On 23/02/2012 7:34 PM, I'm back on the laptop wrote:
> Sitting in the Virgin Blue Lounge at Melbourne airport, having a nice
> cooling Asahi beer, while the SO has a couple of glasses of Tattinger
> bubbly.
>
> The short haul from Hobart to here, they served us the rice paper rolls
> with a dipping sauce. It didn't taste very spicy to start with but *holy
> crap*!! I spent most of the flight in pain, and not able to drink my G&T
> till we were on approach. But it's all cool now, and the next leg back to
> Brisbane will be the dinner run, so it will be interesting to see what is
> going to be served up in Business Class.
>
> The SO has decided that now she has flown Business Class for her last 5
> flights, she is never flying 'cattle class' again :-)
>
Vietnamese rice paper rolls have a dipping sauce that is spicy but not
what I would call hot. Having a Vietnamese wife means that I have had
this particular little treat more times than I would care to count. The
dipping sauce most favoured by the Vietnamese is Nước mắm pha (mixed
fish sauce) and is used with a variety of dishes of which Gỏi cuốn
(wrongly called rice paper rolls) is but one. While serrano peppers or
Jalapeno Chilli is used in the making of this sauce, the quantity is not
great. Typically just one deseeded Jalapeno chilli is used however the
intensity of the chilli is offset by the vinegar, the fish sauce, the
sugar and the lime or lemon juice. Thus the dipping sauce has a sweet
and sour flavour with just a tinge of spiciness.

If you had a stomach burning and painful experience with a supposed
Vietnamese dipping sauce, then may I respectfully suggest that you have
your stomach ulcer attended to post haste. Either that or your dipping
sauce was of Thai origin. The Thais tend to like their food quite a lot
spicier than the Vietnamese. Even so, I doubt the sauce was hot as the
clientele on a flight to or from Tasmania would be 99% Caucasian and the
catering department at Virgin simply wouldn't risk making a significant
number of their business class passengers ill. That then leads me to
suspect that you are talking out of your arse as you are so often wont
to do.

--

Krypsis