To know me well is to expect this post to be long. Grab some tea, start a fire and slide your arms through your snuggie before you start this read.
Disclaimer: Images within this blog posting are of a graphic nature, please view at your own risk.
The title of this post might as well have been Food Porn #1, now that I've been looking back at these pictures.
Disclaimer: Images within this blog posting are of a graphic nature, please view at your own risk.
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| Pit on top of mint and coriander |
The last few days have been a culinary adventure of sorts, filled with nothing but Southeast Asian dishes, either foreign or familiar. It started with fish, tossed with lemongrass, garlic, ginger, shallot, mint, lemon and whipped egg, then wrapped scientifically by San in two sheets of banana leaf, a strip around the outside to hold everything together and punched together with a halved toothpick. I don’t mean hamburger style. San literally held this thing in her left hand, and with an onion chopping knife, sliced it in two, along the grain, from top to bottom. I know I already talked about this in my last entry, but it still fascinates me. I suppose I don’t see the true practicality of the matter. The risk benefit analysis I run through in my head tells me that it’s not worth the 50% toothpick savings. A toothpick probably costs no more than 1 kip anyhow (That’s about $0.00125 for you farangs out there.) If you haven’t noticed, by the way, Sophia and I have been reclaiming and embracing the word farang, which is hardly used up here in Laos anyhow; I haven’t heard it once and Jacqui has said they hardly ever use it. Furthermore, it’s not derogatory like in Thailand, but the locals still get a giggle out of our self-deprecating overuse of their word.
It seems like 5 days is too long for me not to have written much about food, so I’m going to attempt to stay on that topic here and detail a few of our last few meals, in the excessive, gory detail that I often do. I’m no sommelier, but I do appreciate a good dish, and my love for tropical herbs is renewing with invigoration. My days at home I stuck to typical American fare, which of course borrows from many other cultures. What I mean is that I didn’t necessarily eat American, but I ate western, meaning it was dominated by Italian, French, and American cuisines. A grass-fed beef tenderloin supplanted in our fridge fresh from the slaughterhouse from our neighbors farm-ranch got roasted in a—what soon became—portabella demi-glace at 85°C until the thermometer read 52°C.
My parents left the weekend before I, so I made a braised pork tenderloin with what I coined a “spice fig jam”—one of my proudest kitchen feats and accompanied by a number of tapas. The following week I took some beef short ribs out of the freezer (also from our neighbor) and braised them in red wine and beef jus. They were alright, which I expected, because hasty, “in-a-pinch” braising is technically impossible. I won’t blame this on anyone but myself, Lindsay. Actually, I will, Lindsay. I won’t risk my culinary reputation for my friends’ sake. But thank you for the dates.
I thought such indulgences might be over. My fears of that were quickly waylaid upon my arrival in Vientiane. We landed at 11:00 AM and walked into our convertible-open-air home with our noses zinging and bellies churning out of emptiness. We ate squash soup and a salad of cilantro, field greens, tomatoes and ground pork. There was pork in the squash soup as well, adding both texture and flavor, as though the organically grown, purely indigenous, non-GM squash needed anything but a good mashing and stewing to fill your heart with glee and your lungs with a yawn.
Larp was the next day’s meal. Watching it being made, and seeing it on the table atop a bed of lettuce reminded me, and to use the term endearingly would not do justice, of Pismai’s Tiger Cry, her own incantation of Laab, a common Thai salad that Pismai makes with beef. In Laos, San makes it with pork, and it’s mixed with lemongrass, lime, lime leaves, mint leaves, garlic and shallot, all fresh and only the meat cooked. Served cold with sticky rice. There was one ingredient missing, peppers. I politely and sarcastically complained to San. After telling her about Tiger Cry that she had not made it spicy, and that I did not believe it was made without peppers. This was all through our mediator, Jacqui, so I’m not sure that my sarcasm, or the rhetorical nature of my comments was transferred. Nonetheless, I was promised spicy the next day. Pit pit, I heard Jacqui and San joking. Then I said, “Baw falang pit, Chao pit Lao.” Transliterated, that would mean ‘no foreigner spicy, yes Lao spicy.’
My wish became her command and when she showed up the next day she had a bag full of peppers. These things were short and skinny like Thai peppers, but descended with these swelling rings, bulging outward circumferentially. A foreboding appearance, which made me question what I had really gotten myself into. They came in all different colors, just like sweet bell peppers at home, and were about two to three inches in length. This was the day we had fish. She made five pieces without pit, and then, for me and her, she made three with pit. She took a handful of peppers, about 10 or 12 and washed them in the sink, put them in the mortar after taking off the stems, and began to smash them with the bomb shaped pestle.
