EatingAsia

In Southern Taiwan, the Sea in a Bowl

Fish noodles. That's noodles made of fish.

I (and you, hopefully) are already reaping rewards, of a sort, from EatingAsia's recently created Facebook page.

A comment, which I now seem unable to locate (there have been quite a few; we love that folks are joining the conversation -- thank you so much), included mention of Taiwanese fish noodles. Not noodles served with fish and fishballs in a piscene broth, but noodles that are actually made from fish.

It reminded me of one our tastiest finds last May-June on Taiwan, a dish we never got around to posting. We have soooo many of those --- stories from past trips that for some reason or other have never made it onto this blog. But it's never too late to publicize a find, don't you think?

 

We took a real liking to the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, not least for its many holes-in-the-wall and proper restaurants serving impeccably fresh and simply prepared seafood. Every meal we ate in and around Kaohsiung revolved around something fishy. There were a few excellent porky items thrown in for good measure, but for the better part of five days we ate seafood for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I'm not complaining.

One morning we took a boat out to tiny Cijin Island, a popular seafood-loving daytripper destination just 5-10 minutes by boat from the city. After feasting on grilled squid and raw tomatoes with powdered sugar (both specialties of the island -- a perhaps odd-sounding combination that works) we followed a coastal path to the island's northwestern tip and ascended a small hill, where we explored an old lighthouse and battery remains that date back to the Qing dynasty.

 

All that activity stoked our appetite, of course, so once back down at sea level we nosed around for a snack or three to carry us through the 10-minute boat ride back to the mainland. We noticed, on an otherwise sleepy side street, that every table at a stall advertising hujiao shougong yu mian tang (literally: pepper handmade fish noodle soup) was filled and further, signage advising that the place had been in business for thirty years.

Making the decision to stop and sample was a no-brainer.

We ordered the zonghe yu mian tang ('composite', ie 'mixed' fish noodle soup) and ended up with bowls of light scallion, Chinese celery, and white pepper-enhanced broth packed with a variety of fish balls (and one pork ball) and noodles, dumplings, ribbons of seaweed, and a few leaves of lettuce.

 

Imagine our surprise when the noodles turned out to be made of fish. They were absolutely exquisite (have a look at the opening photo, above), almost translucent, nubby, lightly fish flavored and boasting a fantastic chewy-snappy texture. The fish dumplings or yu jiao consisted of more piscene pasta filled with chopped pork generously seasoned with toasted sesame oil. The oil was so fresh and fragrant that when I bit a dumpling in half it released a plume of sesame-scented steam.

The fish balls were excellent as well, springy but not bouncing-rubber-ballish, and as intensely flavored as the noodles.

(Interestingly, we also found noodles made from fish in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah. When we returned to Kuala Lumpur after that trip more than four years ago I spied the same sort of round, thick fish noodles in a grocery store/ They were disappointing -- more binder than fish, with little piscene flavor.)

The proprietor off this stall on Cijin Island told us that fish noodles and fish pasta-wrapped dumplings were fairly common there -- and perhaps elsewhere? -- until about ten years ago. "It's a lot of work to make these kind of noodles," she said. "So we're one of the last stalls around."

Long may she and her lovely fish noodle stall thrive!

Hand-made fish noodles and fish dumplings stall, 44 Tongshan Lu (near corner of Miaocan Lu), Cijin Island, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. (07) 571-1711

Chongqing Alley Eats

Chongqing is not Chengdu. That was evident from the moment we stepped off the train.

It's bigger, sprawl-ier, uglier. Gritty and grey, cloaked in a layer of coal and industrial pollutants. Chongqing sprawls along both banks of the Yangtze River, yet feels claustrophobic. Neighborhoods march up and down hillsides, packed tight as honeycombs. And the city is in the midst of a massive makeover that aims to make it into a "little Hong Kong". Not for Chongqing Chengdu's old neighborhoods of work unit-era lowrises built along tree-lined streets. The municipality's mayor is after endless office towers, shopping malls, and  high-rise luxury apartment buildings encircled by an ever-expanding network of wide, efficient ring roads.

