WHY DOES THE WATER TASTE STRANGE

The Hot Pot

This unplanned post was inspired by last night's events. When even drinking water tastes funny you know that something is up.

Joanna and I have been hosting a Taiwanese student for the past three months. Una is real fun, easy going and happy. And her bubbly personality becomes truly exuberant whenever anyone brings up the subject of food or cooking. And she is not alone with her love of food, her friends from her home country and China would hover around the kitchen every time when we prepare dinner. They sniff around like dogs, lifting the lids of pots and pans in order to peek under, spying what is cooking.

One of our friends came up with the theory that eating and cooking in the Eastern cultures take first place in the hierarchy of important activities. Not like in the West where the number one spot on the same scale is indisputably held by sex. This theory seems to contradict the facts; since books like Kama Sutra and tales like The Thousand and One Night are all products of the Eastern World. Clearly the tales of the Brothers Grimm, while containing plenty of sexuality, do not measure up to the advice of the Kama Sutra. I myself do not claim to be the judge in this important debate, but I can say with certainty, that food is important in the Orient.

Cook #2

Cook #1

Una told us about her favorite foods; stinky tofu, thousand year old eggs and the “hot pot”. All sounded very appetizing but not available. While I was traveling in Houston and only feasting on sushi, authentic Mexican and Turkish food, the women in my house sneakily arranged a Chinese dinner. Una and her friends bought all kinds of things at the Asian market, which we have seen before there but never dared to buy. Not because we did not want to try them but because we did not have the slightest clue what they were let alone how to prepare them. So I missed out on the first Chinese meal and in my desperation had to stuff down even more sushi than I originally planned. 

                                                 Our first dinner (some of the dishes)

The Hot Pot Cooks

But things turned for the better. This past Saturday we had a spontaneous potluck type of dinner and we lucked out when a Korean girl brought some delicious “I-don’t-remember- what-was-it-called” dishes. When asked if there was any fish in them, she said, “no, only anchovies”.

Ingredients

and more...

And then yesterday we were able to top all of that. Una will move out at the end of the month and her new roommate is here visiting for a week from California. Apparently the commercials in Taiwan are different then in the US.  While here you cannot leave home without your American Express card, there you can’t leave without your hot pot cooking equipment. So she came, all the way from Taiwan, via Iowa with a short stop in California, never leaving her trusty hot pot behind. I thought of myself as one who knows his Chinese food, but I admit, I was so, so wrong. I knew nothing about :火鍋; pinyin: huǒ guō, which is of course Chinese for hot pot. For those of you who want to dwell on the definition of hot pot check it out on Wikipedia (I could not link it).

Dessert - Japanese Sesame Pudding

For the less curious, I will explain. It is sort of a Chinese fondue, but the pot is divided into two. One part contains a spicy hot “soup” the other a mild “soup”. You dip different veggies into the boiling soup; mushrooms, broccoli, lettuce, lotus roots, sea weed, etc. For seafood lovers there are; shrimp, crab, octopus, etc. And of course meat; pork and thinly sliced best quality beef. And of course there must have been a million other things I forgot to mention! But it was all delicious. When it is cooked, which only takes a couple of minutes, you put it into the sauce that you already have in your bowl, containing plenty of green onion and garlic and some red sauce out of a jar earlier bought in the Asian market.

Cooks and friend

I love hot food especially if it does not only burn your mouth but when it brings out all the hidden flavors of the food you eat. This was the case last night, with one added caveat. When you drink water to sooth some of the still pleasant burning sensation in your mouth, the water tastes funny. It tastes sour, it tastes like something is wrong. We kept bringing in several freshly screened jars of water before we realized that the water was fine, it was our taste buds that played with us, I guess it was not an optical but a “tastical illusion”. And the girls were laughing at us: “You should have drunk beer!” we were told.