New Adventures in Eating

I was back in Georgia for a few days for field work a couple weeks ago, and while the field work can only be described as unpleasantly hot, humid, rainy, sticky, buggy... some of the food was rather revelatory. My field site does not have inexpensive hotels nearby, so that meant we needed to find housing--in the outer suburbs/exurbs of Atlanta. As it happened, we picked an extended stay place in Suwanee, which has a large Asian American population. The nearest grocery store is the Super H Mart, a wonderful Korean grocery. And it is situated in a plaza filled with Asian restaurants--a tofu place, a sushi place, a noodle bar, and so on...

Naturally, this meant I had to explore all these options I could. So, my first night in town, I had some sashimi at the sushi place. I went for dinner early, and it was a Sunday night, and stormy, so the restaurant was quiet. I sat at the sushi bar, the only patron up there initially. Started talking to the sushi chef as he prepared my basic sashimi platter. For the uninitiated--sashimi is the raw sliced fish with no roll, no rice, just good, unadulterated sliced raw fish. This is the one thing you do not order in a crappy sushi place that keeps its fish too long. Well, the plate came with generous portions of flounder, yellowtail, salmon, and tuna. All was good, each showed such uniqueness and freshness in taste--none of that slight fishiness or, God forbid, ammonia, that comes off of subpar fish. As a result, I used very little soy sauce or ginger, and left the wasabi alone--didn't need it, and could better enjoy the fish without it. So, this is very good. But the chef noticed I was appreciating the fish and it so happened the owner was in for his 'special meal', and it allowed him to share a couple slices of another type of flounder with me. Didn't tell me the details, just said, "Try it". It was amazingly briny, seawatery, a bit of iodine, and incredibly firmer than the other piece. in fact, it almost seemed like the piece was trying to "bite back" as I ate it... As it turned out, it was LIVE fish--the fish had just come out of a tank in the store, its heart was still beating. Now, is this a bit macabre? Yes. Tasty? Oh my, yes. What a difference! The texture was, in fact, the muscle tissue still contracting in reaction to such a novel environment. A few minutes later, over comes another few slices--this time, live blackfish. Again, briny, chewier, and thoroughly delightful. I don't know if I'll get another shot at this sort of food in the near future. I hope I do.

My second outlandish food experience was a fruit I've been dying to try, a durian. Now, this is a fruit that is large, 8-10 inches or more in diameter, spiny, tough, dispersed by tigers, native to Southeast Asia... And, did I mention--it smells like rotten meat? (that's one of the least colorful descriptions of this smell--running the gamut from stinky gym socks left for a year in your locker, to "French kissing your dead grandmother".) So, why eat it? Well, for many people, it has an incomparable flavor of mixed fruits, nuts, custard.... I was quite trepidatious about tapping into that thing, with the odor it was giving off, and the reputation. But, as I had two students with me, I had to simply dig in and brave it. And, when I did....

out came the most amazing combination of flavors and scents. Yes, there was the rotten putrid smell; but it was part of an amazing bouquet of banana pudding, creme brulee, custard, almond, hazelnut, macadamias, lychees, all brought together with a slightly fermented note of brandy. And that does NOT do it justice. I really cannot think of another comparably complex food that I've eaten, particularly a completely unadulterated fruit. The complexity and beauty of it all was most reminiscent of a fine, well aged wine... all produced directly by nature, with no real help from humans. One of my students shared my interest in the fruit (or at least pretended); the other was utterly revolted and ran from the room to avoid being ill.. . sad for her, but more for the rest of us... :-)

Sure, there were other good foods--some nice noodles, Korean grilled ribs, kimchi, gyoza, and some rather mediocre barbeque from a chain restaurant near the field site... but none of the rest was that incredibly enlightening.

When living in Georgia, we had previously shopped at Super H Mart, so I knew what to expect. But it's still a shocking panoply of foods... amazing produce in great quality, great price, and amazing selection--8 types of basil, dozens of different chilis, 4 types of bananas, plantains, burdock, banana flowers, lotus roots.... and on and on... Then freezer cases full of meats of all types... 3 kinds of tripe, tendon, bull penis, testicles, pork belly... rabbits, poultry of all kinds--black chickens, pheasants, quail, capon... and a fish case with live fish of many types.... flounder and fluke prepared as you shop, snapper, conch (in shell and out), live crabs, more kinds of shrimp than.... yeah... wow...