Yam Salat

Crushing the freshly toasted peanuts in the koke

Yam salat has to be one of the few true vegetarian dishes in Laos, that is if you don’t throw in any pork, and you can overlook those undeveloped chicken embryos.

It’s now the end of the summer and all of the garden seems to be reaching it’s prime at the same time. Almost all of the vegetables for this salad were home grown. The tomatoes are ripening so fast we are having to freeze many of them for the cold winter months and the seeds from the celery that Creagy poured into the garden while no one was looking has given us a mini celery forest. The lettuce is the second crop that my wife started back in mid August to take advantage of the cool fall days. The cilantro just keeps coming up, as long as we remember to let some go to seed and to turn it over into the soil. Cucumbers have been appearing regularly since the beginning of August. The green onions we dig up and replant when they get too bitter, somehow the first shoots from onions are sweetest.



Above is some of the celery. This variety is from Laos, it never forms the stalks we are familiar with in the United States. It’s only grown for the leaves which are eaten as a leafy vegetable, great in soups.



Behind the celery is the leaf lettuce in clumps. This batch started off slow in the heat of the summer. The lettuce from the spring was a lot larger.



In this sauce I think there were four eggs used. They are hardboiled, the yolks are set aside for the dressing and the whites are sliced into the salad. Besides this big spoonful of squeezed lime juice there’s also a quarter cup of water, some bang nua, and a little salt.



On top of everything else is some toasted crushed peanuts. The peanuts come uncooked and unsalted, I guess from the Vietnamese grocery where we buy everything else. I don’t know why but peanuts quickly lose their fresh toasted taste. Best to cook them just before making the salad.



Not mentioned is mon pao, a crunchy white tuber that is often sliced thin and added for it’s texture as well as it’s sweet apple like taste. (sorry don't know English name) We didn’t have any. People also use any sort of salad green they have, water cress is popular. I’ve never seen nam pa, hot peppers, or garlic of any kind. Sometimes bits of pork. Moo sam san lightly fried is great. Of course just after I posted this a friend told me he has had yam salat with nam pa, I asked my Lao consultant and she said yes some people mix it into the sauce.

(notice the celery greens?)

The peanuts are sprinkled over the salad, the sauce is poured on, everything is tossed to get good coverage, and voila, yam salat.

Also…. A lot of times I eat the salad hours after it’s made, or even the next day. The greens wilt and give up their juices quickly so that the whole salad is swimming in the much thinner sauce. I love it. I even drink down the sauce from the bowl as long as no one is looking. This drunken salad affect is how I’ve most often bought yam salat in Laos served up out of trays at the buffet at the airport, or in bags at the Luang Prabang night food market.

A lot of these photos I’ve taken at the high ISO setting. I get sick of trying to hand hold at 1/5th of a second. Sometimes 800 sometimes a thousand or 1600. For you purists,, sorry.

Sun Saap

Tiger Meat for Sale

A couple weeks ago my news filter picked up this story about tigers because it was thought the tigers came from Laos. Subsequent stories identify the countries of origin as Burma and India. Who knows.



From Thanhien News dot com. “ On September 4 the police raided two houses in Hanoi’s Thanh Xuan district, both rented by Nguyen Thi Thanh, and seized two disemboweled, adult tigers from freezers.

They also found two tiger skins and bones and parts besides five bear arms, eight pairs of ox horns, two pairs of stag horns, and two pairs of elephant tusks.

Thanh and her henchmen were arrested at the scene.

Thanh confessed that the gutted tigers were from Myanmar and India and their bone marrow was sold for VND6.5 million (US$400) per gram to traditional doctors for curing rheumatism and other joint ailments.

Thanh and her gang extracted the marrow in the two houses.”

A couple of days later I was listening to the radio and heard a story about a Chinese company that has been raising tigers and freezing the carcases in hopes that some day it will be legal to sell the farm raised ones.

Why not? If people are willing to pay $400 a gram to eat cat marrow I’d say let them. Myself I’ve never had too much desire to eat cat. I’ve heard grizzly bear is pretty good, and I’d give it a try, but cat? Grizzlies also aren’t an endangered species also.

Along that same vein I’ve heard that because of global warming polar bears might not be native to Alaska any more. The bears live on the Ice cap, using the land only to den up and have cubs. They are the only bear that doesn’t hibernate, loves the cold. Because of the shrinking ice cap the open lead of water in the summer might become to great for them to get close to the Alaska coast line.


Footprints out on to the shore ice.

I spent the winter of 89/90 working in the bear’s habitat where the shore ice meats the coast. Much of the time we were walking on the snow and very fearful of seeing a bear. From a totally unscientific source I’ve heard that the polar bear upon seeing a human begins to stalk it, we are food.

Don’t know how I’ve strayed so far from Laos. To bring it on back to the semi tropics, I don’t really care if I see a tiger in the wild or not. I have no desire to be dinner. Don’t even care that much about the species. I mean isn’t a leopard big enough to fill that ecological niche? Doesn’t much matter, as it looks as if Laos is going to be turned into a giant rubber plantation for it’s neighbours.

Thatdam (Black Stupa)

I like the Black Stupa in that it is a historical Tat that is simply in the middle of a roundabout in the middle of a busy town. No one selling postcards or pictures. You don’t have to make a special trip, you pass by it on your daily travels. It hasn’t been plated with gold or in any other way refurbished to buff up it’s appearance. It just is.

There is now a kind of upmarket boutique guesthouse on one side of the circle, a sign of things to come?, but much of the neighbourhood remains the unchanged. On the East down a soi is the entrance to the US embassy, no parking anywhere close by. The guards will direct you elsewhere, and at the entrance to the soi a dilapidated old colonial house.

