Keep your pants on

ALRIGHT. I am making my shameful return to blogging after a flagrant mis-management of posts. I am a little lacing in the photo department right now. On a related note... am I the only one who is a little repetitive when it comes to meals? After I photographed my most common meals (see blog posts 1-10), I started to realize that is about all I eat. Of course, I do buy the occasional ice-cream sandwich from 7-11, but nothing to write home about. So I have taken to photographing food where ever I go. It may be true that I did not eat that food at that moment, but it is likely that I have eaten it in the past, so I figure it still counts.

Sometimes Marc and I go to Chinatown. It's a little far away, and a pain to get to, so we pretty much only go when I want to shop. There are vendors that sell tons of things, and there is also a lot of food.

This is a snapshot of the huge bags of dried fruit that one woman was selling. It looks like we have strips of ginger, plums, apricots, a few kinds of grapes (now raisins, heh), and at the bottom something that looks likes black eggs. Not entirely impossible in Chinatown, but unlikely.

Pheuak Kaeng Buat

This is a Thai dessert that I try to have whenever I come across it. Problem is that I don't come across it as often as I'd like. I sometimes see a woman selling what I think might be this, but her cart has all sorts of jars and boxes of lots of kinds of ingredients, which just reminds me how poorly I speak Thai. Even of the words that I do know and are able to recognize, my pronunciation of said words render them practically useless.

So you probably want to know what the icky-looking black stuff is. It's taro. Most everyone has heard of it, yet few people have eaten it. I know I personally avoided the stuff as long as I could. BUT, like most things, when you drench it in naturally sweet coconut milk and pop it in the microwave, it tastes pretty damn nice. The photo above (the only photo I have ever used in this blog that was not actually taken by me because my one photo of this food turned out all yellowy and bad, beyond photoshop bad), it shows the taro in huge pieces, which looks nice in a picture, but I think it is usually served in little chunks.

Veg

While working on our Burmese visas (a process that took Marc and me to the embassy more times than I like to think about), we ate a few times at the absolute best Indian place in the city. I have been to Hamali Cha Cha, and the Indian street food by Chinatown, yes yes. I've even had some of the crap they call Indian near Nana, but this is the real deal.

Every dish is perfection. This one had a dal, which is always wonderful, and a few more that are consistently great as well. The bread is always piping hot and the rice is always fresh. Marc can even get his tea there, but I'll have a Coke, thank you.

My sandwich was one of their sweet specials. Every day it's different, and it's always the cheapest thing on the menu. This one was kind of like a spicy savory sandwich, plus cucumbers. I know, sounds weird, but tastes spectacular.

The last thing about this place, all vegetarian. Fills you up but won't slow you down. I don't remember what that's from, but it seems pretty appropriate here.

The Bad Stuff

So I have done some posts about street food in Thailand, and other places. I love eating food made and sold on the street, because it is often times very telling of a culture, it's cheap, and it's usually super yummy.

HOWEVER... I want to make it quite clear that not all street food is created equal. Both my poor husband and I have ended up pretty sick from intestinal infections due to eating the nasty stuff. In 2 years living in Bangkok, and about another 6 months total traveling around the region, we have each gotten sick only once, and Marc's was bad enough to stick him in the hospital for a day.

It is important to look at the things you are going to be putting inside your body (nah,... really?!).
Avoid places that look like they don't clean the dishes, look like the food has been there for 5 days, or just general uncleanliness.

These places that serve food (if you can believe it) are located at the end of my street. It makes me feel lucky to know that I can afford to not eat here.

Sweet Meats

A lot of Thai street food, in addition to being deserts, is snacks. A favorite is simply grilled sweet meats; chicken, beef and pork. Here I'm pretty sure we're looking at chicken, though pork is deceptive and often shows up when you predict chicken. Often, the vendor likes to snaz it up by adding some chilies, pineapple or cherry tomatoes. Some people just eat them alone, or you can get a little bag of sticky rice to go with.

