Moke Guang

Moke is one of those foods that just lends itself to wild meat. It’s a steamed dish, and the steaming releases all the flavors, especially if the meat is tough or has bones.

Regularly Moke would be made by wrapping the ingredients in banana leaves and steaming it for a long time in the sticky rice basket covered. We live in the US with all kinds of kitchen gadgets. In our case we use a baby food steamer for all steamed foods, and a food processor in place of the coke and saht. (ubiquitous mortar and pestle found in all Lao kitchens) The saht still sees lots of use in our house, just not for moke, too much work what with the sticky rice and all.

The baby food steamer. Another kitchen appliance I whined and complained about. Cost second hand $10. Use, often over ten years. It's also possible to steam things inside banana leaves in the baby food steamer for that real authentic taste like with those sticky rice and coconut milk deserts where the slight taste of the leaves is important.

Into the food processor goes kafir lime leaves, garlic, a scoop of padek, some galanga, some pre soaked sticky rice, a few hot thai peppers, bang nua and salt.  Combined with that puree were generous amounts of fresh dill and lemon basil then the entire thing was mixed with chunks of the elk and put in the steamer to be forgotten for an hour.

The amounts of the herbs and spices weren’t measured and I’m not the cook so I don’t know quantities,  I do know that in general they are way too much. Subtle lingering hints of flavor are for some other cuisine, this is supposed to hit you in the face and open up your sinuses. Where a sprig of fresh basil might do, handfuls are used, not a leaf or two of kafir lime but ten or fifteen.

When padek becomes a flavor lost in the background you know you’ve got some tastes going on. The bai ee-too (I hate calling that stuff lemon basil as it is neither) also fades. Even galanga, I know it was there but I couldn’t put my finger on it, and garlic, didn’t taste it.

The cut of elk is one of the most flavorful, it’s called ka lai which means “leg very much” (I guess), and that fits as it is the shank. One of those slim tight muscles of the foreleg that says speed all over it. Even though it’s not the most tender cut of the animal it’s one of the most flavorful, and when cut across the grain, it’s extremely tender. We often save that meat to use cut paper thin and layered across the hot bowl of pho cooked by the heat of the soup only.

Kah Lai muscle with it's classic torpedo shape. This is actually a photo from a deer but oh well, you get the idea.

The elk is dark as is most game, darker than beef by far. The ground up sticky rice solidifies the whole thing into a mass that not only sticks it together but provides a handy catch all for the flavors and juices that come out during the steaming. I tried to pry the thing apart for a photo that would show the meat and it didn’t work. Moke is more a meat loaf than a stew.

How to eat it? With a fork I’d hope. Keeps the fingers clean. Still to be traditional I guess one would grab a little with a piece of sticky rice and a judicious use of a finger or thumb. I prefer kao jao (steamed rice, like maybe even that Calrose we buy at Cosco that comes from California), some lettuce or cilantro or something else green on the side. Cool water no ice.

No way to pretty it up. Looks like glop, called moke.
Lastly an apology for not writing for so long. Haven’t been to Laos of late. Especially sorry about no food posts for so long. Way back when a frequent reader requested food type posts, I’ve been negligent, I promise to make amends.

Killing Chickens

I’m not much the sentimental type but when it came time to thin the herd I had little practical experience, and even less enthusiasm.

My wife told me to just knock it’s head against something, but to hold on to it after I did so. Made sense to me, the cook at the restaurant in China used to just give a quick whack with the knife handle to the back of the head of the rabbit he was cooking for dinner. Seemed quick and painless. Of course when I opened the coop the chickens all hid under the laying house where I couldn’t get them. Maybe it was the glint in my eye.

Later that week a friend of my wife’s came by and together while the children were inside they did the deed, slitting the neck, saving the blood, and boiling the plucked chicken to share in their mid week mom feast. Our herd of five had been whittled down to a more manageable four.

I have to admit a bit of squeamishness over killing domesticated livestock. Too much premeditation, too close to murder. I’m ok shooting deer or elk and even prairie dogs or coyotes which don’t get eaten but are traditionally shot in the rural west. Chickens seemed much more up close and personal.

My daughter often feeds the chickens pieces of grass through the cage. She knows which one is which, and when she came in saying they were pecking each other I went out to take a look. Sure enough a spot of blood on one of the black one’s neck. My daughter reported that Rosie the red one had pecked Black Black when Blacky Black was passing by. 

