's ratatouille and my Argentine friend Monada's lasagna. The mango salad was mostly a matter of chopping (julianne) mango, carrot, onion and basil. The sauce is made of fish sauce, palm sugar, white sugar, salt chili, garlic and lime. The green pea desert is a soup ("Soup for desert?", you may ask.) The amok is made with coconut cream, fish, chicken or beef, eggs,onion, shallot and yummy spices. If anyone cares to take a chance on how I can cook this when I get home, let me know. I will need guinea pigs.

Dixie, Georgia

How does Dixie figure into one of my 3 food stories from Asia? A few weeks ago I was in Surin, Thailand, for their annual elephant roundup. During my afternoon siesta one day I was flipping through channels on the TV seeking something in English. I had a choice of tennis, football (theirs, not ours) or the Asian Food Network. I alternated between tennis and food until I was captured by a voice I heard on the Asian Food Network. Someone was speaking South Georgia English!!!!!!!! Completely on the opposite side of the world there on television was a TV chef named Lynn Crawford doing a show on barbeque from Dixie. My thoughts were how bizarre is this and what a small world. I enjoyed hearing some "non accented" English and I was as a little nostalgic seeing a place so close to home.