Sun-dried Foods and Jeowbong

Adam & I have been cycling around Louang Prabang for a few days now and we have come across so many foods drying in the sun outside peoples homes. I am told that Laos food is quite distinct from any other Asian country, and that Louang Prabang's cuisine is the best in Laos. Each family has their own recipes for Louang Prabang specialties. They may only differ slightly but each recipe is highly regarded.






We have seen dried lemon and lime peels, sticky rice cakes, red chillies, bananas, various herbs and fruit skins for teas, and buffalo meat for the Jeowbong', a famous chilli paste only made in Louang Prabang.







Jeowbong is served as a side dish and can be eaten with most Lao dishes. We have tried some Jeowbong spread on seaweed crackers, (but you could spread this onto any cracker of your choice ( rice, sesame, even a pappadam) and we particularly liked it with dried buffalo skin.

Try it on leftover roast chicken in a sandwich. Or spread it over meats and then roast.



If you like chillies you will enjoy this recipe. Compliments of the Tamnak Lao Restaurant where Adam & I will be taking a Laos cooking class tomorrow.



TAMNAK LAO JEOWBANG



Ingredients

4 tablespoons oil

2 tablespoons chilli powder (see recipe below)

3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons garlic chopped finely

Keep 1 tablespoon of oil that the garlic will be fried in later

1/2 teaspoon of chicken stock (powder will do)

1 teaspoon galangal powder (see note)

2.5 tablespoons of fish sauce



Chilli powder

1. To make the chilli powder you will need fifty dried red chillies.

2. Pound them in a mortar and pestle until the chillies are powdered and you have 2 tablespoons of chilli powder

Notes: If you do not want the jeowbong to be hot, take the seeds out of the chillies before pounding.

To save energy you may wish to first process the dried chillies in a kitchen blender and then finish off by pounding them.



JEOWBONG

1.Fry the garlic in 4 tablespoons of oil until golden. (Reserve the remaining oil)



There are two ways to proceed from here 1. The traditional method used by the Lao or 2. The Cheat's Way.



Traditional Method

1. Crush the chilli powder, fried garlic, sugar, salt, chicken stock and galangal powder in a mortar and pestle and pound it down until it is very well mixed.

2. Add the fish sauce and 1 tablespoon of the oil that the garlic was fried in and pound to mix well. Note: It should come together as a paste.

3. Put the paste into a saucepan and fry for a few minutes. The paste should have a rich and pungent chilli smell.

4. Put it into a bowl and serve



Cheat's Way

1. Place 1 tablespoon of the oil that the garlic was fried in, plus all other ingredients into a small blender.

2. Blend slowly on a low setting, making sure the jeowbong does not become too liquid.

3. Continue with the Traditional method in Steps 3 and 4.



Notes:

Galangal powder is often sold as Lao powder in Asian supermarkets. If you do not have galangal, replace it with four small slices ginger. Jeowbong can be made without this ingredient.

Jeowbong will keep for a very long time in the refridgerator.

You may like to add jeowbong to other dishes requiring chillies. For example, fry 60g chicken, pork or prawns in 1.5 tablespoons oil with 3 cloves of chopped garlic and jeowbong to taste until cooked through. Add º cup of coriander or parsley, salt and pepper to taste and two tablespoons of lime or lemon juice. Mix with noodles and spaghetti.

Nuts and Crackers

Walk around the streets of Louang Prabang for a few days and you begin to notice a lot more. For example - the doughnut lady and the grilled banana lady always on the corner of our street. The local children that come up and harass you to buy their jewellery each evening, I am beginning to recognise the same faces and the little tricks they employ to make a sale. I have noticed that there are particular woven baskets for rubbish outside each residence and that tuk-tuks aren't allowed to enter a residential street because they are too noisy. I have even begun to notice the local nutter.




Yes even Louang Prabang has one and he really is special. The first day we arrived he approached us shirtless and with open arms begging for money, he doesn't speak he just uses his hands to signal. The next day he approached us in a flimsy sarong, again shirtless. (The people of Louang Prabang are conservative dressers so this is really inappropriate in Laos culture) The third day he approached us dressed in bright orange monk robes. The fourth day he had a spade a sickle and a piece of wood. Today I saw him walking down the street in full army gear, with a gun in each hand, fakes I hope but I didn't want to stick around to find out, so I veered off the main road and cycled down a small street and came across some crackers of a different kind.







There were at least a dozen mesh wire racks propped on the side of the street with wafer thin crackers lying flat, left to sun-dry. Since it was a scorching hot day, the conditions for sun-drying were perfect, outside their house a family begins the process of preparing some more crackers for drying. We stopped to chat and found that they are home-made with potato, sugar and black sesame seeds.





The process of making the wafers started with an old lady that looked like grandma, she took a small lump from an enormous pile of potato dough, rolled it into a small ball and then passed it to the next person. The next man had a small black wooden press and some rounds of plastic, each ball would be placed between two sheets of film and then pressed between the wood to squash the ball flat into round discs. The disc would then be passed along a few more times to be pressed and flattened some more until paper thin. These paper thin discs would then be placed onto the mesh racks for sun-drying.





Later we found some in the shop at the end of the street for sale, and we bought some to taste. Crispy and sweet with a slight sesame flavour. I found they were satisfyingly crunchy, and great to know that they were locally made and I was helping to support a family business.

Laosing About

We made it! A two-day slow boat adventure down the Mekong river from the border town of Houxai to Louang Prabang, via the notorious Pak Beng.

After all that worry I had nothing to fear from Pak Beng. Yes, it was lawless - and there were men with guns (more for the tourist protection, I would like to think. But hey, imagine you're in a small town in the middle of a jungle, where the electricity in the entire town is switched off at 10.30pm and there is nothing to do.

