Untasty Food

Sally Caves wrote:
[snip]
>    Nuoc mam, or Thai  nam pla, is made from fermented fishies, with >tons
>of salt.  Of course, fermentation is a form of decomposition too, I
> >suppose. It does smell vile, and a little bit goes a very long way; it's
>good. Aside from a bat cave, the worst smell I ever experienced was when I
> >wandered around Saigon and came upon the riverside area where they
>collect, >recycle (and presumably clean ) the nuoc mam jars.  Oy!

Ever heard of a Swedish dish that's usually called fermented herring in
English? (The Swedish term is "surströmming", lit "sour herring".) I have
never actually eaten the stuff, but the smell is intolerable 20m away.

Some years ago, one of my classmates put an opened jar of it in a
ventilation duct at school. He got fined the equavilent of a few dozen
dollars, and was expelled from the school for the rest of that semester
(which only was some week, but still). And of course, a few hundred people
were very angry with him ...

                                                  Andreas


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