As for Chongqing-ites, they are a bit rough around the edges. Not as easy to smile as Chengdu ren. Not as likely to be hanging out in tea gardens or sitting at sidewalk tables playing mahjong and cards and snacking and shooting the breeze. They're can be a little short, initially, when you speak with them. On the street, they push more.Chongqing people have an edge.

Yet we found ourselves wishing, after two nights, that we had more time in Chongqing . Something alluring about the challenge of getting beneath its veneer. Some day, we'll return.

In the meantime we'll remember fondly two meals eaten in a single day, on the street and in sub-40F/4C weather (not as unpleasant as it sounds), within spitting distance a stone's throw of each other.

 

The first, in an alley spoking off a small wet market. It's late for lunch and we're hunting, hungry, dipping our heads against a persistent mist, when we see: a few tables protected from the elements by a striped plastic tarp, handwritten characters on a blackboard hung beneath an open kitchen raised 10 feet off the ground, customers eagerly tucking in. We order sparingly (we don't want to spoil dinner).

 

Dou hua  -- flower' bean curd -- a Sichuan specialty of almost spongy fresh bean curd simmered in water and served hot with black bean-chili or green chili-cilantro sauce; smoked pressed bean curd stir-fried with pickled chilies and local leeks; stem lettuce stir-fried with dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns (which, since Sichuan, is pretty much how I fry all my leafy greens.)

The chef smiles at us from his perch above our patch of pavement. The 'attendant' (his wife, we think) beams when we ask for la jiao (chili sauce), even more so when we request a second helping. It's a typically jiachang cai ('homestyle' dishes) sort of meal, delicious yet built around everyday ingredients. In case we haven't already driven this home with previous Chengdu posts -- these are the sort of meals that, in Sichuan at least, never fail to deliver.

We decide to return for dinner ... and find the literal hole in the wall closed. But just around the corner another is gearing up for business.

 

It's still cold and wet. We're offered tables inside the shop but it's much livelier on the street. In front of us a man and woman work a grill; they're making chuan-chuan -- food, all kinds of food, grilled on wooden skewers The characters for chuan-chuan say it all: 串 串. This skewered specialty is all the rage in Chengdu, but as we find out they do it a bit differently in Chongqing.

At the entrance to the restaurant is a table displaying this evening's ingredients. What a fantastic way to order dinner, gazing at an array of tempting fresh and pickled vegetables and smoked and fresh meats rather than a menu.

We end up with a couple of wonderful surprises, like snow peas (it's the first time we've seen them in Sichuan) stir-fried with bacon-like la rou, and fava beans cooked with local leeks and a bit of stock and served with a healthy dusting of ground Sichuan peppercorn. The creamy blandness of the beans is a perfect partner to the numbing bite of the peppercorn.

And there is a dish that by now, almost three weeks into our time in Sichuan, has become an old favorite: a delicious fresh, slightly astringent green-and-red leaf called zhu er gen tossed in a dressing of sesame oil, la jiao, black vinegar, and salt. This version of the dish is especially nice because the leaves have been left attached to their thick stems and roots, which possess a juicy crunchiness akin to celery. 

 

As we eat we observe the chuan-chuan action. Two men arrive and select skewers of eggplant,  cauliflower, liver, and big fat pork-filled dumplings (yes, dumplings) to be grilled over the charcoal. They also select a bundle of green onions and a bowl of what looks to be brains.

 

In Chengdu chuan-chuan is served on the stick with a dipping sauce on the side. We're not sure if the radical variation we're witnessing is special to this restaurant or if it's a Chongqing-style chuan chuan cooking in general. But it's wild.

As the items are cooked they're thrown into a pan set over low heat to keep warm. Once everything is done it's transferred to a big metal bowl and tossed with seasonings -- a bit of chopped green onion and cilantro, soy sauce and la jiao and sesame oil to the customer's specifications, perhaps some ground Sichuan peppercorn and dried red chili flakes.

The entire mess is then dumped on platter and served.

Careful plating this was not, but the muddle on the middle of the table next to us was curiously appetizing. As we picked at the remnants of our standard-order (but tasty) Sichuanese meal we watched the two men dip their chopsticks into the pile on the plate between them and wondered if we'd missed out on the messy essence of street eating in Chongqing.

