It was a Thursday afternoon when my craving struck, and my head began to spin on its axis a la Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her.  Obtaining the best fresh fish in our little corner of Kuala Lumpur, though, has to be done early in the day, when the wet markets are open.  Usually by lunchtime most wet markets are wrapping up their sales, and even if you were to arrive by late morning, the best selection has already been picked over.  Still, I wasn’t to be deterred.  I decided I’d take a gamble and buy some dory fillets from a local grocery store that I knew doesn’t have the best selection of seafood, but I didn’t care.  Baby needed fish tacos.  I selected what I thought were two decent-sized fillets, picked up the other supplies we needed and headed home.

The hubby came home not long after my fateful decision, just as I had removed my beloved dory fillets from their styrofoam packaging and was rinsing them under the sink.  “Ewwww,” he groaned.  “What is that awful smell?”

I’d thought it was just me that had caught a whiff of the unbearable stench emanating from the fish when I’d removed its from its packet, but in my blind pursuit to satisfy my craving I’d somehow rationalized that the smell had to do with the styrofoam packaging and would rinse away.  Undeterred, I ignored the hubby’s gasping and wheezing, and lovingly patted the fillets dry with paper towels.  “They’re fine,” I chirped optimistically.  “Once these babies are rinsed and dried, I’ll just rub them with some olive oil and my special blend of coffee and spices and you won’t even notice the smell.”

The hubby continued his theatrics, consisting mostly of flapping his arms and expressing indignation at the grocery store for selling a pregnant lady bad fish, while I slid the prepared fillets on a baking sheet and into a preheated, 425-degree oven.  In three minutes, an aroma that I can only describe as a cross between roadkill on a hot Alabama highway in July and gently reheated garbage filled the kitchen.  Not only were these dory fillets smelly, something was seriously rotten in the state of Denmark.

Still, onwards I plowed.  Maybe, just maybe, cooking the fillets would kill whatever was already dead on my fish.  Everything would be okay.  I waited the ten minutes usually required for fillets that size and pulled them out of the oven.  As you can see from the photo, my fish turned out to be a watery, disgusting, stench pool smelling just faintly of a cup of stale Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.  Dinner was definitely not going to be served, and now we had all the fixings, including a tasty corn-avocado salsa, but no filling for our tacos.

Luckily, we still had another option, thanks to my pork butcher.   The day before, I’d taken our friends, visiting from the US, to Imbi Market to have breakfast and so that I could pick up some things.  I always buy pork tenderloins from my pork butcher, a cheerful, apple-cheeked man wielding no fewer than three frighteningly sharp knives in both of his hands at any given time.  Every time I visit him, he always sells me some additional cut of meat that I don’t think I need but always end up cooking and enjoying.  We speak Mandarin Chinese to each other, which works for the majority of our exchange, except for two things: 1) I don’t know how to say the various cuts of pork in Chinese; and 2) the Chinese cut their meat differently than Americans do, so there are all sorts of parts and hunks of meat floating about in his little stall that make no sense to me.   That morning, he proudly held up a slightly marbled, reddish piece of pork that he claimed every Chinese person needed to have in their kitchen, “for backup.”  Well, those were the words that did it.  How could I possibly be a good Kuala Lumpurian, Chinese-American expat if I didn’t have backup pork?   (Besides, it just looked like the tail end of a pork loin to me).

It turns out that backup pork was the savior for our dinner that night after our fish fiasco.  I pulled my emergency stash of pork out of the fridge, diced it up, added some seasonings and stir-fried it.  Coupled with the salsa, this impromptu pork concoction turned out to be the perfect hearty base for our tacos.

And even though it wasn’t fish, the pork tacos satisfied my craving enough so that my head wouldn’t roll off my neck into the other room.  Tomorrow, I’m heading back to my pork butcher to thank him.  He was right — everyone needs a little backup pork in their arsenal.