Personal growth

Here it is, only the 2nd day of 2006, and I'm already taking a firm step to confront my fears. I bet none of you are making such headway with new year's resolutions!

Today's fear to be tackled is fish-sauce-phobia. I developed this fear a few years ago when I tried making a Green Papaya Salad. I think I made a few mistakes then. In retrospect, the occurence of both fish sauce and dried shrimp in the recipe should have raised alarm bells galore, but I was driven by memories of the Green Papaya Salad Geetha rhapsodized about at the Thai Temple in Berkeley, so I blithely bought (to the best of my grocery stores' abilities) and assembled the ingredients. I figured I would have a difficult time finding some of the ingredients (like dried shrimp) so I got the extremely Asian things from the Asian store in town. This was probably my big mistake (after recipe choice). This store had several fish sauces to offer. None of them were the naam pla specified by the recipe, and there were definitely none labeled "Fish sauce for whities", which I think would probably be perfect for me. So I randomly chose one.

Oh boy, did I not choose well! It smelled like Napoleon's food, and was thick and gooey and had separated into layers of different viscosities. But I was still unconcerned. In general, all of the online recipe reviews I've read exclaim on how noxious straight fish sauce is, but how essential it is to tying the flavors of a dish together and how undisgusting (even delicious) the final product is. My final product was not undisgusting. In fact, it was very much disgusting! I blamed the fish sauce. Cassie tryed to boost my morale by saying the salad wasn't too bad and that she might eat it as a garnish on fish or something. Several weeks later, it was still untouched in the refrigerator, so I chucked it to liberate the tupperware (which was then washed in vast quantities of scaldingly hot water and left to air for some time).

I've been terrified of fish sauce ever since. It has really been a crippling fear since SO MANY Thai-esque recipes require it, and I cook a lot of Asian (inspired) dishes (they're just so well suited to tofu).

But I decided this week to take the plunge and try cooking with fish sauce again, though I will definitely be using a different fish sauce. Since there still seems to be no "Fish Sauce for Whities" brand, I bought my fish sauce in the Asian section of my local whitey grocery store (which also didn't have any labeled as naam pla, but I'm hoping that's just an oversight on the part of the bottles). Hopefully this will solve my problem, overcome my fear. I went grocery shopping today, and I really think this fish sauce is a winner. There's no disgusting scum or stratification. It's entirely liquid, and a rather becoming transparent reddish color besides. Furthermore, the bottle guarantees that it is entirely "extra-virgin". Wow. Extra-virgin fish sauce (or e.v.f.s. as Rachel Ray would say in her most annoying way). Who even knew that there was such a thing? My previous, disgusting fish sauce definitely didn't say anything about virginity. (Unless it was one of the many things written so elegantly in Chinese or Thai or whatever writing system it was (we tossed the bottle, and I can no longer remember).) Maybe that was the real problem. Maybe it was extra-slutty fish sauce.

So tonight I'll inaugurate my new stir fry skillet (thank you Santa Jenny!) with a Thai stir fry containing fish sauce. Everyone cross your fingers for me, because I'll be stuck eating it (the stir fry, not the skillet) for the rest of the week!

The moral of this story: Definitely stay away from the extra-slutty fish sauce.