Author: D.W. Chong

Title: It's A Matter Of Taste

Rating: PG

Pairing: Skinner/Krycek

Classification: Homework

Summary: Alex's explorations into Asian cuisine force Walter to make an important life decision.

Warning: As always, squicky matters ahead

IT'S A MATTER OF TASTE
by D.W. Chong

Alex Krycek would eat anything.

Experience had taught Walter Skinner the truth of that deceptively innocuous declarative.

In the five years Walter had spent in Alex's company, he had watched Alex eat things that made the contestants on "Fear Factor" look like weak stomached wusses. He had done it without complaint. Sometimes, he even cracked a smile.

Alex had been trained to eat anything.

According to Alex, his 'teachers' had stressed that the ability to eat anything to hand was a strategic advantage, and essential to his survival --both long term and short-- which, Alex declared, had proven to be true on too many occasions to count, particularly during his two week stint in the dreaded silo which gave him nightmares to this day.

Alex had once confided to Walter that the school-masters made every student drink his own urine every morning. Those not quick enough to comply were forced to drink the urine of every person on their ward. As there were thirty children in each ward, every one of them learned to comply very quickly.

Only a life-threatening allergy excused a child from eating whatever was on the school's daily menu, and nobody ever got seconds.

Considering some of the items on the menu, Walter considered this a blessing --not that Alex agreed.

Due to special circumstances, Alex had spent his entire six years at the 'Academy' on half-rations. It had given him a willingness to finish whatever was put in front of him, whether he liked it or not, and a compulsion to do anything --wheedle, barter, steal, or dumpster dive-- to fill his stomach.

Alex Krycek ate haggis. He ate ramp. He ate Vegemite. He ate Limburger cheese. He ate chitlings. He ate crab brains. He ate blubber. He ate century eggs. He ate duran. He ate live fish, sea urchins, butter grubs, crickets, and those Guatemalan beetles that --he swore-- tasted like cinnamon. He ate pease pudding nine days old.

He ate shit.

He ate blachen.

Actually, Walter, thought, *eating* blachen was not all *that* bad. It was a condiment; shrimp paste, to be exact, but a little went a long way. As one flavor among many in some exotic Asian dish cooked in a restaurant far downwind it was pleasantly pungent. Walter had enjoyed every dish he'd ever eaten that contained it, whether Thai, Malay, Indonesian, or Indian.

No, the problem was not blachen. It was boredom.

Alex had recovered from his injuries, retired gracefully from the battlefield, and now spent his days doing housework, yardwork, everyday errands, surfing the Internet, and running up the
phone bill.

Since the threat from the aliens had ended, Alex had renewed his relationship with his step siblings, Irene, in Connecticut, and Jack, in New Mexico, and had --with the aid of Mulder's typically dead-on, if quirky, deductions-- found his brother Victor, in Toronto, after a thirty-six year separation.

Alex's life was as normal --as perfect-- as he had ever wished it to be on long, lonely nights under direr circumstances, but he simply didn't know what to do with himself. He had more money than he could spend in three lifetimes, so the need to accommodate himself to a regular, nine to five job held no appeal.

Walter had suggested he get a hobby.

Thus began a gamut of Tai Chi, photography, reading, swimming, karate, running, weight lifting, target shooting, star-gazing, and bird watching.

After this flurry of serial activities, Alex complained of feeling unfulfilled.

Walter suggested he try something new; some skill he hadn't used during his years as a secret agent. Something that he would enjoy learning. Something that transcended mere survival.

Alex pondered long and hard --and took a cooking class.

That was when the trouble began.

Alex's favorite food of all time was chocolate, so he naturally gravitated to a candy-making class which products proved such a hit, he graduated to pastries, which caused both Walter and him to gain fifteen pounds apiece.

After Walter bit the bullet and scheduled extra gym so they could lose those unwanted pounds, he took Alex aside and gently requested that he balance his culinary expertise with a main dish or three, preferably from one of the less fattening cuisines.

So it was that Alex decided if Yan Can Cook Kung Pao Chicken, so should Alex Krycek.

An encounter with blachen was inevitable.

The first time Alex used blachen, he was totally ignorant of its...'staying power.' It took a month to rid the kitchen of the smell. Unfortunately, the dish itself had been a taste sensation.

In order to avoid another month gagging on the lingering smell of rotted fish guts wrapped in wet cardboard, Alex took his wok to the grill on the balcony.

Scent, as any good physicist can tell you, rises. Which is why the couples on the three floors above them called, respectively, the owner's association, animal control, and the paramedics, for
surely the stench which was causing the pregnant lady on 20 to vomit uncontrollably could have only sprung from the rotting corpse of some unfortunate vermin that had died in the ventilation system.

When the smell was, instead, tracked to Skinner's condo, he had been given a warning slip by the chairman of the owner's association. Such inhospitable actions would not go unnoted.

Dinner, unfortunately, had been a palate pleasing success.