Its form alluded to the troubled and ongoing history of this country since the Vietnam war in the late sixties, and to the bombies’ casings used as cups and bowls by villagers throughout the country despite the plague that they wreaked on their country folk. Jacqui and Roger (her husband) have a number of these displayed on an end table next to the staircase. A sternly on-looking Roger is photographed at the dinner table with them, and this image is propped behind and to the right of the real things. Their effect is apparent, but we will save discussion of bombies—an unjustifiably endearing term—for a later date.
The peppers hardly crushed, ground, or torn apart, San threw them into a smaller bowl into which she’d already aliquoted two fifths of the total portion of fish and tossed it with the beaten egg, garlic, ginger, shallot, lemongrass, parsley, coriander and soy sauce. Here is a funny thing: Jacqui stocks the house with low sodium soy sauce, a heart-healthy option, to which San supplements a lack of flavor with sea salt. As I explained rather ambiguously and reticently earlier, she then folded banana leaves around a heaping serving-spoonful of the fragrant mixture, stapled it shut and put it in a pot, over the stove to steam for about 20 minutes. After this, she took it out, opened one up and I verified that it was cooked and that it was sep. For the farangs, that means good. (You’ll notice I’ve stopped italicizing farang. This is necessary for proper reclamation of the word.) That was the first five, the farang batch. Next she put in the three that she’d made pit pit and steamed those. I of course tried these once they were done. Verifiably, San had done my wish justice, these things were pretty spicy. Aside the steaming pot, San had started a sauce which consisted of garlic, shallot, diced tomatoes, and soy sauce. After about thirty minutes of simmering, pressing, and stirring, San dipped a spoon in and tried it, nodded and offered me the spoon. First, she said something like “Ohm,” which I interpreted, with her charades as “smell it,” so I did, it smelled, well like a spicy tomato sauce. I dipped the spoon in. Ignoring the fact that I had managed to fill my spoon half with a large chunk of pepper and seeds, I sipped it in. A hot salsa, delicious. Then steam blew out my ears, and my face began to drip. Mind you, it was already glistening from the heat and humidity of the day and the fire off the stove, but now it starting balling up into droplets, a few of which I could feel threatening to roll down my forehead. I turned to Sophia, and clandestinely wiped the moisture from my face as I handed her the spoon and said, “mmmm, that’s good,” nodding quickly. I turned back to San, “Pit,” she responded, “Pit?”“Sep, sep lai.” Good, very good.
If you chilled this stuff it would have been nearly comparable to Sam Llona’s famous roasted tomato salsa. For those of you who haven’t had that stuff, run, bike, drive, fly or boat to Portland ASAP and find Sam. He makes some good shit. And don’t be surprised if he forces and few beers down your throat either. That’s good hospitality, people.
We waited, what seemed like an eternity to finally eat the stuff, took a bunch of pictures of the table, the food, the people. San was missing though, which means I would single-handedly have to eat the three spicy ones myself. I took one, unwrapped it to find the white ball, adorned with sunken green ribbons and passed it to Sophia, there were no peppers. I took the next one from across the circle in which they had sat arranged on the serving plate and opened it on mine. This one was white, with an orange hue and the green ribbons of lemongrass, parsley accompanied by chunks and strips of red, orange, yellow, and green peppers and their semi-toxic seeds. I scraped the white fish-fat deposits from the leaf, and melded them into the ball and then added the salsa, an assortment steamed vegetables, including chayote, which is common here, and wild sticky rice to the banana leaf-covered plate.
I would like to take this short paragraph to re-emphasize my newfound indulgences in Southeast Asian food.
As I already talked about in my last post, that night we headed out to see the Molam concert at the French Center, a supposed rhythmic, dialectical story-telling accompanied by guitar, drums, and other instruments. But we didn’t see the concert, because we stopped for noodles. This slowly morphed into pad Thai and pad Thai in an omelet. The noodles were skinny and aside from the coriander, parsley, and mint on the plate, a side bowl of peanuts (normal), dried, crushed peppers (normal), and large sugar crystals came along. My first beer, a large bottle of BeerLao was good and stung the back of my mouth lightly with an alcoholic afterbite. It was first served in a glass to Jacqui, but I quickly swiped in away, making way for fresh lemonade, which the other three had each ordered. I gulped my glass quickly and waited for it to be refilled. I jokingly fought with Sophia for her lemonade, of which she eventually offered me a taste. Jacqui warned that this stuff was good, unlike most lemonades in the US, which consisted of a strong sugar content and a dash of citrus. I reminded me of the Seattle Golf Club lemonades, strong citrus smoothed just enough with the natural sugar in these indigenous lemons—small, round, and thin-skinned. I thought of the limes of Perú, unbeatable citrus savor, and then ahead to the ceviche I would make in the upcoming months.