Dinner: stall on Da Tong Lu across from the Bank of Communications (No. 70), Chongqing Sichuan. Lunch: in the alley just around the corner from dinner.

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This is what the folks at Chiang Mai's Sorn Chai/Sorn Jan were eating for lunch as we were demolishing their laab khua and nam prik ong.

EatingAsia now has a Facebook page. We're already (obviously) posting here, and Dave and I are both on Twitter and Facebook. So why an EatingAsia Facebook presence?

We thought it would be nice to have a place for Dave's photos that don't really have a blog post-worthy back story (or for which I'm too bogged down with deadlines to write one). And for recipes that have no photo, and short musings on ingredients and the threads that connect the region's cuisines.

There will be bits that are more travel-y than food-y (we are on the road about half the year, after all), like the occasional recommendation of a great hotel or guest house. (We don't accept free meals or lodging in exchange for kind words so if we recommend a place you can rest assured that it is truly deserving.) Updates (where we are, where we're going) and news (like the fact that we're now offering 'bespoke' street food tours) will go on the page as well.

Mostly, we're hoping that the page will be conversation-friendly. Sometimes readers of this blog leave comments that relate to earlier comments on the same post, and that deserve a response from the original commenter (which is great - we love comments!) Facebook seems to make these sorts of back-and-forth exchanges a bit easier.

Meanwhile, content here will stay the same. We won't be spending oodles of time on the EatingAsia Facebook page, so you needn't fear that our posts here will become less frequent. And the page will no doubt evolve over time anyway.

Hope to see you over there.

Shan Pickle

I'm not sure if we've ever made it public, but we are Pickle People. It's something to do with our love of sourness in absolutely any form, I suppose. We adore vegetables too, so it stands to reason that any food that is both sour and vegetal is a guaranteed winner in our book.

Last year, while reporting a feature article on Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford's first cooking class in northern Thailand, we were introduced to the pickle of our dreams. Made with mustard -- our favorite leafy green -- and dried chilies, turmeric, and rice wine and fermented with glutinous rice, it's crunchy and sharp and possesses the funky pungency more often found in Asian pickles than those made in the West.

We encountered said pickle on a lovely lychee farm in Fang (a city about 2 hours north of Chiang Mai) where Naomi and Jeff's students spent two idyllic days learning how to cook Shan dishes from a soft-spoken Burmese Shan couple. She had made the pickle, and so we've called it 'Shan pickle' ever since.

In Thai the pickle is called pakkat dong. Dong (pronounced 'dawng') is a general term for anything pickled or fermented. Pakkat most often refers to the choy sum-ish yellow-flowering mustard that is a main ingredient of northern Thai jaw pakkat, a delicious sour pork and vegetable soup. Yellow-flowering pakkat leaves are also served as part of the array of fresh herbs and vegetables that accompany every northern Thai meal.

Pakkat is also a general term for any leafy mustard. Our Shan pickle is made with a variety that closely resembles in flavor the especially sharp-tasting, egg-shaped 'head' mustard that Chinese call jie cai (gai choy in Cantonese). 

Before and after: mustard before pickling and the pickle, sun-dried

The Shan are also Pickle People. Not only do they make and eat 'wet' specimens like our Shan pickle, they also take those pickled vegetables and dry them in the sun. These intensely flavored wisps of soured goodness, which are often touched with a whiff of smoke, are then added to soups and curries. (You can taste and buy a variety of dried pickles at the Cin Haw Friday morning market in Chiang Mai.)

 

Shan pickle is a cinch to make, though it does require a bit of space in which to lay out the mustard greens to dry. They need to be shriveled and moisture-free before they're put in their pickling bath. (If you live somewhere very hot and sunny, the greens can be dried in a day.)

There are no set-in-stone amounts for most ingredients. It depends on the size and shape of  of your jar (or jars), how spicy you like your pickle, whether or not you like turmeric, etc.

For my last batch of Shan pickle I started with about 6 pounds of jie cai / mustard. I removed the core and sliced it into approximately 3/4-inch / 3-cm pieces, which I washed thoroughly and dried in a salad spinner. I then laid the mustard in a single layer on towel-lined cookie sheets -- 6 in all -- and set them on my dining table under a ceiling fan. 

