little trouble in big china

Due to circumstances into which I will not delve here, I did not actually end up eating all that much Thai food in Thailand (more's the pity). But I did manage to sneak in some food on sticks, Thai remix.

First up was lime ice cream on a stick -- looks like a popsicle, only creamier. Hits the spot on a hot sunny day, but I didn't have time to take a picture for fear of it melting before I got to consume it. Second was, naturally, satay. The ones in the photo are barbeque chicken and pork, respectively. I had the pig on a stick from a different vendor, with slightly less viscous sauce. It was sweet n' tasty, and I didn't have to fight with the stick to claim the meat -- just bit right in and off it came. That's a good satay, and something I find a lot of Thai restaurants in the States just don't do as well as they should.

I also wanted to try something a little further afield, so after perusing some vendor selections, I went with quail-egg-fishball on a stick. Each sphere there is made up of a hard-boiled quail egg wrapped inside fishball (the larger ones are regular chicken egg; there were also salted-egg and century-egg options).

Fishball, for those of you not familiar, is sort of like fish sausage -- a dense ball of processed fish parts, somewhat fishy and a little rubbery-chewy-squishy (imagine the consistency of a Nerf football, but a little less spongy). It's really popular in Asia, particularly added into soup. About once a year I'll be struck by the thought that, "yeah, fishball sounds good right now," and I have some and it is, and then I'm good for another year or so.

Anyway, I've never had fishball with egg in it, so I gave it a whirl. And what do you know, it was pretty good. The outer coating tasted like tofu skin, there was an inner layer of regular fishball a couple centimetres thick, and then the yummy egg adding a whole different texture. It came with a lemongrass-chili dipping sauce that made it a little tangy and tingly, too. And even though I've now had my fishball helping for the year, I could see having them again if the opportunity presented itself.

Leave a Reply