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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Grilled chicken and fish

You frequently see stands like this all over the countryside in Thailand. Oftentimes you will encounter a stretch of highway littered with ten or more of these stands in a row, each about 100 meters apart, and all waiting for a hungry customer to pull up. I often wonder how they could all make money and what makes a customer decide which one to stop at since they all seem identical. Apparently it’s just luck of the draw and how quickly a customer can slow down that determines if the vendor will get a sale. I see an opportunity for some operational analysis here since there must be “theoretically ideal” position in the line to place your stall. For example, I can’t imagine the first stall would be very profitable because that just alerts a driver to what is being sold over the next kilometer. No (sane) driver would have time to slow down for that first option, but they would have their eyes peeled for the competing stalls that followed. Hmm…I’ll have to think about this some more.

Well, after all that talk I must reveal that this photo was actually not from the highway, but taken in front of a restaurant in Phayao. Both the fish and chicken were fresh and tasty.

ไก่ย่าง and ปลาเผา

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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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squid ink rice and cheese

This was a weird fusion dish that was quite tasty. Rice cooked with squid ink topped with shrimp and cheese. Certainly not a common dish in Asia, although you really can expect any sort of fusion food in Hong Kong. Despite the odd combination, this dish worked quite well. I especially enjoyed the extra crispy grains of rice that were clinging to the edge of the clay pot. I’ll have to file this idea away if I ever run a fusion restaurant.

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Catfish 'fingers'

Here’s a plate of catfish pieces from Dinosaur BBQ.  I prefer to call them catfish ‘fingers’.  nothing too odd about these, but they are very different from the catfish in Thailand.  Thais eat a lot of catfish (bplaa duk [ปลาดุก]) prepared in many ways.  Thailand is also known for some of the largest catfish in the world: the mekong giant catfish.  These fish can be in excess of 250 kilograms!  Unfortunately, they are very endangered due to overfishing so I don’t plan on giving them a taste anytime soon.

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Odd looking geoduck

Fresh geoduck

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Bag full o' oysters

Here we have a freshly purchased bag of oysters (hoi nang rom [หอยนางรม]). Oysters are plentiful and cheap in Thailand, although not as good as those from abroad. I find the Thai ones to be quite large and somewhat sweet. They are very cheap, though. That bag there cost about $1.

No matter where your order the oysters around here, they are always served the same way: on a bed of ice with the following accompinaments.

• Crispy fried shallots
• A green, bitter vegetable known as gratin [กระถิน]. I don’t know of any common English name, but leuceana leucocephala might be its scientific name
• A thick sweet chili sauce called prik pao [น้ำพริกเผา]
• Freshly sliced chilis and garlic
• Sometimes another type of sauce which is the typical spicy-sour seafood sauce that comes with anything from the ocean
• Some lime wedges

All in all, a nice tasty dish.

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Oops...forgot the photo

Sorry about the photo. I guess I was hungry. This is my leftover yam bplaa salid [ยำปลา่สลิด], which basically translates as a sun-dried fish salad. There’s nothing too interesting about the salad, just your typical yam (Thai style sour and spicy). The fish is what’s interesting. Basically, this is deep-fried pieces of fish, bones and all, that is now as crispy as a potato chip. As a result, you eat the whole thing, bones and all. Occasionally I get poked in the mouth by some of the larger bones and it hurts! I guess Thais are just accustomed to eating these types of things. A nice tasty dish, but man do I miss my nice sized pieces of boneless fish from back home. It’s rare to get a large piece of fish with no bones around here unless you’re willing to pay the hefty markup.

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