Thipalada and Rosy

If I’m squeamish about killing chickens I’m nuts over any animal experiencing pain. The fact that they were pecking each other too. Too many chickens too small a coop I figured. We had to be somewhat discreet as our town doesn’t allow chicken ranching.

The next morning my wife cut up some pieces of yarn, told the kids to stay inside and told me to come help. Sometimes when things need doing she decides to do them. She got in the coop, then confirmed with Thipalada, who had followed us out anyway, which ones were the pecker and peckee. She would first pick them up by the foot tie a piece of yarn around both feet then around the tips of both wings. Trussed up they were in no pain but they just lay there.

This is the condition you often see chickens in when being brought to market in Asia. Usually slung by the feet over the back of a motorcycle.

Once when I was the guest of honor at a suk wan at my sister in laws house, I remember a chicken being trussed up similarly. Bien had gotten the chicken early so that when the time came she wouldn’t have to chase it around the yard to catch it. While helping to set up the chairs and tables, every once in a while I’d hear a plaintive falorn squawk from the doomed prisoner. 

Suk wan ceremonies are quasi religious affairs left over from the days before Buddhism. Something to do with making sure spirits and ghosts are all where they should be and ones who aren’t supposed to be around get gone. I remarked that I wasn’t so worried about my ghosts but about the chicken’s ghost and that maybe we should have a suk wan for it. My inlaws thought this was pretty funny. It’s well known how sensitive the foreigners are about animals, and there is no such thing as chickens having spirits.

Recently when I asked why always chickens at suk wans and why always boiled I was told it’s because boiled chicken is a sign of luxury, all meat, no vegetables.

After both chickens were secured Thipalada helped bring them to the back door and mum got a pot of water boiling at her outdoor stove. I freaked when I saw ST hold the chicken down and pluck the feathers from it’s neck, but watching closely the chicken showed no signs of pain. Seems like docility is bred into them.

I held the legs and the wings with the head pointed downhill while ST carefully nicked the throat such that the blood ran down into a bowl of fish sauce. The blood is mixed with the fish sauce so that when it congeals it makes a tasty solid, kind of like the luet in kow piak. The only signs of discomfort on the part of the chicken came at the very end when it’s blood pressure was probably about zero. It thrashed a little but I’d been forewarned to hold tight.

When I got back from work all was in the freezer already except a delicious ope made from the livers, intestines, unhatched eggs, etc. It was delicious, none of that factory taste. Clean like game but not elk.

Later I noticed two hand lettered plaques by the hose. Rosie chicken pecker, and Blacky Black chicken pecker. We’d found peck marks on both. Don’t know what’s up with the markers, never did discuss death and dying with Thipalada, but then kids understand those kinds of things anyway. She eats the chickens with gusto unlike her brother who was slightly uneasy over the entire project.

Mum (Fermented Elk Liver Sausage)

Above one very fresh elk heart and liver taking up most of the sink

One of the good parts about cutting up one’s own meat is that you get to make use of what many call “the fifth quarter”.

One hurdle to using the “other” parts to their full potential is getting them in the first place. When confronted with the enormity of hundreds of pounds of steaming warm meat lying on the ground I have a hard time thinking beyond the logistics of getting that huge heavy mass back home and into butcher paper packages in the freezer.

By the time I’ve pulled the whole heart/lung/liver/gut sack/intestine mess out of the body cavity and rolled it onto the snow, I’ve about had enough of getting up close and personal with the big pile of other bits. The heart, lungs, liver portion sits above anything that could be called guts and is a good place to start.

Today I’m writing about liver. Elk livers are packed chock full of vitamins, there are nutrients the elk can’t find all winter while the grass is dead and the snow is deep, the supply of those nutrients is stored in the liver.

above after careful trimming I ground smaller pieces into hamburg

Mum is a traditional way preserving liver without refrigeration.

The recipe is actually pretty straightforward and uses basic ingredients every Lao household already has.