You don't have to live somewhere hot to dry vegetables this way, but it is very important that the cabbage, if not dried outdoors, be exposed to moving air. Otherwise -- speaking from experience, when I tried to dry them in my hot, airless, fan-free little kitchen -- the leaves will rot rather than dry.

So, there they sat on the table for three days. Did they begin to emit a strong cabbage-like stink? Yes, a bit. No matter; we don't spend much time in the vicinity of the dining table. By the end of the third day the mustard leaves had shrunk to about 1/3 of their original volume and looked like this:

I put all the leaves in a bowl, added about half a tablespoon of kosher salt and a full tablespoon of dried ground chilies, and rubbed the seasonings into the leaves with my fingers. I then cut a peeled knob of fresh turmeric into 6 or 7 slices (if fresh turmeric isn't available you can substitute about 1 teaspoon turmeric powder and rub it into the cabbage leaves with the chili and salt).

I placed the leaves and turmeric slices into a jar (see photo above), smushing the leaves down to pack them in tightly, then sprinkled in 2 or 3 tablespoons of Chinese rice wine. (Sake would work, as long as it isn't sweet, shoju might work as well, or a very dry sherry.) A single layer of glutinous rice topped the greens, and then I added warm (not boiling) water to about 3 fingers' height above the greens.

I sealed the jar, set it in a dark, warm place -- and 2 weeks later we had Shan pickle.

 

We could have let the pickle ferment for another week for a stronger taste, or pulled it a week early for a lighter fermentation. Once the jar is opened it goes in the fridge, where it stays good forever -- or 3 months, at least.

We eat it as a condiment to accompany other dishes and rice. You could toss it into a northern-style soupy curry made with pork, perhaps. But when we cook with our Shan pickle we most often use it in a wonderful pork belly and pressed tofu stir-fry that we learned at the class up in Fang. The sharpness of the pickle is the perfect foil for the belly's fatty richness. Feel free to adjust ingredient amounts (you could certainly do with more pork belly if you're a pork lover.) Serve with regular (not sticky) steamed rice.

(The glutinous rice aids fermentation. It doesn't soften. If you're eating the pickle as a condiment you might want to pick off the grains, but we don't bother. If you're cooking with the pickle the grains kind of disappear into the dish.)

This recipe is adapted from Naomi Duguid and Jeff Alford's cooking immersion course in northern Thailand (thanks to Jodi and Farina for putting together a collection of recipes from the class). Naomi is now offering classes on her own. Anyone interested in a very different -- and fun and fascinating -- sort of foodish experience should check out the 2011 schedule, with class details and itinerary, here.

Pakkat Dong Khua Sai Daohu Muu Sam Chan (Shan Pickle with 'Three-Layer' Pork and Bean Curd)

2 Tbsp cooking oil

200 grams fatty pork belly, skin removed and sliced thin

Optional: 1/2 Tbsp (or more) ground dried chili

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

Optional: 1 cup sliced fresh mustard greens, any variety

1 lb pressed tofu, sliced thin (Substitute regular firm bean curd, wrapped in towels and pressed under weights for at least 1 hour)

1 1/2 cups pickled mustard greens

Salt to taste

5 scallions (white part and green part), chopped with a medium bunch of cilantro

1. Heat a wok or frying pan over high heat. Add the oil and heat, and then add the pork belly. Fry it till it's brown and beginning to crisp, stirring often.
2. If using the chili, add it now and fry until fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Add the sliced onion and fresh mustard greens, if using. Stir for a minute and then ad the tofu and fry until the tofu begins to brown.
4. Stir in the pickled greens and toss together, then cover the wok or pan, lower the heat to medium-low and simmer for about 7 minutes.
5. Taste for seasoning and add salt if necessary. I f you wish for a bit of sourness, splash in a Tbsp or two of pickle juice. Stir everything together.
6. Serve sprinkled with the cilantro and green onions.

Chiang Mai's Lovely Laab, Hidden in Plain Sight

We pride ourselves in sniffing out great restaurants wherever we land. But Sorn Chai is one that we would never have found without a little help from a local friend.

It's not as if this little 4-table spot is hidden. Quite the contrary, in fact -- it sits on one of the city's most tourist-traversed streets, almost directly opposite Tha Phae Gate, the crumbling city wall's eastern entrance. Over the years we've probably walked or driven by the place a hundred or so times.

