This is turning out to be a good trip for new foods that I didn't know I liked. Today, we went to a friend's house for dinner, and there were a lot of foods I'd never tried, which is great. Trevino had provided salad, an Indonesian dish that he told me the name of and I'm afraid I've forgotten because it tasted exactly like corriander salsa and so that's what my ignorant little brain remembered, and some other stuff that I really enjoyed. First came the egg soup with sambal oelek, a sauce that makes Texan Hotsauce look like tomato ketchup and as far as I can tell exists largely so that people can laugh at other people trying it for the first time. But it tastes good. It tastes really nice. But that cautious little half teaspoon I put in my soup? It wasn't quite cautious enough.
See? I'm clashing with my hair!
I clashed with my hair. Then we had a range of vegetarian dishes to go with our salads. This did not initially fill me with hope - previous experience with Tofu has been that it's something your vegetarian friends give you because they think you want meat. Vegetarian friends everywhere, as a general rule, I'd rather just have the stuff you normally have. I know you don't live on little white cubes of mush. You eat well. However, this was a different sort of vegetarian food altogether, and it was really, really nice. There were little round tofu things with onion mashed through it, and some tempé. Tempé seems to be a sort of tofu that is, in the immortal words of our host, fermented with fungus. Then it is fried with garlic and ketchup manis, a sort of sweet soy. And it is really, really good. I will now have to find myself an Asian supermarket back home and give it to people. Dessert was a Thai pudding that was made of little green peas boiled in sugared water, which was nice too, although I think I'm less likely to try that at home. I went home full, happy, and wondering what on earth Tempé is called in England.
Any ideas?
