Anger Burger

Do you ever catch yourself saying that you were a ____ in another life?  A Mexican?  Italian?  And just because you find the food delicious?

I’m pretty certain I was Polynesian in another life, though not just because I love Spam (more on that at a later date) but that’s another story.  Food-wise, I’m sure I was Korean in another life, and Chinese before that one, and Japanese before that one, and Vietnamese before that one.

Mostly, though, it’s that most Asian foods agree with my digestive system.  They tend to be lighter in fiber and have a variety of probiotic elements like miso and fermented vegetables.  A proper Asian meal of virtually any provenance almost never sends me packing in a gut-clenching Crohn’s 100-Yard Dash, which still somehow does not translate to me actually cooking like that at home.

I mean, I eat a lot of rice and as we should know by now I eat a lot of pickles, but there are certain meals that just make me happy and I never seem to remember to make them.  My friend Junko in Seattle would prepare these lovely, quick meals of a dozen little dishes of pickles and a cup of miso and some rice and maybe some broiled fish, and it would all come together in no time because she already had everything she needed in the fridge, and they would inevitably be among the best meals I’d ever had.  I would feel invigorated and, well, nourished, instead of full.  And she’d look at me like I was crazy when I flipped out over the whole thing, much like my friend Leesa nearly had a panic attack when I made whipped cream from liquid cream.  She thought whipped cream was just something that came from a can.  This was when I first realized that I loved her.

Aaaanyway, I couldn’t locate any Korean shredded squid, but I found this possibly Vietnamese, possibly Chinese (the package says it is made in China, but there is Vietnamese printing on the package) shredded squid and tried to make my first batch of my favorite side-dish, the spicy squid strips.  And guess what?

It turned out great!  I didn’t even follow the directions very well, I just dressed the dried squid straight and ate it.  I made it again today and instead soaked and then fried the strips in the sauce, and the texture was a little improved, but still, I’m inordinately pleased with myself.

I mixed up a little side of miso, which made me reflective on a time when I was having dinner at my friend Kanako’s house a lot, where there was almost always a giant commercial-size soup pot of miso simmering on the stove in her communal house.  They’d add heaps of vegetables and pounds of tofu and everyone would sort of dig in as they pleased while a rice-maker kept pounds of cooked rice hot for kids to eat from as the evening went on.  As I age, I forget that being punk rock meant trying to keep healthy in between bouts of alcoholism.

Takuan, the knife that nearly took my thumb and some shiso leaf.

I bought a giant daikon pickle (often used as an ingredient in vegetable sushi) called takuan and was home before I read the ingredients and saw it was sweetened with aspartame.  Giant sigh.  I’ll eat some of it, at least, but I tend to put up cross-fingers before the beast aspartame.

Those homemade gyoza were from about two months ago, but some fresh ones are coming to Anger Burger soon.

Still, as we set up to eat our little buffet in front of the TV (how entirely American!) to watch Lost Boys again for the first time in at least ten years for each of us, I had to marvel at what started out feeling like a cobbled-together dinner.  This is how I want to eat most nights.  Try and help me remember.