Thai Sweets

So I kind of had this thing going on where, it had been so long since I posted anything, so I didn't want to post again until it was like something really great. To be honest, I don't really have any magnificent wonderment stored up. Then I realized that I'd have to just put one foot in front of the other and get posting again.

Above you can see one of my favorite snacks. I wish I knew the name in Thai, but I don't. Inside, it is sticky rice and coconut milk. A lot of Thai sweets are made of these basic 2 ingredients. Some add things, some do not.

For this one, there is usually either a strip of banana or a few taro beans. I like it both ways. It's just wrapped in some kind of leaf so it doesn't burn, and slow roasted.

When you peel the leaf off, its actually quite slick from the oils in the sticky rice. That also ensures that the inside doesn't stick to the wrapper. One of these little puppies sets you back about $.15.

Street food

If you're in a hurry and don't want to make for a street vendor to make soup, or salad, or some kind of meat dish, most places sell what I call "tub food", not to be confused with tubgirl, of course.
Tub food is basically made in bulk, and presented in rectangular tin tubs. There is no 'list of ingredients' on these tubs, naturally, but if you look closely you can usually figure out the 3 important aspects of it:
Q: What kind of meat is it? A: Fish, chicken, pork, beef, squid
Q: Is it full of bones A: Likely
Q: Is the acid from the chilies going to disintegrate my tongue? A: Let's hope not.The one I picked out today was a pretty good choice. It is fish balls, which is better than whole fish, because I don't think anyone cleans the fish before chopping it into chunks and throwing it in. Fish balls are just ground fish meat, rolled together. Here I could actually see palm prints in them from where someone smashed them in their hands before cooking. Yummy. In this one there are also mini eggplants, which I have really grown to like.

Another street food you can try, if you're not as brave as me, is just having a nice refreshing bottle of orange juice or a fresh coconut. If you can wake the guy up, that is

Sorry for the skipping out on this info. This is the honey grilled chicken from Cabbages and Condoms on Soi 12. The money from the restaurant goes to HIV/AIDS prevention and education. When my parents come in November, this is one place that we will be sure to hit.
Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy.

Singapore chicken and Couscous

We live on a street in the city that has a lot of foreign options. You can get Korean, Japanese, Thai, and, at the very end of the street, you can get Singapore Chicken. Now, I'm not expert, to be honest, but I have been told that Singapore chicken and rice is superior to Thai chicken and rice. Personally, I like both. When you get it from Singapore (the restaurant) it comes with a yummy array of sauces, and you can get Thai greens with oyster sauce.

The chicken is a popular Thai dish called "kao mun gai". At this place they serve it with sprouts, adding some appreciated crunchiness.

On Fridays, a small hole-in-the-wall that usually serves delicious wraps, serves this amazing Moroccan couscous dish. It has lamb, carrot, potato, pumpkin, onion, cabbage and banana pepper. Tons of people show up for this dish on Fridays since it's only once a week. It costs a little over $4, but it serves us both for two meals. You also eat it with an orangey, savory soup.

Eat it at home!

By popular request (i.e. Aunt Sue), I am putting a recipe for one of my favorite Thai dishes. It is the soup from the cafe I mentioned like 2 posts ago.

It's called tom kha gai. The recipe I have in a cookbook actually is quite sparse, so I am supplementing it.
Ingredients:
2-inch piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup chicken stock
1 stick lemongrass (cut into 4 pieces)
4-6 fresh bay leaves
1/4 cup diced red onion
2-3 cups chopped mushrooms (I like the button mushrooms above, but feel free to experiment)
1-2 (or more) finely chopped red chillies
3 chicken breast fillets, cut into thin strips
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
cilantro for seasoning
1. Combine the ginger, coconut milk, chicken stock, lemongrass, and bay leaves into a medium pan. Bring to a slight boil and simmer, uncovered, for about 12 minutes. Don't forget to stir it.

2. Add the chicken, chopped chillies, mushrooms, and onion. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the chicken is done.

3. Add the fish sauce and brown sugar. Season with as much cilantro as you like. Mixed in works well, as well as sprinkled on each bowl.