 

But, like another great little hard-to-miss spot on the same prominent street, Sorn Chai doesn't call attention to itself. It sits next to a drug store (owned by the family that runs the restaurant) and the signage above the shop is in Thai (where it reads 'Sorn Jan/Chan'; the English-language sign stuck to the display case reads 'Sorn Chai'; thanks Leela and W for the heads up). Laid out on a table out front are fixings for kanom jeen nam ngiaow and som tam, as well as fresh-squeezed orange juice in plastic bottles, nestled in a tub of ice. A limited range of northern Thai dishes are almost hidden from passerby in a larger display case set perpendicular to the shop's old wooden counter. just inside its entrance.

During our several meals at Sorn Chai we watched tourists stop and examine, and sometimes buy, the orange juice. But not a one gave more than a passing glance to that display case. The two sisters running the shop don't engage in the hard sell, or the soft sell, or any sell at all.

 

One day I'll write a post about how setting aside the mistaken notion that to stay healthy while traveling one should avoid any dish left to sit out is as liberating, in a foodie sense, as embracing the unfamiliar at breakfast time.

But for now, let me leave it at this: Yes, it's room temperature. Get over it.

Sorn Chai's dishes are prepared in the late morning and served till they close at 9pm. If they run out of something they whip up a new batch (unless it's quite late in the day). The dishes are kept in that closed glass case out front. (If you'd like they can be re-heated in a microwave, and the dishes don't suffer for it. So if this sort of thing concerns you do request a zap for your food.)

This is home cooking, quite literally. The family lives above its restaurant and drug store. The kitchen is directly behind both.

We came -- and were referred -- for our favorite northern dish, laab khua. This dish (khua refers to a method of cooking with little oil over low-to-medium heat, the opposite of pad or stir-frying) has little in common with its Isan cohort other than chopped meat. It has no lime juice, no nutty tasting ground toasted rice. Instead of fresh chilies it incorporates dried ones, which are bashed together with grilled garlic and shallots and spices more often associated with Indian than Thai food and then khua-ed into a brick red, smoky paste.

Isan-style laab jabs you between the eyes with its sharp, bright limey spiciness. A good northern laab khua draws you in with those warm spices and layers of flavor, then slowly builds to a satisfying crescendo of smoky heat taken a level higher by the tingle of northern Thai prickly ash.

(We've an excellent -- if I do say so myself -- laab khua recipe for you here.)

Sorn Chai's laab khua muu (pork) is all that. Bits of offal add only richness that balances the heady mixture of spices; there's no  gutty funk here. The chili heat is subtle, until it's not. It's perfect eaten with a little knob of sticky rice and chased with a fresh mint leaf.

 

Other excellent eats here include the nam prik ong, Chiang Mai's signature tomato and pork-based dip. Nam prik ong is reminiscent of Bolognese ragu, and it's pretty difficult not to fall in love with this dish. Sorn Chai's is thick and porky, a touch sweet, and a little spicy. It would be wonderful over noodles but we enjoyed it dipped up with cucumber slices and sticky rice. 

The som tam is good as well -- order som tam tai if you don't want fermented crab or bplaa raa pounded into your papaya -- but if green mangoes are in evidence on that front table order the fabulously sweet-sour-hot as hell dtam som mamuang with peanuts instead.

Sorn Chai, 23 Kochasarn Road (opposite Tha Phae Gate). Open till 9pm. Dishes start trickling out of the kitchen around 11am but the full array sometimes isn't available till 1pm or 130. Less than U$5 for two people.

 

The Price of Progress in Chiang Mai

'Kanom Under the Stairs' is the popular name for this decades-old kanom (sweets) stall, which is located in Warorot Market ... under the stairs

We love Chiang Mai.

We love Bangkok too; we lived there for eleven all too brief months in 2002. But over the last few years Chiang Mai has really grown on us. Travelers who knew the city way back when (and resident Thais as well) love to complain about its sprawl, its pollution, its traffic. I'm sure it was a different place 15 or 20 years ago. What Asian city wasn't?. But we think that, despite its obvious warts, Chiang Mai is still wonderful. It's got its own personality, a lot of soul, and a heart as big as a northern Thai's.