We returned after adventurously scouring the store to find San and Clinton (that’s her son, named after our Arkansan ex-prez) cutting slices of pork from the hunks in the soup, and cleaning meat off the bony piece. These went back in. After more cooking, meat and some soup was scooped out and individually served into bowls. In the remaining liquid, which was abundant, noodles were started, and boiled for a minute, two at most before being served on top of each existing serving.
I approached the table, with our bowls at the ready, two plates full of greens, lemons and pit at either end. I sat down and began tagging the food, which looked good. Seriously good. I put my camera down and San stood over me. Although I’d eaten breakfast in that seat, whenever she’d been here, I always sat opposite. She motioned for me to get up. Everyone laughed, and I obliged, switching napkins (we use cloth here), and I’d already put mine at San’s place-setting. I took more pictures from the other side and then began to dump in greens. Parsley, Coriander, Mint, and then hand-cracked pit and dumped them in on top. On the table sat a small dish with a gray lump. I asked what it was. Fish paste, I scooped a small chunk out with my chopstick and began to swirl it in my bowl, with the rest of the goodies I had already dumped on top. Then I added more soup and stirred it all again before diving in.
I never ate pho until the end of junior year in college, despite its growing popularity ever since the beginning of high school. Of course, people raved about it. The first time I went was on Santa Clara street, kitty corner from Lee’s Sandwich Shop in San Jose. It was good, I spent 7 dollars and filled myself up. I had been generous in adding both sriracha and garlic-chili sauce, and was sweating lightly by the end of the meal, very fulfilled. From there on, people would always argue that one pho restaurant was better than the next, but to be honest, I really could never tell much difference, with little preference for one restaurant or the other, except by price (which were all relatively low enough not to warrant any real discrimination anyway). San’s pho was different. It was better. Every flavor jumped out of the bowl, either when sipping through the spoon or chopsticking noodles and coriander deep into my mouth (take that whichever way you please). This, and excuse my French, was phucking good pho. Compliments.
Jacqui stayed at home last night and took some time to relax. It was Friday evening, afterall, and she had been working away all week, nonstop at God-knows-what, in her lovely air-conditioned office and was up until 02:00 working on her budget the night before. She sent Tu Hkawng, Sophia, Joey and me out to find dinner by the river. Now, we live on the river, but she meant in the middle of town. I don’t think I’ve said much about Joey up until now, because we haven’t had much interaction. Now that it was Friday, and he was forced to hang out and show around the farangs, we got to know each other a little bit better. This post is not about him, but I will let you get to know him better later on, and maybe you can check Sophia, aka Slouch’s blog to see if she’s talked about him. http://thelaomeow.blogspot.com We got into downtown and walked around, the day had been hot, but less hot than the rest, and a nice breeze had been picking up since the morning, keeping the effective temperature below 28, humidity included. I brought the FE with the 50mm and encouraged the group not to wait for me if I stopped. A great collection of colorful lights down every street and around every corner contrasted the dark sky and illuminated the people, mostly storefront-seated farang. Just a block south, closer the river, we left the farang behind us, and found more unfamiliar faces seated at picnic table draped in red-checkered cloth, some covered under a tent. Groups of people sat here, eating, drinking, laughing, taking pictures of each other, drinking more.
Joey asked us if we wanted to eat here after conversing shortly with the hostess/waitress. He said he’s eaten here a bunch and it’s good so I just told him that we should go to his favorite place here. We sat down. Two tables behind us a group of six young women, all in their twenties roared as they ate, they seemed fun. We looked through the menu and Joey kept asking us what I wanted. I told him to pick. We ordered grilled fish, grilled chicken sausage, papaya salad, a vegetable curry and a beef curry. This was all new to me. I ordered a large BeerLao and Sophia ordered a small one. Tu Hkwang ordered a red wine in English, despite our waitress speaking to him in Lao. He’s Kachin, and speaks less Lao than Sophia and me, but he fits in until solicited into conversation. Then I remembered the bottles of alcohol Sophia and I had seen at the grocery store, against a flat blue or green background, a flower decorated the front and the word Champak. This was liquor made from a flower, clear white 80 proof. I asked the waitress if they had it. After a little lingual struggle we were on the same page. I said two, as I attempted to order for Sophia as a joke, then took one. The beers came. Tu Hkawng ended up with Spy, a red wine cooler, and was displeased and traded it in, though already opened for a beer. Joey had ordered a thick, frothy orange drink that he sipped through a straw, it looked good, I’ll have to get one. The food came. An entire fish, scaly and ashen white, not from char, but from the salt it had been rubbed in before put over the fire, a sausage, already sliced, and papaya salad. The curries weren’t out yet. I regret to remind you that I only brought the FE, so I don’t have pictures to post of any of this food. But it was like being amidst the filming of a food porno, so maybe best not to display online.