Makes 4 small servings of soup. Eat with rice for a full meal. <3
I like to eat with with a heaping serving of plain steamed rice. Thai rice is woooonderful if you've never had it. I recommend going to an Asian grocery and getting a bag. It's easy to do in the microwave or stove top if you don't have a rice cooker. Keep in mind that it will triple in size. I made the mistake of making 2 cups of rice for our soup, which turned out to be able to feed a small army.

The next day, I tried my hand with curry. Curry paste is actually surprisingly easy to use, and with delicious results. This little number is a bit easier to make, takes less time and less brainpower.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons curry paste in whichever flavor you like
4 chicken breasts cut into pieces
3 large potatoes
4-6 fresh bay leaves
2-4 (or more) fresh red chillies
fresh basil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil

The key to using curry paste is to actually cook it before you mix it with other things. Simmer it for 3-5 minutes with some water, then add some vegetable oil until it has enough to it to put the chicken and potatoes in. At this point, put in everything else and let it simmer. It will probably take up to 25 minutes for the potatoes to cook all the way through.
Just like any good Asian food, serve with rice.

Gaeng Keaw gup Gai

I am a little behind on the posts, but I wanted to give this one a posting all of its own. This is one of my favorite Thai dishes, and we recently went to a cafe that did it exceedingly well. The Thai name is hard to remember (I always have to ask Marc "What's that thing I like again?"), but in English it's just called plain ol' green curry.

Curry comes in lots of colors and flavors, some are spicy, some are not. Green curry Thai style is a southern dish. A lot of the curry dishes are from the South, since there is quite a big Muslim population there. It is usually made with beef, but Thai beef is chewy (think the thin water buffalo) and doesn't really help out any food. I get it with chicken whenever I can. It is cooked with Thai basil, bay leaves, capers, and lots of chillies! I ate it with two heaping servings of plain rice.

Elefin Cafe

As you might know, I work on the biggest road in Thailand, called Sukhumvit. I actually work off of the first small street, and it's called Soi 1. So I basically walk up and down this street 10 times a week, give or take. There is a cute little place that I love to go to called the Elefin Cafe. They have lots of dark wood furniture and comfy chairs for relaxing. It looks like it might be expensive, but it's not at all, and has really great Thai and western food. My bowl of soup today was less than $3, and the extra rice was $.40. Also they play the greatest old cartoons.


When Sue posted that she would like some recipes that she could try at home, I knew that I had just the thing. One of my absolute favorite dishes is Tom Kha Gai. It is a soup, and like most of ther Thai food, it incorporates many flavors together: sweet, spicy, sour. The broth is made from coconut milk, and it has chicken and mushrooms it in. It can range from being really thin, almost more like an appetizer, to being so thick and rich that you can eat it for desert.

For dinner, we had Thai food again before we went to see Bruno (not recommended, if you were wondering). Here I have 2 dishes with plain rice, which is pretty common.

The orangey one was red snapper fried with a sweet and sour sauce. It was really good, but a little too sweet for my taste.

The lighter one is chicken and tofu, cooked with a few veggies and chilis. It was quite hot, and very good. Tofu is really common in Thai food, which I love. I think in general that Americans get a bad impression of tofu. When I told my dairy-farming grandmother that I loved eating tofu and ate it all the time, she asked why I just didn't eat "real food". I told her that I also love chicken, and pig, and cow, and duck, and just about anything else there is, but I also like to eat tofu. Thai people eat about anything. You don't need to substitute it for meat. If you've never had it, give it a try! It tastes a little nutty. Most people aren't crazy about the texture, which is understandable. I suggest small pieces eaten with other things, like a salad or noodles.
So, tonight I am cooking again! I am going to make (and photograph) my second attempt at the soup above. I will post the recipe and steps tonight or tomorrow.

Cook. I can cook. I'm the cookingest damn thing you ever saw.

