Rational Insanity
Food and something like it
First up, I would like to thank Jenny who texted me straight from Paris to react on last week's column. I hope your Valentine was just as you wanted it to be. Now, for this week's topic.
If there are fashion victims, there are also culinary victims. I'm sure almost everyone has seen the episode of Mr. Bean where he orders a 'steak tartar' and ends up getting a lump of cold raw ground beef on his plate. It wasn't the fault of the concierge, and the meal was not mistakenly served raw. Mr. Bean's order was just as it should have been, good 'ole plain steak tartar. What was wrong with that picture was that Mr. Bean tried to order something that sounded classy and cheap without knowing what his order really was. This is the trouble with most culinary victims.
Definition: Culinary victims are people who pretend to be very knowledgeable of food (especially when they want to boast in a restaurant) when they don't even know the basic difference between penne and risotto. These are people who use food to skip up the social ladder without knowing that there is much more to know about food than meets the eye.
Now, I am doing this column for the benefit of those culinary victims and social eater wannabes because I know how it feels to order something then force yourself to eat what you ordered just because you want to look good, even when you already feel like throwing up.
The first thing to bear in mind when we want to eat out is that if we have a limited budget it would be wisest to go for fast food instead of the classier restaurants. Chances are, if we opt for a classy joint on a low budget, we will end up excusing ourselves for the men's/lady's room all too often to wipe off the beading sweat on our foreheads. Tension over the bill can easily spoil our appetite. Now, if this is not the case, then we are bound to order the cheap stuff, which, if luck runs out, do not really taste that good. A meal in a classy restaurant can cost us AT LEAST five hundred pesos. Now, when I say 'at least' I really mean it.
For those of us who really want to try out the classier restaurants and with a budget to boot, then it's time for us to learn the basics.
Steak can be served in six ways - very rare, rare, medium rare, done, well done, and very well done. If you like lots of blood in your steak, go for very rare, and if you want the tough, rubbery, tasteless piece of meat that most of us Filipinos like, then go for very well done. I like mine rare to medium rare. The rarer your steak is the tastier and tenderer it is. A tip for restaurants also, a piece of steak should be accompanied by gravy, buttered vegetables and mashed potatoes, not rice.
For pasta - when one says al pomodoro or carbonara, these refer to the sauce; when one says spaghetti or fettuccini, these refer to the noodles. Now, if we go to a classy resto and order spaghetti expecting to get the kind that most fast food chains have, we might get disappointed. Normally, in classy restaurants, we have to specify the kind of sauce we want, therefore, we should say, for instance spaghetti al pomodoro if we want red tomato sauce, or spaghetti al carbonara, if we want the carbonara sauce. There are many other sauces aside from just the two I mentioned here, and it would be wise to read about all of them lest we look stupid in some classy Italian restaurant. By the way, authentic Italian spaghetti is not sweet, it's sour and when they say meat sauce they really mean meat sauce and not hotdog bits.
All right, now to the more simple preparations; when ordering wine you should not fill your glass to the brim, unless you want to look like an alcohol starved swinger. Just fill the glass halfway then twirl the contents with your wrist a couple of times then sniff at it to savor the bouquet of the wine. Yes, this is now the point where you take a sip - take note - a sip, not a gulp. Wine is meant to enhance the flavor of food in most restaurants, and so there is a specific kind of wine that would be best for your meal. So that you don't go wrong, ask for the waiter's suggested kind. Not all wines are sweet, by the way, the best wines don't exactly taste the way we Pinoys would expect them to taste (what is it with Pinoy and sweet, anyway?)
On to Japanese - sushi and sashimi are two very different matters. While both contain raw seafood such as octopus, squid, fish and, sea urchin, the former is wrapped in a seaweed wrapper called 'nori'. The dipping sauce for both is most often soy sauce and lemon or calamansi. A warning: for those who are about to have their first taste of either sashimi or sushi, don't get deceived by the attractive green glob that you are supposed to mix into the dipping sauce - it's called wasabi and too much of it can set your nostrils on fire and make your eyes water, so, unless you want to get the mace on your face experience, then I suggest, tone down on wasabi a bit.
This is not all of it folks, there's a lot, lot more to learn, but I guess I covered pretty much of the basics and most common mistakes among culinary victims. Now, if you want to know more, it would be best if you email or text me.
Be rational; be insane...every once in a while!!!TTFN! Hello to Jenny! Welcome to RI! Hello also and to my dearest readers, to Am-am, Dot, Verona, James, Sheen, Hellpen, Anne, Mary Dale, Chan,Michelle, Zarthus, Jonald, Mr. Bobot, Vic, Vincent, and Rex, Alex, Arvin, Corz, Jim, Kiara, Malikh, Audrae, Franz, Hendrick, Janice, Jay, Jim, Jonathan, Mark, Marz, Mel, Pres, Nhonoy, Niel, Piper, Rheavil, Joey, Alma, Rodolfo, Ecker, Ryan, Roni, Ian, Narle, Sunny and to Anuj of CMC, I love you all! Byers! Salamat gid sa mga walang-hintong text and reactions nyo! Catch Rational Insanity in TNT's online edition, check us out at www.thenewstoday.info, text me at (0920)9254269, or email me at prague@eudoramail.com. Byers! Mmmmmmmwah!