Signature dish
One of the things I love about food is its ability to excite. It goes beyond being merely delicious; on occasion, something can make me look at an ingredient or dish with new eyes. It doesn't happen often, and only rarely when I am looking for it.
This time it took place a couple of weeks ago, on a four-day, food-focused trip to Malaysia. I was with a group of friends, sitting at a fold-out table that had been set up on the road outside the Restoran Tauge Ayam Lou Wong, in Ipoh.
While the poached chicken and silky-smooth ho fun (rice noodles) were delicious, it was the bean sprouts that had me raving.
Yes, a humble plate of bean sprouts. Ipoh is famous for its bean sprouts, which are short, stubby, crunchy and full of flavour, rather than the long, thin and tasteless type you normally encounter. I'd eaten Ipoh bean sprouts before, but never in Ipoh, so these were super fresh.
Blanched briefly before being drizzled with soy sauce and sesame oil and topped with sliced spring onions and chilli (which were there for colour rather than flavour), they were a revelation as far as bean sprouts go.
I've had many other food epiphanies: the first time I realised that a tomato wasn't just a round, juicy red blob and that it could be as sweet and delicious as any other ripe fruit; my first tastes of uni (sea urchin), foie gras and Kobe beef, all of which were as wonderfully rich as I'd heard; eating Miss Gla'Glas, the most perfect of ice cream sandwiches, at a Pierre Herme shop in Paris; the shockingly concentrated flavour of the sour cherry sorbet at Berthillon, also in Paris; 'experiencing' (the word eating doesn't do it justice) the famous El Bulli spherical olive, which is more intensely olive-y than the real thing; and tasting the magical simplicity that is dragon's beard candy.
When I think of all of these, I can vividly recall not just the taste of the food, but my surroundings and the feelings I had while first eating it, as if all my senses were heightened.
Other people might argue that what I experience with these food epiphanies comes close to one of the seven deadly sins - gluttony. But I'm not a glutton - I'm not greedy and I very rarely overeat.
Some people are proud of their ability to hear beauty in a perfectly played symphony; others notice the subtle differences in brush strokes between a painter in his early period and later in his career.
Food is a lot more prosaic than any other art form - after all, it's something we consume three times a day, if we're fortunate. And if we are lucky enough to be able to eat for pleasure, rather than just for sustenance, then we should appreciate our good fortune and savour every bite.