Today I made hamburgers. the grocery stores rarely have hamburger buns, so we had to make them on dinner rolls, which actually look neater in the photo anyway. Also, lettuce, tomato, and the like are not the freshest in Asia, so we pretty much do without. I was planning on getting some tomatoes, but they were incredibly old looking, and very small. Nice veggies include potatoes, carrots, and zuchini. We cooked them up with some parsley, which added a pretty color more than it really did flavor. Thanks to my wonderful parents graciously sending BBQ sauce with their latest package, we got to enjoy the burgers like we made them on a grill.The following day we got Japanese food from a stand that we eat at a lot. They do a really good, authentic (according to people who have been there, not including me), katsu curry. It is basically a savory curry, usually served with pork. I get mine with chicken, but either way, you bread it up, deep fry it, and stick it with some gooey curry and some fresh Japanese rice. While we're on the subject, Japanese rice is quite different. Think the rice you get with sushi. It's got bigger grains, and it's usually a lot stickier and softer.
Also served with a cabbage salad. It's covered with something like thousand island, which I avoid in general, but sometimes can be good.

Breakfast food

So with all the food around this city, from street vendors, to fast food, to Burger King delivery, you would think that I would never get to cook, but... not true! I happen to make my way to 7-11 at least once a week and pick up some cooking supplies.
We now have a stove-top, which is sweet quite frankly. I am now discovering the wonderful world of things like pancakes, fried eggs, hamburgers, and the occasional piece of toast (no toaster, of course).
Though most of our diet has been switched over to the Asian dishes around us, we still, naturally, like to make some good ol' fatty American food. Today it was scrambled eggs and bacon slapped between a couple of bread slices. Yum.
For dinner we usually try to eat light, especially after a lunch like the above...
So, I had some instant noodles. Nothing to write home about, unless you have a food blog. Mama is the most common brand, and it comes in lots of flavors. Think ramen noodles, on crack. There are about 4 different packets of spice, sauce, crumbs inside the cup. It also includes chili paste.

Japanese-Thai

Oishi is a Thai restaurant and brand name that is everywhere. It is supposed to be Japanese-sounding, and it actually had me fooled for a long time that it was from Japan. So they sell food in 7-11, tea, and have lots of places to eat, like sushi bars and noodle joints. We like to go to Oishi Ramen on the 3rd floor of the mall near our apartment. It's cheap, and we can walk there. What more can you ask for?

So this is the tom yuum noodle soup. It is spicy with egg noodles. Normally, tom yaam doesn't have noodles in it, but I appreciated it. It also has slices of slow-cooked pork, cap mushrooms, and some sprouts. The broth was spicy and sour.

We also like gyoza, a Japanese dumpling with pork. You can pan fry them, but I think these ones were baked. The outside is crispy and a bit chewy, and they drizzle it with a sweet seseame sauce. Yum!

For lunch I will often get food from Soi 1 where I work, and bring it home for Marc and I. This time I stopped at a food market and got kao moo daeng. It means 'red pork', which is decidedly baconish, which, naturally, I like. It think it's from cooking it with some kind of sweet marinade. It also comes with crispy pork, which is literally a thick slab of bacon that is deep fried, then cut into cubes. Generally you eat it with plain rice, covered in a sweet and savory sauce, like in the photo.

Tastes Like Chicken

Garlic. Deep-fried. Spicy. Crispy.
Thai fried chicken goes so far beyond any kind of chicken you have experienced. The best stuff is breaded with a thick rice-flour and sesame seeds, and deep fried in a huge wok. Some more creative vendors like to throw in some herbs, other pan fry some whole garlic cloves to serve on the side. We like to dump the crispy, golden garlic right over the top and smash it in with the rice.

Speaking of, this is a good time to get a plug in for sticky rice. Unless rice is a main part of your diet, chances are you don't know a ton about it. Turns out, I don't know a ton about it either, but god knows I know what I like, so how about I just tell you about that? In Thailand, you can get two basic kinds of rice: "Kao pow" (plain rice), or "Kao ne'ow" (sticky rice). Plain rice is just what it sounds like. It's soft, fluffy, steamed rice. It goes with anything strong and spicy. I can generally eat about 3 pounds of it in one sitting which tends to be dangerous.

