Le fridge alors!

I decided, that since my fridge is a bit bland with regards to old condiments (figuratively speaking, of course), I would tell you stories about my freezing compartment instead. I mean, there is that old Turkish pomegranate syrup that never seems to get used up, because it is incredibly sour and only seems to go well with Tahini. Some rare oils I've really used. And an ongoing experiment of a bottle of vegetable juice that never seems to want to change into a state that would justify to throw it away. But these things happen in every second fridge, I guess.

Let's talk about the freezer then. It's really just a tiny compartment, where we mostly store our cat food and some fries. And my experiments with condiments. While they have resided there for a quite a bunch of time, I decided to re-prepare a few of them for your viewing pleasure.



The ones I actually use often are various roots. A freezer is the perfect place to store your ginger and radish. They keep their full freshness, and you can just grate it in frozen state as well as fresh. The one long root is already one of which I do not recall the purpose - only that it was given to me by a friendly lady in our food coop from her garden.

There's a bit of soap on that photo too, which would become jelly were it not frozen. This way, it is soapy enough, but falls into disuse for the simple fact that the shower is separated from the freezer by three doors, and the other fact that cold soap is simply plain eeky.

But the interesting story in my opinion are the transparent plastic bags of greenery in the lower left. They are the result from my various trips to the local Asian supermarket. Which is a really huge place, filled with lovely foodstuff, labeled in Vietnamese, and Thai, and Chinese, and Japanese, with tiny sticky labels providing a rough translation to my mother tongue to fulfill the legal requirements to sell foodstuffs. Most of them are really rather transliterations than translations, because you cannot translate what doesn't exist in the country.

Which is part of the fun.

The game goes like this: I love to browse the section with the fresh herbs and vegetables; Buy the one with the least meaningful label; and then try to google it, to find what tasty recipes I might cook up with it.


(All the Thais among you will probably see what is coming)

The first one I came up with, was labeled "Cha om", in Latin and Thai script. Now, happy relet, upon returning home, opened the bag and smelled and googled and found out that he had gotten himself a bag of "poo weed" or "rotting thorn". It smells, and is has thorns. Sounds exactly like yummyfood. Almost.
Now, the bag on the photo says "Acasia"(sic), which tells you that the first had not been the last time I have bought the stuff. It's tasty. It also tells you that the sticky labels change from time to time, both in spelling and in meaning. The mighty Internet suggested that I make a pancake out of it. That's what I did, and I now enjoy a good Cha om pom pom once in a while.



Here's a photo of it schopped. Unfortunately it takes advanced ninja skills to take a picture of the pancake itself, because it has a very low half-life. The reason this one bag slept in my freezer is that I bought a few bags in case they disappear from the shelves.



On a subsequent expedition to the Asia mall, the next unreadable condiment was the Sa Dao. Same deal, happy relet hopping home, unpacked, smelled... no particular odor. Tasted... ew, bitter. Googled. Turns out it is Neem leaves, well-known for their bitterness and alleged healthiness. Now what to do with these? The mighty Internet tells me that only the village elders like to chew these raw, but that they sometimes are prepared in a salad. I could not imagine this. However, I found another recipe which claims that they do well in a sweet sauce.



So basically I chopped a few...



...prepared a sweet sauce to sprinkle them in...



...and distributed the result over a generic dish.

It was interesting. The bitter taste is really something you have to get used to. But in combination with the sweetness of the sauce and the other flavours of the dish it makes for an attractive change. The bitter taste is not something you often use intentionally in today's cuisine.

The reason why this one resides in the freezing compartment is simply that there's a whole bag full of the bitter stuff. You really cannot use more than a few chopped leaves for every meal (unless you are an Indonesian village elder, I guess)

Lessons learned: I should shop for the unknown more often again. I have neglected that habit too.