Weird Shit I Put In My Mouth.

Well, I've been MIA for a couple of weeks and that's because I've been in Cambodia and Vietnam! And you may be hearing quite a bit about that for a while because Asia really filled my senses. Two amazing places full of beautiful, resilient people. I can't help but start out with the food because right off the bat I knew I was entering an exciting new culinary horizon and I tried to experience this to the fullest. All of my film is still at the lab but provided are some quickie digital photos we took for reference.

A huge highlight in Ho Chi Minh City were the Vietnamese Pancakes, a rice crepe made from Bánh xèo (sizzling cake) flour then filled with shrimp, pork, and onion. Add some mint leaves. Wrap in mustard leaves. Dip in nuoc cham sauce. Come in your pants.

Corn Milk! From what we could gather, Cambodians are crazy about corn. Not just corn as part of the processing of the product like us corn-crazy Americans, but corn as a flavoring. Like some crackers we got that were basically two Ritz crackers sandwiched with Oreo cream only the Oreo cream was the flavor of corn. Here I am testing out some Corn Milk. It was sweet, milky and yes, corny. Kind of like liquid cornbread.

There were lots of street vendors in Ho Chi Minh City who sold fried egg sandwiches. The egg is literally fried in heavy oil then slapped into the freshest baguette imaginable with cilantro, daikon, shredded cucumber and hot sauce. We loved that they wrapped this one in scrap paper with computer directions on it.

I have to say, without a doubt, I had some of the best soup in my life in Vietnam and Cambodia. The Phở goes without saying, but even slurping down some of the murky looking soups at roadside bus stops or at the average street food vendor was a transcendental experience. There is something crazy going on with the flavor that you just can’t get here. Not intense as in just plain old spicy, but like all of the flavors in the soup combined and multiplied by 1,ooo. A burst of umami.

There are stands by Tonle Sap in Phnom Penh selling fried insects- larvae, beetles, crickets, spiders. I had already tried crickets, grasshoppers and larvae (as well as a nest of ants that accidentally got baked into some baguettes we ate at the Angkor Temples…oops), so I went for a big ol’ tarantula. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy because I’m terrified of spiders. He was big, fat and hairy. But when I finally took a bite of his spindly leg I was pleasantly surprised. This is what I had been terrified of? Slightly greasy, but also garlicky, spiced and savory. I ended up having another one before we left.

My final exciting foray into the world of Asian cuisine was a sizzling plate of chicken testicles, renowned for their positive effects on male virility. I preferred the tarantula. They were encased in a thin, tight membrane, like a sausage. The effect was like biting into a grape- that little pop. The inside was the texture of soft tofu. Despite the garlic they were served with, they were kind of bland. A bit gamey too. But the size was pretty impressive for a bird. Here my travel mate, Dani is inspecting a plate of cock’s testicles….err, roosters’ balls….