Warning....vegetarians or those of weak digestive constitution may not like some of these photos.
A couple of days ago I enrolled in a Lao cooking course. There are a number of them around town, but I'd heard from a friend that a restaurant called Tamarind was absolutely lovely and that it also did cooking courses. So I headed down for lunch and booked myself on.
She was right about the food, they do like a Lao tapas plate called '5 bites' which give you 5 different Lao dishes and sticky rice to eat it with. It was nommy.
So the next day I rocked up to the cafe again at 9am. Six of us were there and we met our chef for the day, hopped in a tuk tuk and headed to the local food market. Our chef was very funny, unfortunately I can't remember his name, but he had the best deadpan sense of humour. First he took us round the fruit and veg section, showing us various Lao speciality vegges and herbs, explaining what everything was and how it was used.
Then we stopped for a second and he said 'now we're going to the butchers. If anyone doesn't want to look at or smell the meat you can meet us at the end'. Then we walked into a health and safety nightmare.
The meat and fish is all out on show and the stall owners keep the flies away with a plastic bag tied to the end of a stick. At the end of the day it doesn't do you any harm if flies land on the food as long as it's not rancid and it's cooked properly afterwards, but you can't help but be a little bit sick in your mouth at the sight of some of the things around. Here's a typical meat stall.
At the front you see skulls, I think they may be pigs. That red jelly stuff is congealed blood. The sponge thing at the back is buffalo stomach, and in those bags is buffalo bile and all kinds of other grossness.
We walked past a stall with lots of pig trotters, and he pointed at something and said 'this just for Halloween'. I followed his pointing finger and came face to face with a pig face....just the face...the face of a skinned pig. What people do with that I have no idea and I have no desire to find out! We stopped at a stall on the way out selling some strange dried meat. It was only when I looked closer that I realised it was dried squirrel....like whole squirrel jerky. This...he announced....was something we'd be cooking with later.
Oh joyous!!
After the market we headed to the place where we'd be cooking, it took a while to get there and we were wondering where the hell we were going to. When we got there I thought I'd fallen into paradise. The place was utterly beautiful and I think I'd have paid the money for the course just to go and spend a day there.
Once we'd gotten over our surroundings we were introduced to the first item we would be cooking, a spicy dip for sticky rice. I chose the Lao tomato salsa and we were set to work. I charred the chilli, tomatoes, shallots and garlic over the fire and then pounded them with a pestle and mortar with a pinch (a Lao pinch....almost half a teaspoon) of salt and some chicken stock powder. Stir in some spring onion, coriander and lime juice....voila!
Ok....so it doesn't look that impressive..it tasted good though...a bit too much lime, but what the hey??
The Lao people eat sticky rice using the following method. You take a smallish amount and squish it in your hand into a bite sized lump, then you scoop morsels of food up with it, or hold food onto it with your thumb. It's very bad Lao manners to leave rice grains in the food (eating is usually communal amongst families etc) and so it can take a bit of practice, but the sticky rice is really quite sticky, so you're usually ok.
This was our snack, so we munched our dips whilst he introduced the first proper dish we'd be cooking, Mok Pa...fish steamed in banana leaves, typical Lao fare.
To make the marinade for the fish we pounded shallots, garlic, chilli, lime leaves and salt. Once this was suitably squished we added spring onions, dill and basil then continued pounding. Add water and fish sauce for moisture and flavour, then we stirred the pieces of fish in.
We then parcelled up the fish in the banana leaves, softening the leaves first over the fire, poured in residual marinade and secured the parcel with bamboo. To distinguish ours from the rest we used a little veggie or something, so I stuck a green chilli on mine. We put them in to steam and began straight away on the next dish...my FAVOURITE!
Ua Si Khai: Stuffed Lemongrass
I was confused at first....how the hell do you stuff lemongrass? Have you ever SEEN lemongrass? But I trusted the chef and I persevered.
We mashed garlic, spring onions, coriander, lime leaves and salt,then we combined it with minced chicken and mashed a bit longer. Setting that aside, we attacked out lemongrass stalks. Roughly an inch from the bottom (the woody bit) you start making incisions with a sharp knife, straight up the stem for about 4 inches. Make lots of these incisions and due to the structure of the lemongrass (and a big dose of luck) you end up with a basket type arrangement when you compress it.
We stuck the meat/herb mixture into the lemongrass basket and smoothed down with our hands and then let it marinade for a few minutes. After that it's fried in soybean oil.
Friggin delicious!!
Next up was Orlarm, or Luang Prabang stew. We split into pairs and did one between 2 for this, one squirrel stew, one buffalo stew and one pork stew, my team got pork. There are lots of ingredients in this one so I won't go one forever, if anyone wants any of these recipes I'll be bringing them home with me :). Essentially we made our stews with aubergine and various weird and wonderful ingredients (most of which they've suggested alternatives for), and we then sat down to eat our creations.
The lemongrass was by far my favourite, the fish was lovely and the stews were ok. The buffalo was a bit tough,and because the squirrel was dried whole you were picking bones out of your mouth constantly!
For desert we made purple rice with coconut sauce, NOM NOM NOM!
What a fabulous day, but bloody knackering, we barely stopped. I really deserved that beerlao at lunchtime :D
(Enough food pics for you Wiluf?? :D)
Lunch on the last day was fish and chips...Vietnam style. That at the bottom there is deep fried squiddly diddly.
