I’ve always been more of a generalist than a specialist. I’m way more interested in knowing a small amount about a lot of things than knowing a large amount about one thing. I get bored easily.
Knowing a small amount about a lot of things is great for bar trivia, crossword puzzles, and making polite small talk at parties. It’s bad for almost everything else. People with actual skills get to do things like write books or talk about things on CNN. People like me get jobs emailing people who do actual work to remind them about various deadlines and deliverables.
It’s better this way. I would be a terrible expert on CNN. Our conversation would be like:
CNN person: How is climate change affecting zebras?
Me: It’s probably bad! Bad for zebras! Right?
CNN person: That sounds serious. Are we already seeing the zebra population declining?
Me: Listen, I only know one thing about zebras. Unlike horses, zebras have never been domesticated. Which means there are probably way more horses than zebras. In fact, that’s why people say, “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras!” Har, har, har! It’s usually true, unless you’re in a place where zebras live, amiright? Turns out I know two things about zebras! Does that answer your question?
CNN person: No.
I’m the same way with most hobbies. I consider myself a runner, but every couple of years I get bored and quit running for a while to get into something else, like yoga, or spinning, or sitting on the couch and not working out at all. This is why I’ve never been a very good runner. Earlier this week, I ran a two-mile race and Travis Barker, the drummer from Blink-182, beat me by six and a half minutes. That is a big difference in a two-mile race. Travis Barker was so much faster than me, I didn’t even realize he was there until I got home and saw his Instagram post about it.
I’m sad I wasn’t fast enough to keep up with Travis Barker (get it? Keep up? He is a Kardashian now! Technically I should be calling him Kravis). However, it’s not nearly as embarrassing as the time I, an adult, was beaten in a sprint to the finish by Rahm Emanuel’s eleven-year-old daughter in a 5K while he was Mayor of Chicago. I know this because right after I finished a random person helpfully said to me “Rahm Emanuel’s daughter just beat you.”
The only area where I am kind of a specialist is cooking. I only know how to make two things well: guacamole and macaroni and cheese. Don’t worry, I didn’t suddenly acquire discipline in this one area. I’m just very anxious about cooking (as you’ve probably gathered, I take food extremely seriously) and so I only cook under duress. In other words, I only cook when I’m invited to a gathering where I have to bring food and it would be weird to bring Doritos.
Between guacamole and macaroni and cheese, every type of gathering is covered. Thanksgiving? Mac and cheese. Superbowl? Guacamole. Chili cookoff? You won’t win, but you can bring either guac or mac and call it a fancy mix-in.
In this regard, I’m not especially out of step with the culinary world. Plenty of restaurants seem to get their start by generating buzz around one really great dish (see: Little Fish’s sandwich that I wrote about two weeks ago). Before I left Portland last week, I had to try one of the exemplars of this genre, Nong’s Khao Man Gai.
Khao man gai is a Thai version of Hainanese chicken. Hainanese chicken is poached chicken with seasoned rice and chili sauce. Khao man gai is also served with chicken broth. For newbies like me, Nong’s provides a helpful graphic to explain that the chili sauce, chicken, and rice should be mixed together, with the broth sipped separately between bites.
Chef Nong Poonsukwattana started selling khao man gai from a used kettle corn cart and worked her way up to two brick and mortar restaurants, a proprietary chili sauce you can order online, a Chopped victory, a James Beard nomination, and a podcast, which every notable Portland resident is legally required to have. This is what specializing gets you. In contrast, I have zero restaurants, zero proprietary sauces, two game show losses, zero awards for anything, and a failed podcast, which every aspiring comedian is legally required to have.
In all honesty, I wanted to try Nong’s Khao Man Gai before I left Portland because I was a poached chicken skeptic. If I had to specialize in one dish, poached chicken wouldn’t be my first choice (mainly because it would confuse people at a Superbowl party). Like a turkey sandwich or a Caesar salad, it strikes me as the kind of dish that is always fine but never transcendent.
Nevertheless, I have been converted to a poached chicken believer (beakliever? bawkliever? There has to be a Belieber-style portmanteau here somewhere. I’ll continue to think on this).
First off, the chicken is cooked perfectly. It’s flavorful enough that you could enjoy it all on its own. The rice adds more flavor and some textural variety, which even the best chicken requires. The chili sauce adds heat and tanginess and elevates the dish from a very good lunch to a lunch you make a special trip for. The chili pastes provide even more heat. The chicken broth has more depth of flavor than chicken broth has any right to have, and if I had followed my initial instinct to dump it all over the rest of the dish, I would have been extremely incorrect, but I probably still would have enjoyed my meal.
It's a good thing I’ve been converted into a chicken enthusiast (I gave up on portmanteaus and instead want to remind you about the best Bachelor contestant occupation of all time) because my boyfriend also loved Nong’s Khao Man Gai and immediately tried to recreate it. And if he ever makes khao man gai for a dinner party, I’m ready with the perfect side dish (macaroni and cheese, probably, but I’m not ruling out guacamole).