Mushroom soup

I recently made a visit to a semi-famous Isaan restaurant in Bangkok called Crok Mai Thai Lao [ครกไม้ไทยลาว]. The name refers to the ever ubiquitous wooden mortar and pestle required for somtom and northeastern chili dips. Most Isaan restaurants in Bangkok are little more than temporary street stalls whereas Crok Mai is relatively large and much more permanent. In fact, it’s permanent enough to even have its own website: Crok Mai Thai Lao. It is also well known for the expansive menu it harbors, featuring regular favorites such as grilled chicken, somtom, curries, and soups all the way to frogs, snails, bugs and vegetables not often found in Bangkok. There are way too many interesting things to try and I will have to make many visits to test them all. I even noticed at least 12 different kinds of bugs on the menu! Alas, as often happens when a restaurant becomes popular, the price is higher than typical Isaan fare and the portions seemed quite small. Even so, the chance at tasting all these new foods makes it more than worth it for me.

This was actually my second visit to Crok Mai. After my first visit I sort of forgot about it until recently. On this visit I went for a nice variety of food. First, I chose a mushroom soup (gaeng hed paw [แกงเห็ดเพาะ]). I found a lot of information about hed paw at thai-mushroom including the common name of barometer earthstars. Wikipedia states that many “North American sources often describe [them] as being of either unknown edibility,or too tough to be edible.” I think these are relatively uncommon in Thailand, but mushrooms were edible and I didn’t get sick. Actually, they were very tasty with an earthy flavor and a lot of fun to eat too since they (sort of) popped in your mouth.

Ant egg omelet

Ant eggs!

Second, I got an ant egg omelet (kai jiaow kai mod daeng [ไข่เจียไข่มดแดง]) which was actually disappointing. I have had red ant eggs several times before (ant egg soup), and this was the stingiest anyplace has ever been with the eggs. I was expecting a plump spoonful of eggs with every bit of omelet, but I could barely taste the ones in this. If you look close enough, you can see a few white eggs mixed in there, but more or less it tasted like a plain old omelet. The only way I recognized the eggs was the occasional pop (like the mushrooms) when I got one. Now I know: never skimp on the ant eggs in your omelet.

bee grubs

bee grubs closeup

Third was some bee larva (rang phung yaang [รังผึ้งย่าง]). I have also had this before, but I wanted to see how it would be prepared here. The serving was small and basic: some grilled up bee grubs and a bit of salt. It had an odd flavor that I found to be very good, although it was slightly pasty at times. It’s strange because not only do you eat the larva, but you also eat the hive around the grubs. If the hive had been out in the wild longer, I believe the meaty grubs would have turned into bees, the hive would have waxed over, and then it would have been filled with fresh, sweet honey. Sometimes its amazing how much difference a little bit of time can make for a potential food.

grilled frog

sour fish

Fourth, I ate a meat dish: grilled frog (gop yaang [กบย่าง]). This was the most surprising plate of the day. On the previous occasions I’ve eaten frog in Thailand, they just minced it up, bones and all. In this case, it was actually a whole grilled frog. I was surprised at the amount of meat on the frog and it was quite delicious. This cliche saying truly is fitting here: tastes just like chicken!

And finally, I needed some sort of fish so the meal was finished off with some bplaa som (bplaa som [ปลาส้ม]). The bplaa som was big and tasty with large bones. Large bones are good because they are much easier to pick out compared to the usual array of small and microscopic bones you encounter. I have talked about bplaa som before here, but to quickly summarize, it is basically a fish that is covered with rice and water which is then left to ferment (or rot) at room temperature for a few days before cooking. I did a quick search for a recipe and found this funny quote:

9. Soak it in a bowl of beaten egg before you deep fry. Don’t forget to remove the rice you see outside the fish. Leave the rice in side its mouth and stomach there. I think it will be ok.

All in all, this was a refreshing meal. Thai food is almost always delicious, but if I had to choose a region, it would definitely be Isaan-style food. I find it to be more exotic with bold tastes that can really get to you. Whether it’s salty, sour, bitter, sweet, or, most noticeably, spicy, northeastern cuisine just seems to have more oomph in it.