I like the grass and bushes growing out of the cracks, lends that “lost in the jungle” type feel. It’s on Chanta Khooumane just north of the mini mart on Thanon Samsethai. I took this photo from well back by the school so to include as many wires as possible.


Top Centre

"or maybe not"

Adjust your monitor for photographs, click on the photo so that it enlarges, and take a look. This is an LZ above Indian Creek in Utah. Notice how the wet Navajo Sandstone really shows it’s colour? Great Photo by Scott Lambert.

Remember the description of the blog says, “or maybe not”, as in “ Travel, Food and Other Things Connected to Laos and Laotians,,,,,, or maybe not” well this is that “or maybe not“ part. Actually there is a tenuous link in that one of the first pilots I knew flew for Air America in Laos, I have no idea what kind of aircraft he flew, from what I gather he was in a few different kinds of fixed wings.


I like Lamas. A Lama besides being a filthy animal that looks like a goat and spits, is also the helicopter with the world's altitude record, for thirty five years running. We used to say that at lower elevations below 12,000 feet, the engine was governed down so as to not tear the blades off with the excess power. Who know if it’s true. The three blades are wide for grabbing lots of air, and the fuselage has no skin so the cross winds can blow through the aircraft and to save weight.

A lot of helicopters will first get some forward speed up before gaining altitude or else they are very sluggish going up from a hover. When the pilot pulls up the collective on a Lama the aircraft feels like it’s a yo yo at the end of some giant’s string. It goes up in a hurry.

If you are waiting to get picked up, on the lee side of an avalanche break to get out of the snow that‘s blowing sideways, sixty miles from a road, with night time temperatures dropping out of site, and winds gusting to seventy from a stationary lenticular cloud, there’s nothing to compare. Just the sound of a Lama is enough to remind you of warm hotel rooms, chicken fried steaks, and all the other thoughts that come at the end of the day.

Up and Down Saw

Click on the arrow lower left (twice) to play the video.

This is the only time I used the video function of my Pana FZ7, the high resolution didn’t work. I wasn’t much into video anyway, still trying to figure out how to take a picture.

These Kammu sawyers were fulfilling a contract to provide wood to the relocated villagers of Ban Nammat Mai. I don’t know what you would call the new village of Nammat Mai, Nammat Mai Mai? I also don’t know why the Akha contracted out the cutting of wood rather than doing it themselves. Certainly an up and down saw doesn’t take that long to learn to use? Notice the rice in the background sown between the burnt trunks of the trees. New slash and burnn due to relocation?

I don’t know what species of wood they were cutting, or how much the contract to cut them was worth especially on a piecework basis. The Kammu guys said they usually cut three or so pieces a day. I also don’t know why they didn’t just chop the wood flat with a knife they way they do in the hills. Notice the peg in the saw cut at the end of the log, probably to keep the saw from binding. How about the language they are speaking, that aint Lao!

One year when my grandfather was a boy he cut his hand badly in the saw mill and so hea nd his brother contracted to cut railroad ties off a wood lot for ten cents a tie. They used a regular axe and a broad axe. The broad axe is used with one hand to cut the logs to flat. I don’t think they got rich on that deal. Seventy five years ago, before workers compensation or Social Security in America. I wonder in 75 years what kind of a world the grandsons of these Kammu guys will live in.

Sticky Rice Stuck to the Tree

I can only guess as to the meaning of sticking a small pinch of sticky rice to a tree above the place you sell barbeque from every day.

I would assume this is a carry over from the worship of animals, house spirits, and the like. Probably thought to bring good business to the woman. I watched her carefully affix a new pinch onto the tree just before I took the photo.

For the record she had a little of everything, Sam San Moo that three skins of pork, pieces of chicken, and five stuffed fish. Quite the variety.

Anyone definitively know the reason for the rice, or perhaps the name of the habit?




Up close

About Lao food and Blogs

Two Lao Girls slurping Tam Mii


Lately Lao Bumpkin has been getting hits originating from food blogs mostly by Lao Americans. I’m psyched to know that there are people interested in the food of the culture their parents come from. The bloggers are young, articulate, and sometimes very funny. (one is called I eat padek) If you are looking for the nuts and bolts of how to cook Lao food it’s there. What, how much, and often with videos and ingredients lists. To say I’m impressed is an understatement.

I had been worried that the food of Laos would be lost with the transition to western society. I often hear from travelers to Laos that Lao food is bland and tasteless. Well I guess that stuff served up at restaurants with English menus is. I mean how exactly do you cook laap without pa dek, organ meat, or bang nua? Oh and no hot peppers, king, kah, and so on. You end up with hamburger seasoned with a little mint. More often it’s fried rice, a sure fire meal guaranteed not to offend the delicate palate of the tourist. Or mixed vegetables. I digress.

The web sites of these new Lao cooks are written mostly in English. For any of the Lao cooks who read this sorry about the lack of specificity. I assume anyone reading knows their way around a Loa kitchen already. My intent isn’t to provide a step by step, but just a rough guide.


Nice padek brown color to the sauce eh?

I know what your asking, what the heck are they eating. It’s like tom makune but with those noodles that you use for foe, sen foe or mii. It also contained whatever they wanted to throw in. Toasted fresh peanuts, padek, kapi, bang nuah, cabbage, that green called pak bong, meat balls, squid, and a couple pieces of nuat on top, that’s the brown tofu.

Sun Saap

Look for a separate section of links to Lao Food blogs.