You start with grinding up fresh meat and follow it with a lot less fresh liver. We used 1000 grams of ground meat to 300 grams of liver. In a large bowl we mixed it with a cup of precooked sticky rice which we’d whetted so that it was slippery instead of sticky half a cup of chopped garlic, half a cup of lemon grass, and fifteen kafir lime leaves. The lemon grass was the round part not the flat sharp leaves, sliced thin across the grain then chopped in the food processor, the kafir leaves were simply sliced very thin. Also a couple table spoons of salt.

above lemon grass grown in the pot

above kafir lime

Sticky rice cooking in the pot

The entire concoction was kneaded for ten minutes of so in the bowl then run through the meat grinder one more time with the sausage adapter at the end inserted into casing from a pig. Our first use of the sausage adapter for the grinder, I think the regular sausage maker is better, tighter sausages even if it takes a little more work to push.

The liver besides storing vitamins, filters things out from the blood, I don’t eat liver from raised animals, I’m too worried about antibiotics and growth hormones or gosh knows what all.

My fellow blogger over at Lao Cook http://laocook.com/ calls sticky rice “Lao Rice” in that Laos is the only country in the world where all the inhabitants eat it as their every day rice. There are other rices called sticky from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or wherever but they are an entirely different rice. In Laotian and Thai language the rice is called kao niao, sometimes called glutinous rice it contains no gluten. If you’ve never had kao niao then you’ve been leading a deprived existence and you need to buy a steamer, a basket, the book Food from Northern Laos http://www.foodfromnorthernlaos.com/, and start living the good life.

Lemon grass is sold at many Asian markets these days. You need to buy some that has the bottom of the stalk or root bulb attached, plant it in a large pot, and you’ll never need to buy again.

Kafir lime is more problematic. Most people cultivate a tree. Unless you live in Socal or Florida that means a house plant, hopefully an overgrown houseplant. Leaves are useless dried, sometimes they’re sold fresh or frozen at Lao Markets here in the US.

Finished sausages off the grinder

Back to sausage. After being put out in the sun inside the protection of the screened jerky maker to remove most of the water they are allowed to further ferment and dry inside the house for a couple of weeks. The starch in the rice is some kind of kick starter in the fermentation so that the meat ferments as apposed to rotting. We cook them all then freeze them, so that they can be thawed and eaten on at moment’s notice as hors d'oeuvres, The sausage is sliced into bite sized pieces and served with raw green onions and hot sticky rice on the side.

drying mum

done mum

Som Guang

Som Guang

With fresh deer in the freezer all kinds of foods are starting to appear. To the right are most of the ingredients of som guang or in English “sour deer”.


Today the chef mentioned she was making hamburger with a couple packages of deer. “Why not use the meat grinder?” was my question. I guess the flavor is better if chopped with the cleaver like laap. The hamburgers for the kids never materialized, instead they had Cosco Pizza, and all the chopped meat was used in the preparation of som guang, probably the original plan.

When I got back with the pizza the meat was chopped and I finished peeling the garlic. Maybe a kilo of meat and 3 heads of garlic. Yes heads not cloves. Note the garlic press over on the right? Garlic is important to the “cure” of the meat. The dry ingredients were the usual, salt, bang nuah, a tiny bit of sugar even though you aren’t supposed to, a couple cups of cooked sticky rice that had been whetted with water to make it break apart and mix easily. The rice is also very important, I think it feeds the right kind of bacteria to make the meat sour instead of rotting.

Meat squeezed and mixed with all ingredients, looking carefully you can see the sticky rice.

There was also an additive that helps keep the water in meat sausages. I think it might have been some sort of phosphate. As soon as the ingredients are mixed the garlic robs the meat of it’s red color. It becomes more brown.

The concoction is all wrapped into long fat rolls of about an inch or more in diameter with plastic food wrap and set on the counter to age. It will sit there for three to five days until sour. It’s tested for done by frying a tiny piece. When at the proper ripeness all of the uneaten meat is frozen in the plastic until needed.

Chef

In Laos the sausage would be wrapped in banana leaves and tossed in the coals of the cooking pot. The meat will be cooked long before the banana leaves burn.

In a few days these rolls of meat will be som guang. Takes longer in winter, colder room.


Also.... Links for reference.
For all food Lao http://www.foodfromnorthernlaos.com/
Also Lao Cook had a great video on how to make som moo, which is similar but using pork instead of deer. I can't get it to play now but here it is. http://laocook.com/2007/06/15/lctv-let%C2%B4s-make-som-moo/

Ahan October

That unidentifiable food next to the kao jao is dinner a couple nights ago.

