In my whole life, I think there are two remarkable foods that change my whole perspective of food. Well, it is kind of an exaggeration, but these two foods give me a new perspective on the way food is perceived.
It is just like how avocado is perceived differently on how to serve it. In Indonesia, we often use avocado as a dessert ingredient. We make avocado juice with lots of milk, and we eat avocado with condensed milk or chocolate, and in general, avocado is just a food that is perceived to be served sweetly. But when my Spanish friend saw that, she was shocked because she eats avocado with salt and pepper, and generally, avocado is being served as a salty cuisine for her.
So, just similar to that, these two foods that I encountered broaden my view about the food serving.
The first one is eggplant with honey or called Berenjenas con Miel in Spain. I tried this food on my trip to southern Spain. I was looking at the menu in one restaurant and tried to order no-meat food, so this is one of them. I couldn't imagine how the food looks like, but I was up for a challenge anyway. When the food arrived, it looks totally different from how the eggplant is usually served in my country, so it was intriguing. But when I eat it, I decided that would be my favorite eggplant cuisine. Just additional information, eggplant is my favorite vegetable, so this is kind of a big deal.
Usually, for me, eggplant served as stir-fried food, and a kind of mushy, which I like, and can be cooked with different kinds of sauces. But this one is deep-fried, and in a shape that looks like a french fries. And it was sprinkled with salt and topped with honey, so sweet and salty. Sweet. Sweet. For an eggplant. Eggplant being served sweetly is just, wow. It just changes my whole perspective of an ingredient.
The second one is a potato pizza that I ate in Seoul. So my friends and I came to this one pizza restaurant that got popular thanks to BTS having a photo shoot there. We ordered different types of pizza slices to share, and we decided one of them would be the potato pizza.
The pizza was just like any other pizza, besides, they top it with condensed milk. I mean, I know the 'sweet pizza' where only the shape is pizza-like, but the ingredients were sweet stuff like milk chocolate and everything. But this one was different because the pizza itself, without the condensed milk, is just a normal salty potato pizza. But then they put condensed milk on it. Yep. It was unique to me, but I guess it is kind of normal in South Korea to combine sweet stuff into everything. You know, corn dog with sugar sprinkled on it, or sandwich with meat or egg and other salty stuff but then combined with strawberry jam. Yep. But this one time, the pizza and condensed milk combination change my view lol.
My friend ended up 'addicted' to this combination at one point in her life, but I haven't brought it into practice. So when I had a chance, I ate my leftover pizza with condensed milk, and yes...yes...that's it. That's the thing.
I think at some point I was too fixed on how ingredients being used and served with what is common in my daily life, and maybe too comfortable with that, or just lazy in general. I think I should see more potential and possibilities in an ingredient and not get a fixed idea about something.
Maybe there are ways that I don't know yet to eat stinky beans, maybe it has much more potential than just being fried, boiled, or combined in various sambals. Maybe.
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