food trip

nagyaya yung 2 officemates ko to eat out for lunch. i have packed lunch, but i thought, well, it's not everyday we get to eat out, so GO! we went to this Indian buffet place. spicy food, foreign-named dishes, nothing familiar except rice.

i was feeling brave so i tried everything except the lamb chops. never did liked lamb... i had a traumatic experience back in ohio. nagluto ako ng almondigas with ground lamb, super icky yung lasa. bleh! just thinking about it puts a crease on my forehead and a wrinkle on my nose.

anyways, stupid me, i forgot the names of the dishes. well, primarily because it's not english or tagalog, so it's harder to remember. i will try to describe them as i remember them.

dish 1 - okoy-cook-alike
it's a mixture of shredded veggies with other spices, shaped into balls, and deep fried. looking at it, i think it's prepared just like okoy, with batter and all that. no dipping sauce whatsoever. it's actually good, only it's a little too oily. and my tastebuds know that with a little sweet and sour sauce, it could pass for a filipino dish.

dish 2 - curried veggies
the only veggies i recognized were young corn, snow peas, green peas and carrots. i know there are other things in there, but when i asked our officemate, he just said "vegetables". all. right. as long as it's not poisonous mushroom, i'm up for it. the curry sauce tastes peppery. and i can taste a hint of coconut milk too.

dish 3 - curried/buttered chicken
this is the best dish among all i've tasted. it's, well, curried chicken, but more buttery in taste. they used boneless thigh meat, and i'm a certified chicken-thigh-meat-eater. no other ingredients, just the chicken and the sauce. pretty good sauce, i think that's the one we're more familiar with. maybe that's why i liked it! =P

dish 4 - chicken ala peking duck
it's colored red. it's pretty dried up. it looks like duck. peking duck, of which i'm not a big fan. no further comment. =P

dish 5 - kidney beans
just like your ordinary all-american baked beans, only with bigger beans, and it's not barbecue flavored. it has a unique flavor, definitely not barbecue, and not curry. there's some veggie, probably spinach, because it's limpy, leafy greens.

dish 6 - sort-of-compressed-tofu and spinach
pretty good. like a spin off of the spinach dips that's good with crackers. there were cubes of tofu-like white stuff. when i asked what it is, the reply was pretty long. it's curd, mixed with something acidic that caused it to lump into those big pieces. then its juice have to be squeezed out, giving it a more "solid" texture than tofu. then my attention span raised a flag and whatever he said after that part, i don't recall anymore. =P i think it will be good with pandesal. hehehe!

dish 7 - spicy as hell pickled dish
my officemate warned me about it. it's vegetable with spicy sauce. he suggested i roll a piece of it on rice to remove the pasty sauce before commiting suicide, errr, before taking a bite. i listened, but i didn't exactly followed everything he said. i just wiped all sides of a piece of cucumber on my plate, then took a bite. *riiiing!* it was so spicy, i thought i heard ringing sounds in my ears. beads of sweat gathered on my nose and forehead, as i gobbled up more rice to neutralize the taste. it's like fear factor! i'm not a big spicy foods fan, so that's a big leap for me. after a glass of water, i'm ok. i didn't touch the rest of that dish though.

dessert 1 - rice salad, anyone?
it's, uhmmm, rice, with milk, and sugar, and chopped pistacchio nuts... served cold. it reminded me of oatmeals, pag nilalagyan ko ng evap milk. not really my type of dessert, but it did remind me of our biko. hmmmm! *salivates*

dessert 2 - sweetest fingers
it's a flour mixture, rolled into finger-like shape, deep-fried like donuts, rolled in crystal sugar, then soaked in syrup. i only had about a cubic inch of it, and i felt like all my teeth suddenly went sensitive. it's that sweet. if my glucometer was in my bag that time, i'd probably test my sugar levels and see if i'm going into a coma.

that's my Indian food adventure. i would say, there's nothing in there that i feel i won't learn to like. it's gonna take a little while to make the spicy curries an acquired taste, but it's not bad at all.

my ulcer will not agree with me though. =P