Worried over a possible frost we picked most of the stuff that's not cold tolerant including the Thai peppers. The leaves themselves are also edible and also pretty flavorful. Besides the chili pepper leaves ingredients were some kind of pork short ribs, lemon grass, green onions, squash (winter squash I think), and the usual suspects, pinch of salt, half teaspoon sugar, bang nua, and most importantly a half a tablespoon of nam pik gaeng daeng that Thai stuff in a tub.

I like the way the thicker squashes go with Lao food. Thickens it without coconut milk. Thicker gaeng for colder weather.

Happy Fall.

Food From Northern Laos: The Boat Landing Cookbook

The photo above I "borrowed" from a review on a shutterbug web site called Bangkok Images. More than likely it's a photo by Kees Sprengers and it's in the book.


Two people associated with the Boat Landing, a husband and wife team of cook and writer Dorothy Culloty and photographer Kees Sprengers have written what sounds like an extremely comprehensive book on Lao cooking. They also have a web site with a similar address that is well worth putting on your favorites list and stopping back for a look see every once in a while. The web address is http://www.foodfromnorthernlaos.com/


Kees alerted me to the upcoming release of his book but I've been negligent in giving it the promotion it deserves. What can I say, it's hunting season, election season, and I'm a procrastinator. Also I didn't have a copy and I'm real shy to broach the subject of shelling out some cash for a book about something my wife does all the time.


What I did today was put it on the request list at my library, I'd urge you to do the same. They almost always honor requests to buy books and doing so accomplishes two good things. It puts santang in the hands of Dorothy and Kees in the form of book sales, and it introduces Lao food to a wider audience. I know where I live all the affluent yups with time on their hands like nothing better than to buy a whole bunch of new cooking paraphernalia and a book with tons of gorgeous ethnic photos to go along. If only it included a music tape of Bhudist chants in Pali from a Tai Lue temple complete with giant cymbal clashes and drums. Well maybe some morlum for mood music. I digress.


How to write a review about a book I haven't seen? I didn't quite have the gall to email Kees and suggest he send me a copy. Thankfully it's all been done for me by Vienne that Lao chef in Spain with the great web site. He's read the book and gives it a much more thorough review than anything I've seen yet. http://laocook.com/2010/10/01/food-from-northern-laos-the-boat-landing-cookbook/ after reading Vien's review and shouting out the good parts to my wife as she was packing the kids off to bed I now have official permission to buy.


Often when my wife cooks foods that she is apt to repeat she takes note of amounts of ingredients and writes them down correcting herself when she adds more or less, eventually she knows exactly how much of what to make say the noodles for Kao Piak or a Gaeng Keowan. She shares the ingredients lists freely with her friends but not the amounts as Lao people are used to a much less measured system. Some secrets are harder than others to give up. Thankfully Dorothy holds nothing back. This book will be a new source of ideas, all written down with measurements even!


There is of course one question that will have to wait until I have the book.


There is that one ingredient that all Lao people use in almost everything they cook. It is the ingredient that no westerner will ever admit to using, the ingredient foodies don't even like to talk about, the ingredient that can change a dish from simply "very delicious" to "saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!!". How do they handle the ingredient so controversial, so, well, downright sinful, that we dare not speak it's name? The ingredient that I've seen in use in every different ethnic village, the ingredient I've seen in use, in ubiquitous use, in villages so remote that some residents have never seen a road or car.


Will they deny it's use? "Oh that's not "real" traditional Lao food". Ignore it completely? List it as an option?


I'll have to wait for the book.

Eating insects in the Lao PDR

The video begins with a guy named Sangtong waving his net back and forth over a wheat field catching grasshoppers (dakadaeng) in a rice field. Santong comes from Ban Tat Luang which is just out past the famous stupa of that name. His wife dips them in boiling water to kill and clean them then fries them in the wok and sells them.

The next shot is of women digging in the earth for maeng jute jill or as I less delicately call them “maeng kii kwai” (buffalo dung beetles). The voice over and the scientists go on to explain that 40% of children in Laos are malnourished, or I think that’s what sahmhua means.

The last series of scenes are an interview with a woman who is growing wingless crickets (maeng jii law) and regular crickets (maeng jii nai) I think the wingless version is just the imature stage of the cricket. The woman in the clip started out with 3 barrels but is now up to 56, quite a little growing operation. Now she’s trying to grow grasshoppers commercially.

