A taste I can’t forget (part 1), originally uploaded by Jen Chan.Though foodpr0n.com has been live for almost 9 months, flickr has hosted my photos for many, many, years now. There’s a ton of photos there that I wouldn’t get around to writing about here if it weren’t for the convenient cross-posting feature flickr has, allowing me, with the click of a button, to generate a quick post. Well, it would be quick if I didn’t tweak and re-write so much.
So, from the flickr archives: The fancy Vietnamese restaurant Nam in NYC from August 2005. Or “When I started liking the flavour combination of orange & chocolate.”
Clearly, I had yet to train my friends into waiting until after I had taken my shot to eat...
Two desserts were the sugar-highlight of my weekend trip. A coconut pyramid with tapioca in a pandan sauce, and a chocolate mousse with caramelized orange peels. Both were so entirely fabulous and SO TASTY. At the time, I had pondered ways to replicate the coconut pyramid, it was that yummy. But that I liked this dessert seemed more of a given, since coconut is definitely on my list of flavours-I-enjoy. What surprised me was the chocolate mousse. Until that point, I had never enjoyed the mix of chocolate + orange. It had always seemed like such a terrible combination. But it was this dish that got me into it. The toasty bitter-sweet taste of the peel was palate-changing and the mousse was an excellent foil. To this day, whenever I make candied orange peels, I try to match the taste and texture of those citrus rinds.
Checking on Nam just now, shows that they’re still open and serve some variant of the pyramid. Sadly, no chocolate mousse and candied orange peel!
- Nam 110 Reade st, New York City
More from Nam in 2005
[flickr-gallery mode="tag" tags="nam" tag_mode="all“]