Those of you who have the experience of living outside of your home country for a long period of time will understand what I am about to describe.
The image in your head playing in loop, the frustration at every occasion, the endless craving for that one dish that you are so familiar with. The one dish that you can call YOUR comfort food. The one dish which is practically impossible to find in the foreign country which you live in. Even if you find that one dish in a restaurant somewhere in that country you'll soon experience a clash of memory and reality.
Imagine this, you go to a restaurant and as you scan the menu there it is the one dish that you've craved for so long. The name of the dish is the same as the one that's been flashing in your head for the last month or so and the description makes you believe that it is THE authentic dish from your home country (in my case, when the description says "a typical Indonesian dish made of..." how can I confuse it with another typical dish from...oh...I don't know...Timbuktu?).
So you order the dish as you swallow furiously trying hard not to drool. When your dish arrives the scene plays in slow motion as the waiter places the plate in front of you. Your head is full of the sweet memories of childhood, the first time you tasted this heavenly dish. There it is...finally...THE dish...YOUR comfort food! It's just that.....something is not right but you can't really put your finger on it.
You try to analyze what is going on and as you keep pondering you take a bite from your plate. Then you suddenly realize that the name of the dish is right, the description of the dish is right but digging in deeper into your memories the image, the smell, taste, texture is completely different than what is in front of you. The dish in front of you is not THE dish that you want. It's not YOUR comfort food. Whoever was cooking this dish didn't even try to copy the recipe. Probably has never actually seen what the dish looks like let alone know what it's supposed to taste like.
I've experienced this way too many times. I've been craving this ONE typical Indonesian dish, MY comfort food, and the Big Kahuna up there knows that I've been searching high and low for it. Some of you may know the dish, it's called Sate Madura. It's a typical dish from my home country, from an island called Madura to be precise. It's basically skewered chicken with peanut sauce, BUT, it's not that simple to make it taste right. The last time I had this dish was a long time ago. It was in 1996 when I last visited my home country.
I tried different Asian restaurants in Switzerland and at the beginning whenever I saw in the menu a dish called chicken satay with peanut sauce or chicken in satay sauce I always ordered it. And every single time I was disappointed. The dish either came as skewered chicken with a small bowl of peanut sauce on the side that tasted like it was made out of jarred peanut butter or it came as a pile of diced chicken with bean sprout, red bell pepper or some other veggies and doused with what I call peanut water...yes, peanut water...it was so thin that I couldn't even call it peanut sauce.
After all the years of disappointments you'd believe that I have learnt my lessons. NOPE! I was craving the dish so much I went to the gas station just across the street from my office a few weeks ago to look for something to eat while I work. As I was going through the isles my eyes caught the familiar set of letters that formed the familiar set of words....Chicken Satay. It was one of those ready made meals that you just punch a few holes with a fork on the plastic wrapping and pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
Sirens were blaring, warning lights were flashing, flags were raised, bells, whistles and all sorts of alerts were going off in my head. "DO NOT GET IT!" my mind screamed. But my craving was stronger and I reached out to grab a package.
I waited until everybody left the office and I popped the chicken satay in the microwave. A couple of minutes later it was ready. I peeled open the plastic cover and a wave of hot peanut sauce aroma rose from the plastic container. My mind which somehow got blinded by my craving told me "It actually smells good..." I looked at it and saw the container divided into two parts. On one side was the white rice and the other side was a few pieces of, what I believed was, chicken submerged in dark, surprisingly thick peanut sauce. I took a spoonful of the sauce and dumped it on top of the rice. I fished out a piece of chicken and scooped out some rice and peanut sauce.
Ready made meal - Chicken Satay - I'm not touching this one EVER AGAIN!
Disappointment: 1, Satisfaction: 0! It seemed like disappointment won again! I guess I should have known. Packaged ready to eat meal is a culinary breakthrough making it easier for busy people like me to have a quick hot meal, but it's no fine dining. The rice was dry and brittle but not as dry as the chicken (if it really is chicken) I don't know since how long those pieces of chicken drowned in that thick dark peanut sauce but it was as dry as my leather shoes baked under the sun for months in the Sahara desert. And let's not talk about the peanut sauce...no...LET'S talk about the peanut sauce which was artificially thickened probably using the old trick of adding flour or corn starch in the mix and throwing a few peanut chunks in it. It was like eating peanut flavored motor oil.
I know, I know...it's nobody's fault but mine. I am guilty of submission to my craving for Sate Madura. I guess I just have to be patient until the next time I go back to my home country to have the authentic one.
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