Mongolian Matters

I don't think I'll ever get Mongolian style meals. You're given a dozen ingredients to choose from, including assorted meats and sauces - implying you, the great empowered creator of your own meal can choose from tens of thousands of combinations to make your dish uniquely yours. But when you have it cooked, it still tastes like every Mongolian meal you've ever tasted. How is that possible? That's like giving me two pairs of wheels, an engine, four seats and a tank of gas and no matter how I arrange it, I'll end up driving away in a Honda Civic all the time.

There must be some conspiracy wherein the splitsecond you take your eyes off your food, the "chef" mixes in some secret "make-it-mongolian" ingredient, and it's not even crushed nuts.

Speaking of crushed peanuts, why is it that when a dish has crushed nuts, it's considered classy and oriental, but when you're just having a couple of beers with nuts, that mean's your too cheap to afford anything else? Why can't we decide once and for all if peanuts are cheap or saucy?

I digress.

I can just imagine what Mongolian chef school is like. They'd just have one subject: How to Mix Shit Without Burning The Kitchen 101. They don't have to think of the ingredients, the ratio and proportion, the blending of taste and all that. No, that's the customer's problem. Isn't it just the laziest thing? It's so lazy I'd say it's just fucking brilliant with a capital A. Does your food taste like shit? Blame your poor ability of picking out the right ingredients. The chef was just there to mix it all up in a heated metal plate.

I imagine that the whole "Mongolian" bowl meal started out as some lame excuse of a chef who got to work late one day. "Where's our food?" the angry customers yell. "I'm planning something special," the chef tells them, and then brings out every ingredient in the kitchen.

"It's called EMPOWERMENT. If you make your own dish, I'll cook it for you and add bottomless iced tea."

The crowd loved it, quite possibly because we're talking about a really shitty chef who can only cook better if the customers did half of his work.

Or maybe it's really just a Mongolian tradition? They probably have no Mongolese (and I am freely asuming this is just how they call their language) phrase for "What's for dinner?"

One person got so fed up of the bullshit, he had to leave the country and have other countries make food for him instead. This is Genghis Khan and his motivation of conquering half of the known world during his time.

And he probably hates lettuce too.