Tempted, like any junkie, to abuse the now 'out-lawed' substance yet again, Alex --in deference to the delicate condition of his upstairs neighbor, moved his cooking aparatus to the building's sub-basement garage.

The result: complaints from everyone who parked their car near Walter's assigned parking space about the lingering stench; Alex's --and dinner's-- surprise dousing from the impressively sensitive
sprinkler system, which had been set off by a sudden grease flare in the wok; a lecture from the fire department, which had responded to the automatic alarm set off by the activation of said sprinkler system, about the illegal use of open flames in an area saturated with flammable gases and floor stains; and yet another warning slip from the owner's association.

Dinner had been ruined by the deluge.

Walter had driven his car into utter chaos: fire engines, hoses deployed; flooded parking lot; irate neighbors; ruined dinner, and a decidedly sopping and out-of-sorts lover.

Walter took the elevator up to his 17th floor condo accompanied by his pouting, half-drowned Rat, who was dragging his cooking apparatus about him like Marley's ghost, the fugitive odor of frying blachen wafting about them like the remains of run-over skunk.

Walter, realizing that his lover needed to vent --in more ways than one-- prompted Alex to disclose the sordid details of his latest blachen debacle while they soaked, two man Luge-style, in the bath tub. After he insistently put his exhausted --but odor-free-- lover to bed, he trooped downstairs, phoned in an order for pizza, and waited for the deliveryman in the livingroom, staring at the second warning slip like a seer scrying through a crystal ball.

Walter had moved into the Vista Towers condo complex twelve years ago, upon his separation from his estranged, now late, wife Sharon. Located in Crystal City, a chic, bedroom community for diplomats and high paid government flacks, six miles from his then place of employment, it had been a refuge from the turmoil of his personal life, and the professional compromises demanded by the Consortium and the political machinations of his co-workers.

He no longer worked for the F.B.I., having given it up in order to protect his lover from the death throes of the Consortium. It was no longer convenient to his place of employment. Even after twelve years of continued habitation, the decorator-furnished livingroom was surprisingly spare of personal touches, virtually devoid of the imprint of its inhabitants' personalities. Anonymity had been an easy, non-choice way to avoid facing the void that passed for his life. But impersonality was no longer the comfort it had been. Now, it was an negation of his attempt to build a future with Alex. The strict, bland conformity imposed upon his life choices by the owner's association now seemed an imposition upon his emerging individuality.

The pizza came.

Walter paid for it, then carted it upstairs with a couple bottles of beer. He settled himself into the bed, snuggling next to his now dry and pleasantly toasty-warm lover, and interchanged bites of pizza with slugs of beer and spicy kisses.

When the last bite of crust had been sopped with the dregs of beer, and the cardboard container crushed into the bedside waste bin, Walter told Alex to clear his schedule. It was time to give up this no longer useful, temporary refuge for a new haven where two, no-longer desperate men could forge a new life together. Somewhere where the smell of blachen could hover over them like a little black cloud without out-raging the neighbors, while the taste of blachen could enliven and fulfill the men who dared to eat it.

SAMBAL UDANG

Sambal is a multi-purpose condiment used throughout Indonisia, Malaysia and southern India.
There are as many types as spaghetti sauce recipes, but the most basic version is a mixture of chile, brown sugar, and salt. This version is Malaysian and uses shrimp and blachen, which is a paste made from shrimp and salt.

1/2 lb medium-sized prawns, shelled, with tails intact.
1 cup coconut milk
3 tbs peanut or coconut oil (or 2 tbls of one of these oils and 1 tbs
sesame oil, for added flavor)
1 two inch piece of lemon grass
4 Thai bird chiles, seeded (you can substitute serrano peppers)
4 dried red chiles
8 small onions
1 and 1/2 ounce blachen
1 handful of skinned, roasted peanuts chopped

Pound together the thai bird and dried red chile peppers, onions, and blachen in a mortar.
Heat the oil in a frying pan or wok with the lemon grass stalk.
Add the pounded ingredients, and peanuts fry until fragrant.
Lower heat.
Add coconut milk.
Boil. Reduce the sauce to desired thickness.
Discard lemon grass.
Add prawns and stir till cooked. Don't overcook the shrimp.

Set aside in a bowl.

GARLIC FRIED NOODLES
1 pound cooked cellophane (mung bean) or rice noodles, flat, a little
broader than fettucinni
(follow package directions for preparing)
3 tbs oil (as above)
1 bunch scallions, finely sliced
1 bunch corriander (cilantro) or parsley, chopped
2 thumbs fresh ginger, grated
2 limes, juiced
1 tbs soy sauce
1 lb spinach sliced
3 to 12 cloves garlic, minced
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Heat oil in frying pan or wok, add garlic until toasted brown, about
two minutes.
Add scallions, ginger, soy sauce, and lime juice.
Stir for 20 to 30 seconds.
Add the noodles, corriander, and spinach.
Cook until the spinach wilts.
Add the Sambal Udang. Toss.
Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Serves 4