Joey put the back of his knife under the gills and scraped the meet away with his fork, gently and in one big piece. I did the same, taking a strip of scaly white, gray, and black skin connected to succulent white meat underneath, from along the spine. No bones came along. I balled up a piece of sticky rice in my left hand as Tu Hkawng sent his back and asked for steamed rice, which was easier on his stomach. He was nothing but trouble, I felt less farangy amidst all the locals. Maybe that was the BeerLao. I began to eat the fish, with a slight but distinct flavor of fish sauce apparent in my nostrils. I’d always wondered why it was called fish sauce; now I had evidence that justified the name, apart from the arrogant, sodium-rich aroma which it gave off. Then I stabbed a piece of sausage and ate that too. Good stuff. Perfectly browned, a nice brick-red skin glimmered before I lost focus of it. The champak liquor came (pronounced: champa) and after clearing my palate with wash of beer and a few swishes of saliva (I told you this would be gory) I got ready for the next new thing. Except I only asked for one. She brought me a tumbler full. This shit was served straight up, by the glass (10 oz worth) and cost no more than 2000 kip. If you do the math on the its about 6 drinks for a quarter, so ¢4.17 per drink. I love Earls on the Ave, but their shit is weak (I say that as a matter-of-speech) compared to the riverfront grill in downtown Vientiane. I picked up the glass after raving about it loudly. I went from having 3 drinks on the table to having 8, and for a quarter more, I think that means I love this country. I smelled it—smelled like alcohol—then sipped hard off the rim of the glass. Very smooth, and its floral beginnings were obvious. Unfortunately, after two easy swishes and some slow draining, I had nothing but the memory of taking a shot of Tanqueray from my parents’ cabinet senior year of high school. And yes, I admit that without shame, guilt, denial, or any loss of self-respect. That was also the last time I ever drank straight gin. That shit is nasty.
Next, on to the papaya salad. I think I talked about this, and if I didn’t Sophia did. The papayas here are surreal. They have a rich red hue, not that weak yellow-orange that they grow in Hawaii, and bursts with sugary-sweet flavor. I was looking forward to this papaya salad. Gary, Greg, and Pismai all raved about its popularity and their liking of it in Thailand, so I was jived. Joe shoveled it into his mouth, clearly one of his favorites as well. Except when I looked at it, it wasn’t what I expected. This was papaya greens, and pit mixed throughout. It also burst, but with a tangy quality dissimilar from that within the fruit itself. Ginger (king) added to this effect. The tough greens and peppers crunched loudly as I chewed them around, adding texture to this meal, and to this trip, that I had not had yet, and it was cold, refreshing. Sophia and Tu Hkawngs curries were pretty good, but that grilled fish was quite the fare. Sophia and I passed the champak liquor back and forth, unworried of passing germs. Tu Hkawng gulleted the last pound and we left. We found out today the flower comes from up north and has a high religious significance in Laos especially but across the region as well.
During dinner we had also met a nice man who detailed a simple theory he had about whities and Southeast Asia. It went like so: “Watch out, everyone has their threshold here. For some, it’s three days, others: three weeks, three months, or three years. Everyone’s got their threshold, and then they never go back. I haven’t been home in ages,” he spoke through a heavy Scottish accent which he’d claimed he’d lost. It was gone when he spoke Lao with Joey. He was fluent. He’s been here for fifteen years, in Vientiane and Nong Khai, right across the river.
We walked around Vientiane a little, but not enough to work off dinner. We ran into some of Joey’s friends and found a tuk tuk home to lak si, that’s kilometer 4. The cab ride was 30,000 kip. I’m going to get fat if I keep this up.
Good news on other fronts: I don’t have Dengue.
I'm also working on better organizing my flickr so it will be easier to view everything and grouped to look at different subject matter. Thanks for reading. Please comment and send me an email!
Flickr Food & People from Laos:
Go there to check out more food pics, and I'm going to start putting the karoake words there so we can all learn Lao together!
I am so hungry it's not funny. love the stories and love the photos. love, mom
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