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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dancing shrimp

During my recent adventures around Phayao I enjoyed this delicious meal. The first dish to arrive was dancing shrimp (goong dten [กู้งเต้น]). The bowl looks dirty already, but that’s because the shrimp weren’t very happy to be in there. The shrimp are actually still alive and flopping around while you eat them. The combination of no water and lots of chilies can’t be pleasant for the shrimp, but it does make for tasty food. I’ve posted about dancing shrimp before, but this was the first time I ever encountered the dish outside of Bangkok.

The second dish was deep-fried morning glory (pak bung grawp [ผักบุ้งกรอบ]) with an abundance of squid. The morning glory is very lightly battered and then flash fried so it has a soft, but crispy texture. It is covered with a sour spicy sauce that is typical of most Thai salads. The extra squid served with this one made it really tasty.

Lastly, we had some laab muu [ลาบหมู]. Laab is a common, traditional Isaan preparation for pork that minces it up along with some herbs and spices. Sometimes it includes only the meat whereas other times offal will be added for extra flavor. It is very tasty, but the introduction of what I believe to be fried shallots made this serving unlike any of the hundreds of laabs I have previously had. The shallots gave it a pleasantly sweet flavor which is strange for dish that is usually spicy and sour.

All in all, this meal was a great sample of some food served on the lake in Phayao province.

กู้งเต้น

deep-fried morning glory

northern laab

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Fresh oil

You can’t get any oil fresher than this! As I’ve demonstrated in many posts before, when an animal is killed in rural Thailand, every single piece gets used in one way or another. In this skillet is a big pile of pig fat that is getting melted down into some fresh oil that can be used in plenty of other preparations. In the image below, there is also a big plate of pig skin. This pig skin will be added to another famous Thai dish, laab [ลาบ] to add some texture. The skin is not really cooked much. It is still chewy and rubbery, just the way the Thai’s like it. It’s great to see them really utilizing their resources because, if this was left up to me, these would be some of the first things I would discard. I guess I need to work on being less wasteful.

pig skin

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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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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

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duck tongues

I wasn’t even fully aware that birds really had tongues, but sure enough here we have a plate full of grilled duck tongues (ลิ้นเป็ดย่าง [lin bped yaang]). Duck tongues aren’t terribly common, but if you go somewhere with an extensive menu you might run into them. They are considered a drinking snack and we ordered these at a Tawandaeng, a massive “German” beer garden place that features a variety of performances throughout the evening. Of course it was necessary to order the duck tongues when I saw them on the menu. They weren’t too bad, mostly tasting like fried stuff. Despite calling them grilled, as has been the case with many other Thai foods, I am almost positive they were actually deep-fried. I am not 100% sure, though, because I have never eaten a duck tongue before and it had a strange meaty and chewy texture with a few crunchy bits mixed in. I should have asked, but I was too awed by the oddness of the dish while I was working on the beer tower.

ลิ้นเป็ดย่าง

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mmm...turkey

Thanksgiving was more than a week ago, but we just had our belated feast. Turkey is not common in Thailand although it can be purchased at a pretty penny in most upscale grocery stores. If you do decide to splurge on a turkey, then you encounter the problem that ovens (and definitely not ones big enough for a turkey) are not common either. So how can we get a nice, big turkey cooked on Thanksgiving? Enter Tops delivery. We are fortunate enough that Tops will be happy to cook up a turkey for you and deliver it with some stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce. The only thing you need to worry about is carving it.

Our turkey arrived on time and hot. The guests brought dessert, salad, and mashed potatoes. I’m not sure if it was simply a dearth of turkey over the previous year or simply that it was good, but the Tops prepared turkey was delicious. In true Thanksgiving fashion, we had plenty of leftovers to last us a week later. A little bit expensive, but after you factor in the leftovers and holiday mood, it was totally worth it.

our 'buffet'

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ox tail soup

This is some ox tail soup I ordered in Jakarta. The soup was pretty good with a tasty broth. I did get a huge chunk of bony tail. In fact, it was so large that the majority of the bowl was filled with the bone. That’s too bad, though, because there was only one sliver of meat on the tail bone. Essentially, I only had a bowl of broth with some potatoes mixed in. With some more meat this would have been a tasty meal.

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Deer and goose meat

Nicely cooked goose meat

Some pheasant meat

Here’s a nice collection of some less common meats.  I certainly wouldn’t consider these rare or strange, but we don’t see them all that often.  And they sure are tasty!  This is venison, goose, and pheasant all three of which my friend hunted and smoked for our eating pleasure.  We should have made some Thai dipping sauces for them.

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