This is the first of a series of monthly articles on Lao and Thai cuisine. Each month we will give you a new recipe of 'real' Lao and Thai cuisine - not your 'made-for-Falang' food served in most outside-of-country restaurants. We welcome you to share your exotic food stories and favorite recipes with us.
Lao Food is Normally Simple, Moderately Spiced and Very Healthy
Lao food is one of the healthiest cuisines in the world. The herbs and spices typically used are credited with preventative and curative properties. MSG is rarely used, unlike in most Thai food. Medical findings confirm that lime juice, chilies, garlic and onions - used almost universally in Lao food - as well as lemon grass, galangal and kaffir lime are useful in lowering cholesterol and controlling blood pressure: all have anti-oxidant properties as well.
Chilies, lime, lemon grass, galangal and basil are also very rich sources of vitamin C. In hot climates, chili is especially beneficial in cleansing the blood. Notice how the further towards the equator you go, the increasing intensity of spiciness in the food. Hot food makes you perspire and perspiration is the bodies' natural system of cooling by evaporation.
Sticky rice (khao niow) is the staple for all Lao meals; accompanying dishes are prepared with fresh vegetables, freshwater fish, poultry, duck, pork, beef, buffalo or wild game. Limejuice, lemon grass, coriander and chili give the food its characteristic tang, and various fermented fish concoctions are used to salt and flavor the food. Any meal is normally served with a plate of lettuce, mint, coriander, basil, bean sprouts, lime wedges, watercress and a host of exotic tasting leaves gathered from the forest.
Rural Lao people eat almost anything and everything - with exceptions, of course - nobody eats cockroaches! Giant water beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, big red ants and their eggs, bee and wasp larvae, however, are consumed with gusto, often uncooked. Pure protein, with a shot of calcium from the shells! Chopped raw meat, lizards, frogs, snakes, songbirds, field rats, civet cat, porcupine, deer and bear - almost anything that moves - is fair game!
Meng Das are Tasty Giant Water Beetles
For most travelers, it takes a bit of adjustment, years sometimes - even if interspersed with rounds of fiery white lightning. But most visitors to Laos do not venture far enough off the beaten track to experience such really distinctive Lao food, that is, the Lao preference for wild foods.
This tells you many things about Lao culture: for instance, the proximity of most Lao to the forest where food is hunted and foraged. Game shot in the mountains is carried back to the village where it is chopped up into laap, boiled into soup, grilled and fried. Extended family, neighbours and friends all gather to feast and drink communally. Larger animals like boar, deer and bear are occasions for feasts. Because there is no electricity or refrigerators in many villages, most of the meat is consumed immediately, but some may be smoked or sun-dried. Even in 'civilized' Lao cuisine, the presence of ingredients from the forest makes it different from Thai food.
Travelers coming from Thailand will immediately notice that
the Lao eat sticky rice at every meal. Each person takes a small handful of
khao niow and kneads it into a ball to dip into one of the dishes or condiments.
When Lao go off to work in the fields you will often see hanging at their side
a small woven baskets in which they carry sticky rice, hot sauce (jaew) and
a small amount of fish or meat which will serve as a mid-day meal.
There is another essential ingredient in a Lao meal, one the
Lao tend to use as an ethnic marker. This is pa daek, made from highly pungent,
fermented fish. In every Lao peasant's house you will find an earthenware jar
of it. Some refer to Laos as the Land of Pa Daek.
Laap - Chopped Spiced Meat or Fish (Frogs, Lizards or Whatever)
A distinctive dish of the Lao, relished by the Thais, is laap or goy, made
from fish, chicken, duck, pork, beef, buffalo or game. Meat and innards are
finely chopped and spiced with onion, chilies and herbs, often mint. Many Lao
prefer it raw, calling it goy dip or laap seua, meaning tiger laap. But in
most restaurants you will be served cooked laap, unless otherwise specified.
Thais and Laos alike are addicted to som tam, another icon
of Lao culinary culture: It's a fiery salad made from green papaya, limejuice,
garlic, chili, tomatoes and fermented fish or field-crabs. It is worth remembering
that when your eyes start watering, your nose starts running and your ears
begin ringing from too much chili, that a pinch of plain salt or sugar on your
tongue will bring - if not complete - at least partial immediate relief. Specify
when you order how hot you can stand.
Lao Som Tam Sellers on a Beach in Southern Thailand
A soup is also essential for Lao meals. Usually they are not overly spicy. Bamboo shoots and mushrooms are favorites, and like almost everywhere, chicken soup. Although one will not find fresh seafood soups, the Mekong River system has within it a total of about 1,300 fish species. Many of these are simply scrumptious in Lao soups, many of them lime, coconut or tamarind based.
Ecological depredation by logging and dam building has put many once-common species in danger. Over-fishing and changes in the flow of the Mekong River have brought several fish species to the edge of extinction. Rhinoceros and tigers, once a major hazard, are now virtually extinct, only to be read about in the tales of earlier travelers. Wildlife in general is under intense pressure as Laos strives to become a developed country.
These Tasty Jungle Rats Should be Eaten in the Jungle, not City Restaurants
If you wish to eat wild game, it is best to partake of it in villages where the inhabitants hunt for subsistence. Wild game sold in city restaurants and markets only accelerates the rapidly diminishing plentitude of Laos' jungles. It's better to leave it for the people who need it. Or be vegetarian.
What can be considered Lao haute cuisine can be found in the recipes of the former Master of Ceremonies and Chef at the Royal Court of Luang Prabang. They have been published in English and Lao as Traditional Recipes of Laos (Prospect Books, 1981).
Below is a recipe for one of my favorites, Tom Som Pa or sour fish soup. This is a popular soup usually prepared using fresh-caught, local freshwater fish. However any firm-fleshed fish will do.
Tom Som Pa
Ingredients: feeds 6-8
About one and a half pounds of fish fillets.
4 cups of fish stock
3 tablespoons of chopped garlic
3 tablespoons of chopped shallots
2 ounces of galangal, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons of mixed red and green prik chi fa (jalapenos), thinly sliced
5 stalks of lemon grass, cut into 2-inch lengths
A quarter of a cup of fish sauce
A quarter of a cup of tamarind juice, or limejuice
1-2 tablespoons of palm sugar (to taste)
2 cups of green cherry tomatoes
Cilantro
Method: Cut the fish into chunks or fillet it
Heat the stock to simmering point, and add all ingredients except the fish and return to low boil for about 15 minutes.
Add the fish and simmer until the fish is cooked through.
Sprinkle cilantro on the surface
Serve
Note: This dish can be eaten as a soup course, but soups are normally eaten with the other dishes of the dinner, rather than before them. Ladle the soup into individual small bowls from a large serving bowl in the center of the table, from where you can help yourselves to more. It is best-served and prepared in a crockery hot-pot over coals. The lemon grass and galangal are not normally eaten.