There is one shot of a woman cooking up bamboo shoot soup with crickets, a very common use of the insect that can be found in restaurant stands all over the country. Lastly some folks that have had a few beers eating deep fried crickets with beer which is kind of yummy. Guy says they taste like meat, which of course they are.

Ough as it Ought to be

The cook cooking

Yesterday was an out of control Lao food cook off around here.

We've been out of sticky rice for 2 weeks. We usually have a pot of kao jao every night so sticky rice is no big deal. But still. This is a Lao house, we eat Lao food. A freind from Vang Vien came by and brought her own sticky rice, I think that's a little too much.

So mum went down to the lao store where we hardly ever go, cause most everything can be had at the new Vietnamese/Chinese supermarket down on 120th. But my wife had a hankering for fresh dill, and small round eggplants. Well when she got back she had bought some other things that she had been having trouble getting, and once she started cooking she started cooking other stuff and more and so on. It was all over in a couple of hours, this is what she cooked.

ough sin guang

First off was ough (like ought without the t) more commonly known by it's Luang Prabang name "or", and the kind where you burn some buffalo skin and throw it in called "or lam". Don't know why it was transliterated as "or", no "R" sound in modern Lao Language, oh well. Note no buffalo around here so folks save the cow skin when they buy a whole cow and they just burn some of that, similar taste. This wasn't that kind of ough any way but just plain old ough sin guang. (deer meat ough)

mak kuah recipe card for the bread in background

 Back to the ough as it's called in Vientiane. The meat was two packages of deer chunks, and some kah, and a ton of bai kii hoot, and the mak kuah stirred a little and in the pot it went.

Later lemon basil, tons of fresh dill, some spinach. Lastly some kao neeow pounded and broken in the saat then mixed with cold water and thrown in the pot and mixed around. Oh and those mouse ear mushrooms too.

I had some tonight on kao jao. Sublime. the sin guang was very tender and infused with the taste of the bai kii hoot. Oh, and green onions. Half the greens were just whatever she wanted but she insisted that in order to be ough you have to have the dill, bai kii hoot, kah, and mak kuah. She says laap has to have bai kii hoot and kah also, but I've bought it all the time without and actually preffer it without. Different folks, different strokes. I asked about the crushed sticky rice with the cold water, why cold, why not just throw it in the pot? I guess it would turn to glop then, by adding it via cold water it all gets mixed in thickening it to the consitancy ough ought to be. Oh, some hot peppers too.

Look carefull and you can see the het hu ngu (wood mushroom literaly mouse ear mushroom)

making the jea kapii

Also on the menu, Nam pik gapii, the Thai name for it cause it's a Thai food. Crushed hot peppers, bang nua, gatee-um, lime juice, hot water. Just so I could see I smelled it, a little closer each sniff until I was right over the container. Yup, smelled like gapii.

deadly nam pik gapii

Also

Gaeng Pah another Thai food, the pah means forest not fish, with pak gapao and those little roots out of a bottle whatever they are called.

gaeng pah

Also

Jao het made out of the oyster mushrooms

jaw het (whatever oyster mushrooms are called)

Also

Gaeng jute with the cucumbers and lemon basil

gaeng jute

Did I mention 4 loaves of bread earlier in the day? No one hungry here.

You've never been to Pakse

if you haven't had foe at the Lankham Hotel, but I'll start at the beginning.


Up on the Bolaven Plateau I met a guy driving one of those Honda 200cc Enduros. He told me that he rented it from the Lankham so that's directly where I headed on return to Pakse.

Usually I speak Lao to people working in hotels, my 200 word vocabulary is easier than the usual 20 words of English spoken at the reception desk. At the Lankham I switched to English after the first sentence. The owner's son and his wife manage the hotel and both are very fluent English speakers.



Owner and grandson

The owners of the Lankham are an ethnic Vietnamese family. I say ethnic because they are 100% Lao by nationality. They all speak Lao when talking amongst themselves, even grandma. The family is educated, one son received advanced degrees in China, the other in America, both by scholarship.