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Nice scorpion

แมงป่อง (maeng bpong)

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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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Bag full of ants

While sounding weird, this dish is amazingly simple: ants mixed with coconut. In Thai called miang mod daeng sai maphrao [เมี่ยงมดแดงใส่มะพร้าว] which literally means ‘mixed ants with coconut’. From what I hear, they collect the ants by knocking their nest out of a tree into a basket. Then they have to quickly (these ones bite) take the basket with a wet cloth and somehow get the ants into a bucket full of water. Yeah, I’m missing some details here, but in the end the ants die by drowning. Finally, they are stir-fried with the coconut and you have yourself a nice tasty snack! I don’t find them to have much flavor, but they’re not bad. Definitely one of the better insects I’ve tried.

Hanging off the spoon

Big spoonful

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Snails!

Here are some snails we order in Ho Chi Minh City. An interesting food, but I’m not a big snail lover in the first place and these certainly did sway me. I suppose not too bad, but I always find snails a bit rubbery. Maybe I have just never had any good ones. Anyway, there are a lot of large snails around Southeast Asia and these ones seemed pretty big to me. I wonder if the French influence has anything to do with snail consumption, or perhaps the enjoyment of escargot is a result of Southeast Asian influence on France? They pulled all the snails out of the shell first, chopped them up, threw them in a mixture of spices and batter, then restuffed the shells. I did enjoy being able to easily get the stuffing out by pulling on the ‘plant-stem handles’. I still think I prefer it when you take the snail right out of the shell yourself. Anyway, I am always tempted when I see snails on a menu, I just need to get it into my head that I don’t really enjoy them.

The mixture inside

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Vendor's cart

There’s never enough bugs for sale, is there? Here’s a typical insect vendor’s cart with all the bugs divided into neat little compartments. And of course, I had to get a closeup of the lovely maengda yet again.

Maengdaa again!

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Yum!

Here we have (again!) some:

• ants (miang mot daeng [เมี่ยงมดแดง])
• water cockroaches (maengdaa [แมลงดา])
• bamboo worms (rot duan [รถด่วน]). There name literally means train which sort of represents their shape.

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Tiny bugger

These tiny bugs, called gudjii [กุ๊ดจี่] up in Isaan are another unique snack. These bugs are actually members of the dung beetle family. In other words, they are bugs that live almost exclusively on animal poop. And many types don’t just eat the poop, but actually play with it by rolling it into little balls. I wonder if that’s what makes them so tasty?

I found these insects quite entertaining as we caught them. They fly really slowly towards the lights in the house, then get blinded and fall to the floor. Often times they land on their back where they have a seriously difficult time getting back on their feet. While they’re laying there we can just snatch them up and throw them in a little cup of water. They can’t climb up the smooth sides and the water doesn’t let them use their wings.

Once you have enough of them, just throw them in the wok for a quick stir fry, maybe add a few spices and some fish sauce, and there you go. They really do taste pretty good and you can just pop them in your mouth. I also find it interesting that I have never seen these for sale anywhere. I guess they’re just not as profitable as the maengdaa and mod daeng.

I also found a Thai site with a few more pictures and information on dung beetles: malaeng.com .

Tasty little critters

Stuck in the bowl

Ready to eat

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Look at them ants

This was a really tasty home cooked meal. Seriously. Gaeng pak waan sai kai mod daeng [แกงผักหวานใส่ไข่มดแดง], or in English, a vegetable soup with red ant eggs. Ant eggs are used in a couple of Isaan dishes, but they are seasonal. Another common way to serve them is in an omelet. You can click on the photos for some closeup views of the ant eggs, but it’s interesting to note how developed some of them are. You can actually make out the ant form.

As for the taste, it’s quite good. The ant eggs have a pleasant, but not very strong taste and sort of burst in your mouth, just like caviar. If you’re a sushi fan, you’ll know just what I mean. The soup is a basic soup with the local vegetable pak waan, (Melientha suavis) which literally means sweet vegetable although the vegetable is by no means sweet.

I really enjoyed this, especially since it was homemade. You can occasionally order these out at restaurants in Bangkok such as Vientiane House (not recommended) and Crok Mai Thai Lao (recommended, but you need a Thai speaker), but you’ll be lucky to have a handful of ant eggs in it. Our homemade soup was just loaded with them. Lovely!

If your curious where the ant eggs come from you can look here.

Cooking up some ant egg soup

A tasty bowl

Just a baby

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