I accompanied my parents and brother to Wild Horse Pass Casino in Mesa to experience a Vietnamese-inspired dinner with Chef Mai Pham. We were greeted with iced water, chardonnay and merlot at the table, and as we had a very good seat up near the stage (but not too close), we were served our first course, a green papaya salad, with too much cilantro, very promptly. The prawns that came with it were coated with green curry, and were plump and amazing. I was brave and took a bite of the Thai basil that came with the salad. It was licoricey and clove-y, and a huge sip of the merlot mellowed it out so that I wasn't overwhelmed. While we let our first course sit, the chef talked to us a little about her life after Saigon, and my mother and I got a little weepy (also due to the wine), and then we all enjoyed some highlights from a Food Network special Mai Pham had done.

Following this, there was some demonstrating (unfortunately, I could not really smell anything coming from the stage, but everyone else at my table could.) and then our jasmine rice was served. This ended up being a bit awkward (everything from the rice and after was served family-style), as it started to clump and get cold before anything else arrived. Since my father cannot stand shrimp, he ended up helping our table finish up the barbecue pork, which pleased and amused our server, as she hefted up the absurdly heavy square plate that had sat the pork. Then our condiments arrived. The green curry shrimp arrived in a lovely sauce, and that was the highlight of the evening. Lemony, fresh, creamy, rich, slurpy...I always know something is tasty when my eyes mist up. It was less because of the wine this time. Some less memorable but filling dishes followed, as well as some much-needed more rice, and then the dessert came, a lovely scoop of ginger ice cream (made with 5 different kinds of ginger) garnished with a kind of chocolate-dipped almond brittle. I was bloated after dinner, but I had walked a lot of stairs earlier, so I was okay with it. Nothing like fish sauce to hike up your blood pressure.

It's amazing how much I'd like to be a food snob because I know how to mix herbs and spices and can sniff out the individual herbs that went into a dish, and cook better when I don't follow a recipe precisely as directed in a magazine.  But I have an inability to read recipes--I always leave something out that is called for or don't prep it as prescribed.  And I've learned a lot about cooking from "Worst Cooks in America."  So I've still got a long way to go.  Also, if I have a fantastic dish in mind to try, I can be distracted by cheese.  If the chopping of onions gets too boring and I get too hungry, I'll often forego the osso bucco or tagine and melt American cheese on a tostado shell.  In the nuker.  At least I have the decency to sprinkle it with chipotle powder before I heat it.