The hotel is a smoothly functioning business as it needs to be with so many working there. The lobby is always attended and has many people checking in and out, getting left luggage, renting motorcycles, using the net, or booking tickets, all the time. The room I rented was cheaper than the competition, and though small, was clean, with AC, TV, fridge, and it all worked. A heck of a lot of Thai and Chinese stay there, good value. I think the rooms on the second floor are better and higher priced. I don't remember what I paid, not too much. There are two halls with rooms both sides and 3 upper floors, maybe 60 rooms or more. Out front is an espresso cart with a blender for smoothies too.


Ashtray Lankham

I was forthcoming about what I intended to use the bike for, and daughter in law suggested I didn't need a large bike but one of the made in Thailand Suzuki 125s might be plenty of power for the slow roads. Not as expensive as the dirt bike, but a lot more solid than the Kaolaos. Good call. Unstated, but in my mind, parts and repairs are a lot easier too. Try getting a large unusual bike worked on in a small village, might not have the right sized tires. The bike I was shown was shiny new looking, I checked the lights and brakes then hopped on to take it around the block, odometer read 450km, the thing was brand spanking new. I left it at the attached mechanics shop around back for the night and they changed the oil and adjusted up the brakes a smidgen.


Street in front of Lankham

But good rooms, great service, informed conversation, and reputable rental is not what really impressed me, it was the foe. In Vietnamese spelled "pho" and in all languages pronounced like the fur of the dog that bit you but without the R. Maybe more resembling the Fur of Fur Elise the famous bagatelle by Beethoven. Like Fur Elise good foe is understated excellence when done right.




Not the usual piano and not understated excellence but I liked it, in the style of Jimi Hendrix.

I'm not sure how foe is made in Vietnam where it comes from but in Laos the broth is light but extremely flavorful. Very little color to the soup but packed full of tastes that combine and compliment each other and are hard to pin down. At the Lankham in the early morning I saw them bringing the ribs of two whole cows fresh from the butcher to make the broth. Over twenty people are employed in the preparation, cooking, and serving of the foe. Everyone has their special job from preparing the ribs by trimming off the bits they don't want to cutting vegetables, setting and clearing tables and so on.

What's in the soup besides cow bones? I don't know. Often foe tastes of cinnamon or anise, and probably they were in the water at the Lankham, I don't know, but in no way did I taste them. Maybe they don't use them, I don't know, same with salt and bang nua. All of the flavors are subtle enough that they can't be pinned down. When the broth pours it shines, clear it is, thin it's not.


Second best thing in the world, foe at the Lankham



I only saw one person cooking the noodles, I have to assume it was the woman in charge of the business. The foe restaurant is operated by the sister of the owner. Of course the thin sen foe (foe noodles) are just barely cooked enough. Thin sliced beef and green onions minced are added so that they are barely cooked and they cool the soup down enough so that when it arrives it is hot, but not scalding, you can eat it right away.

On the side and complimentary is a large glass of unsweetened weak iced tea in a bottomless glass. Also you get a bowl of just barely cooked, still slightly stiff, boiled cabbage chunks and green beans without any added flavoring. More of the same uncooked in a bowl in front of you, and a tin with a lid and chunks of lime to squeeze. Lettuce leaves, cilantro, basil, sprouts, hot peppers, everything you could use with foe.

I squeeze a couple slices of lime and dig in, after half a bowl I devour all the boiled cabbage and half the beans. The boiled veggies are great, clean the pallet, tasty, a break from the constant chomping on lettuce, mint, and cilantro that usually accompanies me eating of foe.

The meal isn't cheap. Maybe twenty thousand kip or so. Between eight and nine there's a big office crowd from all the government offices and banks. Tables are big, they can seat eight or ten people, and seating is communal, just pull up a chair. Mid morning us tourists and a few business people wanting to talk away from the office. What better way to clinch the deal than over a great bowl of foe. Lunch crowd is over and done with by 1:30 and by mid-afternoon all the huge pots are scrubbed and dishes washed and stored awaiting the next dawn.

Haven't eaten foe at the Lankham Hotel? Well you haven't really been to Pakse yet.

Eating well for around $4 a day

First learn to think in kip. A dollar is 8,400 kip, but for simplicity think of $1 as 10,000 kip, twenty cents as 2,000 etcetera. Eventually you will just think in kip. To help you along I’m going to start listing all prices in kip. Learn to count to ten, and twenty, and the words for a hundred and a thousand. Learn the names of the food.

