We just watched “Supersize Me” with the fellows tonight, which has left me feeling…queasy. But also reminded me of my awesome food adventures in Saigon this past weekend.
We went up to Saigon for the weekend to see an art exhibit that one of Eric’s friends was taking part in. The exhibit was on Saturday evening, and after the show I went out with Bich, Will, and Michelle to meet Bich’s friend at a restaurant in District 1. This restaurant is famous for its “bo tung xeo,” a type of grilled marinated beef that you cook on the fire at your table. We decided on the beef, obviously, and then Bich’s friend from Germany decided that we should order two more of the restaurant’s exotic delicacies: (DAMNIT, DAMNIT, AT THIS VERY MOMENT ANOTHER DAMN COCKROACH HAS CRAWLED PRACTICALLY OVER MY FOOT AND UNDER MY DESK!! WHEN WILL IT END!?!?!)
The two new exotic delicacies that they decided to order were crocodile meat and kangaroo meat, both of which we grilled using a similar method as the beef. (pause again while Lillian sweeps the cockroach out of the room with a broom. damn these vegetarian buddhists living here now and their influential ideas about not killing anything…)The kangaroo was similar to a more rich beef, and was delicious. The crocodile, not so much. It looked like fish before it was grilled, but turned into a jerky-like consistency after grilling. Not my favorite.
As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday’s home-cooked meal (apparently a tradition at Chris’ house, which I’ve been privileged to take part in the past two weeks in a row) consisted of shish-kebab. This means grilled meat, thin slices that we wrapped around onions and put onto skewers. This I could handle, as I’ve become quite accumstomed to the preparation of raw meat. The thing I couldn’t handle, however, was the shrimp. We had bought a kilo of large live shrimp at the market, and I had had to carry the triple-bagged suckers home on the motorbike, them squirming all the way. I was told that we had to skewer these shrimps, LIVE through the butt-end and out of the head, and then grill them. Oh, HELL NO, I said. I will not skewer live shrimp. That is my line. So, instead they gave me a shrimp that had already died to skewer. This I could handle, I said. No sooner had I begun to insert the skewer into the shrimps tail, when the little bugger started writhing under the anal pressure. He was certainly NOT dead, and I screamed and dropped him onto the floor. Everyone laughed, and someone finished skewering him for me. Wow, but they were so delicious!
