By admin | October 18, 2009
buffalo soup
This is some really tasty buffalo soup (gaeng juut nua kwai [แกงจึดเนื้อควาย]) that was prepared at a recent wedding I attended. I want to reiterate: it was really, really tasty. Part of the wedding routine was to purchase an entire buffalo and pig to prepare the massive amount of food required for the guests. You can see more details on the overall preparation in another post. I’m going to focus on preparing the buffalo soup here.
In the pictures below, you can see that the buffalo gets totally dismantled. Not an ounce of meat is spared and I’d be willing to bet even those bones will be used for something. Inside the large pot is what I believe to be brain pieces. That’s what I was told on two separate occasions, but one said it was buffalo and another said it was pig which leads me to wonder if it even is brain. It did look unlike any other meat I’ve ever seen (except possibly the pig head I’ve talked about before) so I will assume it is, indeed, brain material.
Once all the meat was gathered, it needed to be prepared for the soup. Buffalo meat is notoriously tough so it needed to be simmered for a long time to get it ready. No need for a lid when you have banana leaves! I should specify that this is actually meat from water buffaloes, not the buffalo that comes to mind for most Americans. Water Buffaloes are notoriously scrawny and with tough meat. Even so, the expert chefs prepared some perfectly tender buffalo meat for the gaeng juut. It reminded me of the taste and texture of roast beef and I enjoyed every spoonful. Most of the other foods were a bit too spicy for me.
no waste
the few leftovers
brain pieces
time to cook
the finished product
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By admin | October 18, 2009
Santal sherbet
While wandering around in Chiang Rai we encountered a tiny little shop specializing in homemade ice cream and sherbet. I picked santal (gratawn [กระท้อน] in Thai) over the other interesting flavors which included durian and longan.
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By admin | August 6, 2009
Thai mushroom dip
Thai cuisine is notorious for including chili dips containing just about anything. And, if you can withstand the spice, they are all extraordinarily tasty. I have posted about quite a few different chili dips (nam prik [น้ำพริก]) in the past, and I plan to write about many more in the future. This particular one is call nam prik hed [น้ำพริกเห็ด] which literally means mushroom chili sauce. As with most chili dips, I was eating it with rice and fresh vegetables. It was very tasty so please forgive me for eating half of it before I took the photo. By that point I was forced to take a break since my mouth was burning so much. Pain is the price I expect to pay when I sample these tasty dips.
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Well, you can never have too many photos of scorpions so here you go!
Nice scorpion
แมงป่อง (maeng bpong)
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Grilled chicken gizzards
This is a skewer of grilled chicken gizzards (sitting on top a bag of hot dogs, of course). Called gun gai yang [กึ๋นไก่ย่าง] in Thai, gizzards are a secondary stomach used by some animals to grind up food. They are actually quite a popular food throughout the world. I am actually very surprised this is the first time I have ever encountered them in Thailand. I found them to be quite chewy and, as expected, have a taste similar to other interior chicken parts I’ve eaten. They aren’t something that wets my palate, but perhaps if they were prepared a bit more elegantly…
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Our supplies
This year for the 4th of July we all went over to a friend’s house for a nice BBQ. It was great! We had all sorts of our favorite foods including hot dogs and hamburgers, macaroni salad, potato salad, corn, potatoes, and even kielbasi and sauerkraut. I brought pork and chicken kebabs in two different kinds of marinade. One was just BBQ sauce and the other was some middle eastern lemon and mint mixture. We were all surprised at how great they were. I love trying all these exotic foods, but I also love the foods I grew up with. Let’s just keep it at: I love food!
The grill
Posted in america, food | Tagged america, food, meat |
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Ready to eat
Well, it didn’t take long to prepare those. Throw them into the wok with a bit of soy sauce and there you go. So now I have this stir-fried assortment of bugs sitting in front of me. I won’t be digging in too much, though. I just had a sample of each and that is enough for me. They all taste pretty much the same and not bad at all, but I’ve blogged and tasted many bugs in the past. Although maybe the perfect analogy just came to mind: soggy potato chips. That is exactly what the texture and taste is like so if you can handle that, you can definitely handle a serving of grasshoppers, water beetles, and crickets. Just close your eyes first…
closeup!
Another angle!
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What a surprise!
I came home just the other day to discover that someone had purchased a bag of treats. Maybe I should be more specific and say a bag of Thai treats…AKA bugs. Yep, I encountered a variety bag of bugs including grasshoppers (dtakadaen [ตั๊กแตน]), water beetles (malaeng dtapdtao [แมลงตับเต่า]), and mole crickets (malaeng sawn[แมลงซอน]). I have tried many bugs in my time here in Thailand, but of these three I had only encountered the grasshoppers before. All these bugs were freshly killed and ready to be fried up. Stay tuned for an update.
Three different kinds
water beetle (แมลงตับเต่า)
mole cricket (แมลงซอน)
grasshopper (ตั๊กแตน)
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Well, here’s a few memories from my trip to India. Now I have been to India before–it was almost exactly five years ago. After my previous two weeks in Mumbai and Goa, I moved on to Thailand and there was such a contrast that I had pretty much decided I had no need to ever go back to India again. First of all, I found India to be very dirty. Everything was old and broken. And the Indians…well, I’ll just say they have their own way of doing things. It was actually quite dissappointing because I was so excited about going to India in the first place.
Anyway, despite having thought I was done with India, sure enough I found myself in Mumbai again five years later. Unfortunately, it hasn’t changed at all. It is just as dirty, grungy, and old as it was the first time. Slums everywhere, people sleeping all over the streets (a huge amount of the population is unemployed and homeless-I think more than 50%), tons of pollution, and really not much to do at all.
At least I was there for a reason: a friends wedding. In this regard I defintely got to experience a part of India I never would have otherwise. Staying at the Royal Mumbai Yacht Club was certainly an experience. And it was nice having some old friends around, too. Even so, I think it’s pretty safe to say that none of us really enjoyed India.
Anyway, on to the photos:
India 2009 (the album has a few mistakes that I am working on fixing)
Posted in photos, travel |
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By admin | April 18, 2009
Yum!
Alright, you knew it was going to happen. It happens every year. So here it is: the obligatory trash plate post. Boy, my mouth is watering just looking at these. I should start selling these in Thailand. At least give my friends who have never heard of such a thing witness the magic within. I wonder if it could catch on?
Beautiful!
Posted in america, food | Tagged america, food |
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