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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chocolate covered seaweed

I was at Chatujak Market around Valentine’s Day this year where I encountered some Thai TV stars and their crew promoting these chocolate covered seaweed treats. It’s a very odd combination and reminds me of something the people that eat peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches might enjoy. Seaweed is very popular in Thailand even though it is definitely not a traditional food here. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the popularity of Japanese and Korean food, music, fashion, and games with middle to higher class teenagers. If it Japanese or Korean culture, they will force themselves to like it and fit in with the current fad. When I did taste it, it was more or less exactly as expected. Something along the lines of crispy, salty chocolate. I won’t plan on buying these as a Valentine’s Day gift anytime soon.

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Looks delicious

This is an exquisite Thai dessert. Jackfruit stuffed with sweet sticky rice and covered in sweetened coconut cream (khao niaw kanun [ข้าวเหนียวขนุน]). The different jackfruit pieces also have different flavors of sticky rice in them (notice the colors?) but I’m not sure what they are. There’s not much else to say about this one except that the flavors work excellent and I wish I had more. Yum!

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Pumpkin pie

This here is one of my favorite Thai desserts. I call it pumpkin pie, although technically the filling is a custard. Thai’s call it fak tawng sangkayaa [ฝักทอง สังขยา]. The cool part, as you can see, is that it is actually cooked in the pumpkin itself! This works out great for me because I always loved the traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, but only the filling. I would always leave the crust behind. now I don’t have to worry about any crust since the crust is essentially a filling as well.

Yeah, I know Thai pumpkins aren’t as pretty as Western ones. Despite that ugliness (I know I’ve talked about that somewhere around here before), they are much more tasty. Especially when made into a sweet dessert like this.

After a little bite

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The egg

Yet another tasty Thai dessert. This is called bua loi kai waan [บัวลอยไข่หวาน] which literally means sweet rice flour balls and egg. It is served out of a hot, coconut cream broth being continually stirred in a huge vat. A raw egg is then cracked open and plopped in it and you are ready to eat. The egg gets poached pretty quickly in the hot mixture. This is a really good one but it can’t be very healthy for you.

the rice flour balls

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candied lotus root

Candied lotus roots is a snack especially popular among the Chinese community. These are fairly thick cross sections of lotus root that have been candied. Don’t ask me about the candying process; I’ll just let you know that they are very sweet and kind of like a gummi candy. I don’t really notice any lotus flavor, just sweetness. Lotus root is also used in various soups and salads that usually have some Chinese background to them.

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A simple dessert

This is a really simple Chinese dessert. These are traditionally given as an offering during Chinese religious holidays and they are very abundant during those times. Some regular food stalls might even shut down their normal service and specialize in these for a few days prior to a significant day. After they are down with the offering, though, there are usually lots of them left over. I decided to try a few and, with my generalized opinion of Chinese food, found them to be very bland. They are very, very thick and jelly like with just a little bit of flavor and sweetness.  I found very little difference in taste between the different colors and size.  If I had to guess, I would say they are mostly just rice flour with some sort of gelatin thrown in. Nothing special taste-wise, but very important religiously.

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Nice presentation

I have no idea what kind of cheese this is, but it was fabulous. It was served as a dessert at a decent restaurant in Italy. The cheese itself was very light and sweet, with a berry sauce on the side. I can barely get any cheese here in Asia, let alone these more unique types. My mouth is salivating now just looking at the photo.

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Tasty Thai dessert drink

You can’t admire all the interesting food on this side of the world while ignoring the huge variety of drinks.  Many of the drinks are actually desserts that are just packaged in a convenient way.  Here’s one particular drink (lawd chawng [ลอดช่อง]) and I’m not sure exactly what it is, but something along the lines of a thick coconut milk liquid with lots of pink and green rice flour strings sometimes flavored with pandan or other fruits. Delicious! (but unhealthy)

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