fried banana flowers

Here’s a quick, but interesting, snack. Fried banana flowers, called tawt man hua bplii [ทอดมันหัวปลี]. Actually, this food is very similar to the common, traditional Thai fish cakes which is where the tawt man part of the name comes from. Just replace the fish part with a banana blossom. I have had banana blossoms on many occasions and in several different forms, but I have always found them to be way too bitter for my taste. These fried banana flowers were exactly the opposite. Nice and crispy with a taste strangely similar to french fries and no bitterness at all. They are served as a side dish with chili sauce and vegetables. With my unhealthy love of fried foods, I will definitely be eating more of these in the future.

As a side note, the two other barely viewable foods on the plate are a cha-om omelet (kai jiaw cha-om) and some sour fish (bplaa som). All of these foods compliment each other and are generally sold at the same stand along with some fresh vegetables and chili dips.

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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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Whiskey shot glass

No, this is not the infamous Varinthip whiskey, but something of a much better quality. Of course, that would include just about every other whiskey you’ve ever encountered. Besides the fact that it’s whiskey (Whiskey is very common around here and by far the liquor of choice in Asia), I thought the ice cube shot glasses were more interesting. An interesting concept and I’m sure somebody out there has already patented ice cube trays that create frozen shot glasses. What a nice start to Halloween night.

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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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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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Dragon fruit field

This is a small dragon fruit field in the northern Thailand province of Phayao. Dragon fruits are seasonal, but when they’re in season I eat my larger share of them. They remind me of a kiwi fruit in their taste and the texture of their flesh with tiny black seeds throughout. The good thing is they are much bigger so one dragon fruit is probably equivalent to ten kiwis. The taste is quite sweet with a slight accent of sour mixed in (just like a kiwi) and the flesh can either be the usual white, or a deep purple that can easily stain. In Thai, dragon fruit are called gaewmanggon [แก้วมังกร]. They have an odd looking purple skin and are about the size and shape of a nerf ball. You can see some pictures and read more about them in my past articles listed below.

แก้วมังกร

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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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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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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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