Below is a typical meal from the street, in this case it was out the front of someones store in Xieng Kuan. They also had a small table and when I asked if I could eat at the table the owner dumped the food I’d bought out of the bags and onto nice clean dishes that she had just for that purpose. Half the time a vendor will have a table you can use, the other half of the time be prepared to eat standing around. It was seven in the morning, finished it all just barely.


moo tawt

The food is sticky rice 2,000 kip. Moo Tawt (deep fried marinated pork) 5,000 kip. Jeao mac phet (hot pepper dip) 2,000 kip. Total 9,000 kip, just over one dollar US.

The rice at 2,000 kip is just about all I can eat, a lot of rice, I never order 3,000 kip. They don’t like it when you order 1,000 kip of rice. It’s smaller than they like to sell, if you can't eat it all give it to some chickens or a restaurant, usually they have a bucket for pigs so it won't go to waste. The way to order kao neeow without speaking Lao is to point to the rice basket and hold up two fingers in the peace sign, they'll give you 2,000 kip's worth.


kao neow baskets

Kao Neow (sticky rice) is cooked in a basket in this case with an old pan used to cover it, then stored in the basket up top until eaten. Best if at least warm, if it's cold I preffer to look elsewhere, but if it's all there is, it's fine cold also. Kao Neow is palatable for a long time, next day even.

I got lucky with the moo tawt, I was buying the food from those covered pots and the vendor just happened to have it. More common for meat is ping, (barbeque). Barbeque grills are easy to see and smell, they have smoke rising from them and the smell of barbequed meat. If they sell barbeque, they sell sticky rice. You point to the piece of meat you want and that’s the one you get. Often they’ll go ahead and cut it up for you before bagging it. If you have the language thing worked out go ahead and ask but pieces usually seem to fall in the range of what a Lao person could afford for lunch. The piece shown up top is probably slighly less than 100 grams.


barbeque Dalat Tatluang

Besides not ordering intestines or pig liver I also shy away from the sour pork. Sour pork has been allowed to ferment for a couple of days and tastes slightly rotten. It’s an aquired taste that I haven’t aquired yet. You can usually spot it by what looks like a thin batter that it has been dipped in, actually that’s the remnants of the soured rice and slime that has caused the fermentation. Not as bad as it sounds.

Barbeque grills often have a lot more than pork on them and if you are feeling adventurous you might want to try the other things you see. Fish is very common. Eat it slowly so as not to swallow bones. Often some of the guts are left in and mixed with some herbs and spices, they are left in because they taste good. Often you see chicken or duck too. All of these things are more pricey than pork.


Kiep (tiny frogs)

More exotic are tiny birds on a stick or tiny frogs, you eat them bones and all. Also crickets or other insects. Little birds are nok noi, tiny frogs are kiep, all insects are mang something, (crickets mang kee nai). I often see doves cooked by being curled into a circle with the heart and liver as well as herbs held in the center, (nok gahtah). I spit out the bones of the doves and the legs and heads of big insects but just eat all the little things in the tiny birds and frogs. Back to cheap stuff.


jeao and som pak

Above are jeao macpet and jeao maclen (tomatoes) behind is a great cheap vegetable called som pac. Som pak literaly translates as sour vegatable, pac meaning vegatable or fruit. Som pac always seems to be mustard greens. The same method as is used to pickle the pork is used on the som pac, but I am much more used to soured vegetables like sourkraut of pickles. They are a nice sour addition to a barbeque and sticky rice meal, and at two or three thousand kip they don’t cost much. My wife rinses them in clean water to get the briney water off them. They are fresh and crunchy. Cheap way to get veggies, som pac is sold everywhere.

In the first photo up top of this page is a bowl of green stuff, it is a combination of mushed vegatables called jeao macphet, (sauce of hot peppers). The jeao is used to dip the rice in, it is made by barbequeing hot peppers, green onions, and garlic, they are crushed and dented, then flavored with fish sauce, salt, and coriander. There are many different jeaos, try them, if you don’t like them you are only out a couple thousand kip. This jeao macpet was made from the large, not so hot, green peppers. Being not too hot it could be eaten in big servings.




Dalat Paxon


Above is a typical market. The market is the most predictable source of food. Street stands might well have fresher offerings but they are usually open only during certain times of the day. Bus stations also often have food.The market also has the best price on fruit or if along the mekong it has bagette sandwiches to go called pate.

