WHAT YOU REMEMBER EATING

They say that the tastes you remember from your childhood remain with you throughout your life, they will be what you think of as the taste of home, of comfort, of happiness.
My childhood may have been someone else's.

I used to love potatoes. I cannot recall the last time I ate them.
Dinner was mustard, spicy pork cake, hot sauce, and noodles.


I did not eat mustard greens till I was in my thirties, I learned about pork cake at roughly the same time, and chilies weren't part of my life in any form till nearly the double digits.

Noodles? Other than spaghetti, and German ribbons when we were on vacation, noodles were NOT part of the programme until my twenties.

Honestly, it wasn't till I became single again that I started eating noodles regularly. A meal may mean rice, but noodles are much more convenient for a bachelor. Cook everything with plenty sauce, and dump it on the noodles. Rice stick, mostly.


For real comfort food, rice noodles, grilled pork beansprouts chives broth (燒猪肉河粉 'siu chü yiuk ho fan'). Plus chili vinegar and hot sauce.
All of which together is quintessentially Viet-Chinese.
There were no Viet-Chinese in my childhood.



Steamed fish with peanuts and chilies might, arguably, be one of those childhood tastes of iconic memory. Haven't had that for eons.

I lack the recipe. And the inclination.
Might have to wing it some day.




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