JackfruitApologies for my long absence and silence. Yours truly has been sampling unusual culinary creations in the Kingdom of Thailand, where street carts, night markets, cafes and restaurants had a vast selection of fun edible stuff. Here’s just a small taste of what I found.
STREET FOOD THAT IS NOT SCARY
Jackfruit ice cream in a cone. Jackfruit itself is rubbery and tastes a bit like bubble gum.
Sweet sticky rice with sesame seeds served on a palm leaf, eaten with toothpicks.
One can eat many things on a stick.
BLACK JELLY
Chow-Guai is a vegetable jelly made from a Chinese plant. It's black and is eaten with ice and palm sugar. This is a dish shrouded in mystery -- no other information can be found about this.
DRIED SOUR FRUITS
BUGS! OF ALL SORTS!Crickets, beetles, larvae! Play the slideshow to see me eating them. These bugs were sold from a street cart. I picked out the ones I wanted to try, they were scooped into a plastic bag for me and sprayed with some kind of salty soy sauce-like spray but remained crunchy. We only saw one bug cart like this throughout the duration of our trip, so I don't think they are very popular. My eyes lit up when I saw this street cart, so I'm glad we decided to try the bugs that same instant and not to wait to find another one later.
SNAKEHEAD FISH
This is a grilled
snakehead fish. It is called so because its head looks like it is covered in snake-like scales and because of its other peculiar features: this freshwater fish breathes atmospheric air with primitive lungs and feeds on other fish and small animals like frogs and rats. Not much of a fish now, is it?
SOMETHING I FORGET THE NAME OF
This is a Muslim dessert crepe that one purchases with a bag of colorful palm sugar strings. We were told it would be unbearably sweet and kind of dry but it turned out moderately sweet and delicious. It was a little bit like eating cotton candy in a crepe. We tried it in Ayutthaya.
KHAO SOI NOODLES
Khao soi noodles are deep fried and crunchy, floating in a very rich coconut milk-based curry.
VAST FOOD COURTS This food court at the Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok is the largest food court I have ever seen in my life. It had an extraordinary selection of restaurants, stalls, cafes, mini-grocery shops and bakeries. I haven't seen a larger food court even in Japan. Does anyone know of a larger food court? My favorite finds here were the
marshmallow taco, hot dog pancakes and a bear-shaped bread bun.
This is a reminder that a whole world of weird food exists beyond the shores of our city, but to stick to the focus of this blog, I will try to research for you guys where you can sample some of this stuff on our soil.
Continue...