Pate sold in the market or on the street often has things in it that you might not be used to eating but when eaten together in the sandwich taste pretty good. I’d suggest just eating them and not trying to figure out what everything is. Often they cost 3 or 4 thousand kip for the little ones, I throw a couple in my pack for lunch.

mac kien

Not all fruit is cheap, but some is. Above oranges (mac kien)from China with the leaves still on the stem and the more plain but just as tasty oranges from Laos. The cost of Lao oranges is usually 5 to 8 thousand kip a kilo.

So what’s the total cost? Add it up.

Breakfast
Moo tawt 5,000 kip
Jeao macpet 2,000 kip
Sticky rice 2,000 kip

Lunch
2 bagettes 8,000 kip

Dinner
Same as breakfast 9,000 kip
Half a kilo of oranges 4,000 kip

Total 30,000 kip or around $3.55 US
Want to save money? A Lao person might skip the meat and get more calories from rice, say 3 or 4 thousand kip of rice per meal, and some jeao to help it slide down. Maybe 18,000 kip a day, or $2.10 US.

What about water I hear you asking. Reuse the big water bottles by refilling at the guest house. Usually the guesthouse owner understands, Lao people don’t buy the bottles of water either.

Want to splurge? Have some bowls of feu (pho) once in a while. Shake the water off the uncooked greens on the side and eat them like you are a cow, that’s what they’re there for. Lots of vitamins, taste great. I never seem to get sick.

Sun Saap (bon apetit)

Kao Soi (the feu they eat up north)

A warning and some unasked for advice. All my prices are based on what I paid in the winter 08/09 off the tourist track. Costs on the main drag in Luang Prabang or Vientiane might well be two or ten times as much. Whatever the price, that's what it is. There is no double pricing, there is no bargaining.

If you are buying local and the vendor is very busy, try not to ask a lot of questions, they don't understand, they don't speak any English, their profit margin is very low, and you are slowing down business.

Meat and Veggies

This fellow and his friends started to appear at the beginning of the hot season. His name is Maeng Sahn, elephant insect. Quite the name for such a little guy. Perhaps it's the tusks. To catch him spread a plastic under the tree and shake. In season there are a lot and it doesn't take much work, eaten like grasshoppers and the taste is similar. Maybe next time.


This jackfruit, (Mahk Mii) is more well known. They still weren't ripe by mid March.

Antelope Laap

Recently Bryan, the guy who gives me meat, gave me some seal-a-mealed antelope, that somebody gave him. I don’t know the name of the guy who shot it or where. I’m assuming somewhere here in Colorado. I do know he used a 308, another one of those rounds that can knock something over way out yonder.



Having no idea what antelope tasted like I lightly fried some in canola oil. Gamey, kind of like venison. Perfect for a strong Laap.



Before I get into the laap some antelope explaining is in order. Pronghorn Antelope as found in the Americas aren’t really an antelope at all. The only surviving genus of the family Antilocapridae, it’s closest living relative is the giraffe. Yes, I looked it up.

Having worked on the prairies of eastern Wyoming I knew they were extremely fast, according to Wikipedia the only faster animal is the cheetah but the antelope can sustain high speeds for a longer period. Besides being fast they also have exceptional eyesight. If you just try to walk up to normal shooting range they will quickly become a small dot on the horizon.



Back to the laap. I pre-cut some of the ingredients, shallots, garlic, thin sliced lemon grass, regular Thai peppers, cilantro, and lime ready to add. My wife keeps a container of ground up toasted sticky rice in the spice drawer. I fried the ground up antelope, (that’s how it came. I am not too lazy to chop if that’s what you were thinking), turned off the heat and added the shallots and green onions, then a couple spoonfuls of fish sauce, a little bang nua and some pah dek water to taste.



I made the pah dek water by mixing a dab of factory made pah dek with some water in a sauce pan and simmering it until it dissolved. ( a couple of minutes) The pah dek water was key to add some juice to the whole thing and also the pah dek and gamey meat compliment each other. My Lao supervisor chastised me for over cooking the meat. I did not. Turned off the heat just as soon as it began to look like it might cook through. Antelope is just a little dry. I mean the prairie out here is technically a dessert.


Vietnamese Pah Dek in a Jar


Pahdek water yummy



Lastly I stirred in the cilantro, green onions, and hot peppers while squeezing six pieces of lime into it. I like lime juice.

And sticky rice.