Unfortunately there are those who'd like to turn Chiang Mai into the Bangkok of the north. You've heard this story before, in other contexts: 'modernity', progress, big is better, old is bad, development must be favored over community. In Thailand it also means money politics; those standing to benefit from urban re-development are almost always politically hooked up. 

In the name of progress, which in this instance can be defined as 'more room for more cars', the Chiang Mai municipal government has proposed to widen a number of roads in the city. It's laughable, really. On the morning we left it took us 12minutes in weekday rush-hour traffic to get from the other side of the Ping River to Chiang Mai's airport. That is not traffic that justifies slicing up neighborhoods and turning thoroughfares into ring roads.

Two of the roads set to be widened cut through an old neighborhood known as Gat Luang. If you've visited Chiang Mai and spent time at either Don Lamyai Market (known for its flower sellers out front), Wararot Market (with its kanom jeen nam ngiaow sellers in a 'cellar' food court), or the brilliant, grilled pork-scented night market that sets up on the street between the two, you've been to Gat Luang. Perhaps you can imagine what widening its two main roads by 16 meters each will do to the now pedestrian-friendly neighborhood.

While we were in Chiang Mai we spent several days in Gat Luang talking to people in its markets and shops and on the street about life in the 'hood and in the markets and what widening those roads will mean for the community. This isn't a case of a couple of farang (us, in other worlds) going all silly and nostalgic over the redevelopment of two dirty old markets. Most markets are bigger than themselves. These two markets are the core of a neighborhood, and most of the people who live and work here object to the road widening plan.

The question is, do they have the power to do anything about it?

You can read my story and view Dave's Gat Luang slideshow at Zester Daily. (Be sure to hit 'captions' on the slideshow.) A couple more shots of the markets at Dave's blog as well.

In Chengdu, Home-style Fare With a Woman's Touch

Mapo dofu might just be our favorite Sichuan dish. While in Chengdu in January we ate many, many bowls of the stuff, some for this article, which was published last week in the Wall Street Journal.

Our favorite was eaten not at one of the restaurant listed at the bottom of the article, but at a classic jiachang cai (home-style dishes) eatery in Chengdu's not unpleasantly yuppy-ish Yulin District where one extremely capable young woman rules the kitchen. 

It sits near the end of a narrow alley lined with poorly kept brick houses. Not your typical Yulin neighborhood, and I suspect that few of the district's fashionably dressed residents would ever think to dine here (or to walk down this alley, for that matter). But what this restaurant and its surrounds lack in style they more than make up for with their undeniable sense of place.

Here you know you're in Chengdu -- not in Shanghai or Beijing or Guangzhou, or even in Chongqing, but in Chengdu, Sichuan.

 

We may have gawped when we saw the woman in cook's white working the wok. Female cooks -- especially one as young as this one is -- at restaurants like this are a rare sight. In fact street food vendors aside, I don't believe we saw another woman cook our entire time in Sichuan.

We'd turned down this alley with full stomachs so we weren't in the market for a meal, but the confidence with which this young woman wielded her spatula, combined with the tantalizing aromas swirling about the patch of pavement in front of her stove and the gorgeous dishes she turned, one after the other, out of her wok convinced us to return.

Of course, when we arrived the next day for lunch everyone in the alley recognized us. After we'd ordered and Dave had wandered off with his camera a small crowd pushed in around me. A typically Chinese-style interrogation ensued:

Where are you from? 

How long have you been in Chengdu? How long will you stay?

What hotel are you staying in? How much does it cost for one night?

Where do you live? What do you do there? How much do you earn a year? 

Is he your husband? What's his job? How much does he earn a year?

How much does a plane ticket from America to China cost? How many hours on the plane?

Ni pa la ma? (Literally, 'Are you afraid of spicy-ness?')

How long have you been married?

How old are you? How many children do you have? Oh, that's a shame, you have no children yet.

And there was information unsolicited but given:

She's an excellent cook. The best cook around here.

She's 27. She's not married. Not even a boyfriend!

When our food began arriving an elderly lady standing at my elbow abruptly dispersed the crowd, and everyone wandered back to their lunches and cups of tea, their knitting, mahjong, dominoes, and soap operas.

