The Horror ... The Horror

Have you ever put food in your mouth and immediately wished you hadn't?

This happened to me at dim sum, which my wife and I enjoy very much, as it always reminds us of our first date, when we went to a dim sum restaurant where I was introduced to dishes I'd never known before.

Over the years in the Big Lychee I've sampled numerous offerings and have come to know what I like and what I can do without (yes, I've tried chicken feet, and no, I didn't much care for them). Most things I've tried that didn't thrill my taste buds were innocuous, but what I encountered during our last visit was truly horrifying.

The culprit was a vegetable dumpling, which often contains some sort of finely chopped green vegetable and garlic, which is usually quite tasty. Thinking this dumpling was similar I popped it in my mouth, chewed once, and literally was forced in a heartbeat to spit it back out, it was that heinous (but into a napkin, I'm not a barbarian).

I don't know everything that was in it, but one item I know it contained was a noxious substance I have a Kryptonite-like aversion to: cilantro (or coriander, take your pick). Yet it was more than the cilantro that so horrified me, and whatever it was registered so strongly that I will never ever eat a vegetable dumpling again without first making certain what's inside. I'm serious, my brain literally refused to allow me to swallow, for which I'm grateful because if I happen to ingest even the tiniest scrap of coriander I end up tasting it again all day long. I shudder to think about that other flavour coming back to haunt me.

Later I learned the offending dumpling was listed on the menu as fan gwo (粉果), which most times is made of pork, dried shrimp, peanuts and scallions (or bamboo shoots), none of which send me to DEFCON 1, or projectile expulsion mode, so whatever else was in there was so at the chef's whim and thus is unidentifiable.

Just thinking about it makes want to gargle with Kentucky bourbon.

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