You can't read, you can't listen to music, you can't watch telly. You can't stay up late with an enforced curfew, the entire town is in darkness and it's hot.

The thought of going to bed at the same time every night would send me nuts and I think the locals definitely get restless - that's why I understand their need to get absolutely drunk.

One of my rules of travelling is, of course, always do what the locals do - so we did... we got absolutely legless. Adam, David (our newly acquired Aussie travelling companion) and I sat outside on the balcony of our hotel with the hotel's assistant and drank Beer Lao (Fantastic beer by the way).

We listened to all the Laos women singing their traditional songs and then watched them all stumble home up the one-street town, past our building and shouting 'sabaideeeeeeeee' with smiles.

Then the lights went out.

We awoke the next morning to the sound of cock-a-doodle-doos and all the mountains clouded in mist. All the villagers were arriving from the mountains to visit the morning market with machetes in hand (presumably to cut there way through the thick jungle).

We set off for Louang Prabang in our slow boat, an eight-hour journey ahead of us. Adam has described our journey along the Mekong beautifully. If you would like to read it follow the link 'Adam's blog' on the right side of my blog.

Grub's Up

There was a little surprise in store for us today as we toured The Golden Triangle. We stopped off at Mae Salong, a 1300m mountain, home to the Koumintang (The Nationalists), who were the ruling party of China for 21 years. The Koumintang settled here after fleeing the Communist Revolution of 1949.

Since 1949 they have been cultivating opium, however, in the last 20 years or so the Thai government has been actively working with them to introduce crop programmes to replace opium. Driving through this area today, we could see lush mountains with crops of corn and tea plantations, and no sign of any popppy fields.

We stopped off at The 101 Tea Plantation and had a wander around, starting with a walk amongst the shrubs of oolong tea and then the factory where all the leaves are dryed, sorted and processed.

Next stop, one of the many tea shops. An old Chinese lady is waiting to perform a tea ritual and, of course, sell us some tea. After we tasted each tea the old lady offered a selection of sun-dried candied fruits to cleanse our palate, there was ginger, palm, longan, prunes and my favourite - bursting with flavour - cherry tomato. We tried green tea, oolong, ginseng, jasmine and sticky rice tea.

The tea is served in in a tiny bowl with a tall cup inside. The tall cup inside has a dual purpose. It holds the tea, keeping it hot until you are ready to start the process - when its time, you release the tea by lifting the tall cup, the tea fills the bowl, then you sniff the aroma that remains in the tall cup and then roll the cup in your hands to warm them (great in winter, not so great in summer) and drink your tea.

Our tea lady decided the fruit wasn't enough to cleanse our palates and perhaps we needed something a little more - savoury, like......grubs... yes you read it - bamboo grubs. So right in front of us the old lady lights the stove, heats a small frying pan and dry-roasts some bamboo grubs with a little salt and pepper.



I have been promising that Adam would be my taster for the more adventurous foods and here was an golden oppurtunity. So I dared him. Kudos to him, he popped one straight in his mouth, crunched away and then another and another with a big smile on his face. It looked so easy I decided to have a taste and it was easy. They were crunchy and salty with no distinct flavour and in fact the texture reminded me of the dregs at the bottom of your popcorn that get stuck between your teeth.



Our guide explained they are enjoyed here as a tasty snack that compliments the tea and that Bamboo grubs are also used in a special version of Nam Prik.

Nam Prik is a northern chilli sauce/dip that can be made solely with vegetables like aubergine, or with the addition of meat, ground pork or bamboo grubs. Nam Prik is usually served with a plate of raw, crisp vegetables and pork crackling to dip.

In the grub version, the bamboo grubs are boiled first and then pounded in a mortar and pestle with the chillies to make a paste.

Well, I'm all grubbed out today but if I come across some Bamboo Grub Nam Prik I will be wriggling to try some.

Coconut Whatsits!

It's my last night in Chiang Mai for awhile and I couldn't leave without mentioning these.





The photos don't do them justice . I don't know the Thai name so I just call them Coconut Whatsits. They are extremely good.

Bite-size coconut milk custards filled with either pumpkin, sweetcorn or chives. They are oh-so sweet, crispy on the outside and gooey-goopey in the middle. The perfect comfort/snack food.



P.S Just found out the Thai name - Kanom Krop - but I think I will stick with the name Coconut Whatsits.

Farewell Chiang Mai

We are leaving for Chiangrai tomorrow and I'm really sad we are leaving because we have met so many great people here. It feels like home away from home.

I have thoroughly enjoyed studying Ancient Thai Massage at ITM. The teachers kept me laughing throughout and were surprisingly patient with me.

It was hard work trying to squeeze so much information in 2 weeks but I feel confident that after I return for another 2 weeks that I will have the core teachings to take home with me and from there it will be up to me to practice, practice and practice some more.

So all my friends in Oz who will allow me to practice on them , please click on some of mine or Adam's ads and they just might help pay for some of the courses. Cheers!!

Back in a bit...

Just to let you know that I have just started a Thai Yoga Masssage course and it is quite intense, so my writing will be limited for a couple of weeks. The good news is that you will all benefit eventually - because I need practice. So all those Oz friends - I will need plenty of bodies to practice on.

Adam will still be writing his blog if you're interested. I am never going to catch up to him at this rate. Have you seen how many hits he has?

Has anyone tried out the recipe below?

We went to the Sunday night market at Tha Phae Gate and had a great time exploring. We tried some delicous food. The black bean ice-cream was pretty good. So here are some photos to keep you salivating until the next blog entry. See you soon...