Sticky rice is also very yummy, and a bit harder to overdose on. It is harder and chewier than plain rice, and this is because of the higher glucose content, making it fattier and more delicious. Thai hill-billies and I like to ball it up with our bare hands and dip it into whatever kind of sauce is nearby.



Cute.... but baaad...

Thai Food chain

Today we ate food from a Thai food chain called J. J. Kitchen. It's mediocre at best, but I like their green curry. It kind of looks like a bowl of green water, so I didn't put a picture up here, but I love to eat it with plain rice. Marc's yellow curry was much more photogenic, so that is what you see here. It wasn't very spicy, but really flavorful. Also eaten with plain rice, as you can see. It is my opinion that anything strong that can be eaten with rice is worth a feature on this site.

We also got some satay. It is sticks of pork marinated in something yellow. They aren't spicy, but you dip it in a sauce. The peanut sauce this time pretty much tasted like peanut butter, which, I like peanut butter a lot, but usually not on my pork. If the sauce is good, it is less peanut buttery, and more just peanut. The other dip option is vinegar with cucumber, onion, cilantro, and chilis. This one is yummy simply because it's hot!

More Favorites

This afternoon I was slightly naughty. I saw ice-cream being sold on the street, and I got it, before I had even eaten my lunch!
Thai ice-cream is usually a little icey and coconut flavored. It sometimes has chunks of hard flour candy, or piece of fruit in it. Also, you usually eat it with a blob of sticky rice in the middle of the two scoops. If you're feeling really frisky you can put some seed or peanuts over the top. Oh yea, and it costs $.30.


For lunch we had pad thai from a place really close to us. They do the best pad thai I've found in the city. I get it "lek, gup goong laat bang" (small, with shrimp and the crispy-fried-yummy-stuff). Best with lots of chili powder and lime.

After dinner, Marc cut up a Phuket Pineapple. Apparently, this is not a normal pineapple. It is more sweet, and the outside is a formidable opponent, which is why Marc cuts it up.

Something Special

Today we saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was good, kind of don't want to get into it. But, more importantly, let's talk about what I ate!

The pizza is from a place where we go sometimes. It's about a 25 minute walk from our place, or we can take the train. This particular variety has apple, mozzarella, and gorganzola. Yikes, it was pungent.

A German place that we like called Bier Otto: We had German beer and pretzels with grainy mustard.
Marc chopb beer. (to like)

First Meal: Lunch and dinner are the same

I have decided to have a blog. Seems like the trendy thing to do, so, I am naturally inclined against it. However, since I just can't get enough of delicious treats, I thought I'd share my life like this. Explanations are going to be at a minimum, to be honest, so if you want details, just have to ask!


So I had class today at the Soi 1 office, so I grabbed a quick lunch to take home afterwards. This is an Isaan dish called larb moo. It's basically ground pork, and its cooked with some water is a small pot with chilis, cilantro, some fish sauce, onion, and some other herbs. This one was actually a bit too spicy for me, to the point where I actually couldn't finish it. Thais usually eat it with sticky rice, but I prefer the plain rice. I also picked up some veggie spring rolls from a street vendor on my way back to the train.

For dinner, we got food from one of our favorite places. It's called Polo Chicken. They serve Isaan food in all it's glory.

This is called kaw moo yeung. It is pork (moo), sliced thinly. You usually dip it in a sweet and spicy sauce. Marc's favorite.

I love laarb so much, I didn't mind having it for lunch and dinner. The laarb from Polo is much better than the street laarb, and the price is about the same (about $1 on the street, versus about $1.40). This time I opted to eat it with sticky rice.
This is one of my very favs, though Marc isn't as big a fan as I am. Also, if you ask a Thai person what his or her favorite food is, 90% of the time the answer is SOM TAM. Som tam is a papaya salad. It includes graan papaya (the white-looking strips), tomato, lots of lime juice, little shrimps, green beans, and, of course, lots of Thai chilis. This is also part of Isaan food, and you eat it with sticky rice.
Yummy! It was soo good!