Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

We interrupt the scheduled programming of the ‘What I Ate in Thailand‘ series to bring you something totally different. Were you shocked at the scary looking huge sausages? I was too.

Anyway, this was Wednesday the 30th of December 2009. It was one of those really hot Melbourne day. What could be better than a nice stein of cold beer. I looked around the dining room (it was 6-ish, very early in the evening we had plans to be somewhere else later) and it seemed like everyone was drinking out of them really huge jugs. I felt totally inadequate with my little stein of beer. However, it was beautifully cold and I can’t imagine ordering a bigger sized beer as I can imagine it warming up very quickly.

The restaurant seemed to have that whole kitschy stereotypical German decoration to it. It was very novel. It made me feel like drinking lots of beer and get up and do a Bavarian dance thing. Hey, I’m sure that’s the purpose of the joint! Read the rest of this entry »

One late night we ended up at a ‘khao dom‘ place. Khao dom literally means boiled rice but in this case really it refers to rice cooked in plenty of water served with various dishes of food that you desire. I suppose you can describe it as a plain congee. A khao dom joint is actually mostly a supper type place. It opens from early evening to often early morning. Some place opens all night. Anyway, the above nice greenery is the kana (also known as Chinese broccoli, kai lan or gai lum) stir fried with bits of deep fried salted fish with plenty of chilli and garlic. Now unfortunately, the chilli in this instance is green and the dish itself isn’t at all hot until you stop paying attention and bite into the actual chilli. Which I did. Twice.

This is, of course, the actual rice. You can order normal rice as well obviously but to me that sort of defeats the purpose of the khao dom joint!

This is stewed bamboo shoots with bits of chicken feet. The bamboo shoots are what are referred to in Thailand as Chinese bamboo shoots. They are soft and not the usual crunchy bamboo shoots. I have tried looking up what the differences between them are (as in whether they’re different because of they are different types of bamboo shoots or processed differently, anyone know?). The chicken feet, I suspect, were there as a stock ingredient rather than actually the intention of the dish. I’m not a fan of chicken feet but I think they make great stock. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I am so shockingly behind in the Cookbook Challenge, I figured I might just launch into my recent trip to Thailand since it’s still fresh. I spent a fair bit of time in Nakorn Si Thammarat in the south of Thailand. The food in the south tends to be much spicier, coconut milky, shrimp-paste than its Bangkokian cuisine. Let’s get to it:

The first dish (which by the way we ate everyday at the funeral) was gang prik moo (lit. curry chilli pork). Imagine, if you can, a hard core version of jungle curry but with fresh tumeric, heap load more chillis and no grachai thrown in. The basic Southern curry paste (which I have procured a jar and brought back to Melbourne) consists of lots of lemongrass, chilli, fresh tumeric, kaffir lime zest, more chilli, garlic, more chilli, lots of shrimp paste (as in more shrimp paste than your usual traffic light curries i.e. green, red and yellow – and no vegetable green curry is not vegetarian).

This was the local version of kua gling (lit. dry-fry, roll around – my only summisation of this strange name is that it’s so freaking hot, you will be rolling around on the ground after eating it). This was mega hot. This was even hotter than my Mum’s uber spicy. Strangely this version had chunks of beef and coconut milk rather than the usual minced beef and no coconut milk. But the same soi dog killing paste was used. I know it sounds scary and doesn’t look great but it really is bloody fantastic and a total local delicacy.

This was a soup – again from fatty belly pork (which I rather liked but let’s face it, you can only eat so much fat). It was pork belly, stock, fish sauce and some sort of tangy leaves (oh and I’m sure ridiculous amount of MSG). The Southern Thais rely heavily on their greenery. It seems like any sort of leaves can be eaten. Mum reckoned this was the cashewnut leaves. I wasn’t too sure. Nevertheless, I rather liked it. We had some forms of these dishes at the funeral almost everyday. Read the rest of this entry »