Above is the bean known as Sator in Thailand (or Peteh Petiah in Indonesian or Stink bean for some English speakers or Parkia Speciosa in Latin). I speak OK Thai and it is never complimented as well as my ability to eat local food so when the locals go over the top a bit on epicurean compliments for eating rotting fish bits in Papaya salad with plutonium grade chillies and crabs, I usually play it down by saying I can't eat Sator. It has a distinctive bitterness and allegedly stinks like methane though I've never smelled that.
Well life moves on and in my neighbourhood the food is so varied and extraordinary that I'm still trying a new dish every couple of weeks even though there's a list of favourites always to hand. A few weeks ago I accidentally ate the Sator bean in a typical Southern Thai style young coconut meat, stir-fried chicken number with garlic and I am now nuts about this bean (sic). It's an embarrassment. I'm now queuing up mid afternoon in case this favourite dish is on the menu. Any later and it's sold out. I complained to the local vendor that I need a little more certainty in monsoon rain conditions and he replied that his menu is a surprise every day.
I responded that's the problem. I'm exactly the same.
Anyway I'm mildly amused that two decades on I'm still making further inroads into Thai cuisine and that apparently nothing is really permanent for me. My food, my politics, my lifestyle, religious beliefs, philosophies, newspapers, shoes and clothes. I would say sexual preference but I really didn't know she was transsexual in the beginning. Fabulous surgery. Could happen to anyone.
It's all been up for grabs hasn't it? I apologise if my hyper-mercurial qualities have caused offence, confusion or upset to anybody in the past. It's not intended.
