Tonight I was eating with friends. It is hard to tell what is in mashed-up-food dishes. (A lot of Isaan food is mashed fish and herbs, or mashed ants, or mashed chicken, . . .) To get a better idea of what I was eating I asked how the dishes were made.
The first dish was basically mashed chicken and herbs cooked in banana leaves. The second dish was boiled fish mashed with skewer cooked vegetables (kebab-esque). The third dish was made by cutting up pork and letting it sit for about a week. “You have to wait until it tastes sour. If it doesn’t yet taste sour, it isn’t safe to eat.” I’m not all that convinced that the fact that it now tastes sour means that it is now safe to eat.
Note: After further research the author has discovered that this sour pork is very much similar to salami. I hadn’t realized that Salami was a fermented meat.
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