I wonder if your tastes change when you eat different foods. They must.
When I arrived in Tshimilakha, the VP was my neighbour and he invited me for dinner. I brought a "vegetable curry" and he made the rice and a meat curry. He asked me if I had put sugar in my curry. I had not, however I had not put the required amount of chiles and salt. So the natural sweetness of the carrots was evident.
Tonight I cooked fresh wild mushrooms. I have no idea what they are called but I tried pan frying them with garlic and fresh local butter. They were not really cooking so I turned the dish into "shamu datsi" - mushrooms, chile and cheese. Boiled up a bit to cook the shrooms. I had also made eggplant parmesan. Real imported hard parmesan cheese, the eggplant is unique but tastes the same as what I eat at home. A splash of red wine, lots of black pepper and tomatoes.
Well the eggplant dish tasted . . . too sweet. Actually it was delicious, but the chile, cheese mushroom combination definitely won in the tastebud arena.
A small confession : I cannot call my cooking Bhutanese. So the "shamu datsi" is not really shamu datsi as I put in part of a chile pepper instead of 6 chiles. It does have a hint of the chile flavour - almost enough to make my eyes water. Actually there are some chiles that do make your eyes water if you sniff them.
Believe it or not :)
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