In addition to the mapo dofu, which featured a fiery, funky fermented chili bean paste-heavy sauce, cubes of silky soft bean curd, and a thick dusting of ground Sichuan peppercorn, we ate a simple but brilliant dish that we'd watched the young cook prepare the day before: a tangle of thinly sliced, creamy textured eggplant, mild fresh green chili, and dried red chilies, all smoky from the wok.

We also ordered potatoes prepared typically Chinese-style -- sliced into matchsticks and fried just long enough to lose their starch but not their crunch. From the selection of fresh vegetables displayed in baskets by the stove we chose spinach, which was flash-fried with garlic and Sichuan peppercorns.

The meal was so delicious we returned another day for dinner: pleasingly vinegary yuxiang rousi, the cook's own version of lazi jiding (chicken with chilies), in which she substituted fresh green chilies, red pepper, and celery for the dish's usual mound of whole dried chilies,

and liangban kugua (bittermelon 'salad'), crisp-tender slices of blanched bitter melon dressed with nothing more than sesame oil and salt and crowned with slices of wok-softened red pepper. We're usually on the fence when it comes to bitter melon, but this dish boasted a lovely balance of saltiness, sweetness, and gentle bitterness.

 

After dinner the cook's father, curious to have a look at these waiguo ren who'd been making such a big deal of his daughter's food, came out to make our acquaintance. He opened the restaurant about a decade ago and handed over the spatula to his daughter a few years back. Now he helps with prep.

We complimented him on the food and he nodded, pleased. He agreed that his daughter is a talented cook. Then he puffed on his cigarette for a bit and shook his head.

"But she's not married yet. And she's already 27."

This restaurant sits on a lane that runs between Yulin 3rd Alley and Yulin 2nd Alley (Yulin San Xiang, Yulin Er Xiang), both of which run off of Yulin Dong Lu. Yulin District, Chengdu.

Cha bok, Cows' Favorite

Just one vendor at the justifiably popular night market on Wichayanon Road, which runs between Chiang Mai's Don Lamyai and Warorot markets, was selling these nuts when we were there last month. I'd never seen them before. Nor, judging from the quizzical looks and queries cast at the woman dishing them up (10 baht for the small dish on the left, above), had most locals.

These are cha bok, a.k.a. krabok, muen, mak lai, and etc, technically not nuts but the seeds from the pit of a sour fruit with the curious name of barking deer's mango (Irvingia malayana). Cha bok are eaten in Cambodia and, I'd wager, other Southeast Asian countries as well. I suspect that they're highly seasonal (we'd never been in Chiang Mai this time of the year). The bitter, astringent shell is peeled off before eating. The 'nut' is soft, smooth, and slightly oily, and tastes a bit like a peanut crossed with a macadamia nut.

Suspecting that cha bok are a bit of a rarity, we brought a bag home for Wan. She was thrilled; she ate them as a child but hasn't seen them recently around her village in Buriram (in Thailand's northeastern Isan region) because, she says, is barking deer's mango trees have been chopped down for their exceptionally hard wood.

Cows, Wan told us, love the fruits that hide the cha bok:

When we took the cows out and leave them for the day they eat up all the fruits on the ground. We like to eat the fruits, it's sour and nice with nam prik. But we don't get to eat that many because the cows eat them all.

Then we bring the cows back to the village at night and put them into a pen underneath the houses. In the morning there's cow poop, with so many fruits in it. Around the village too. We let the poop dry [it's the hot, dry season, so this is a matter of hours], then we take the mango and wash them and peel off the fruit. We take the seed and smash it with a rock or a hammer. Inside is the cha bok.

Water buffalo? No. They don't like the mango at all. They just eat grass.

Given this story it's not too far-fetched to imagine that the barking deer's mango is so-named because it actually is a favorite food of the muntjack or barking deer, which is native to Southeast Asia. But who knows.

After dry-frying the cha bok in her wok Wan offered us a taste. Lovely - very oily and aromatic, something like a macadamia nut dipped in tahini. Wish we'd carried back more.

Kao Soi Lao

Dishing up Lao-style kao soi in Luang Namtha

Mornings are chilly in Luang Namtha, even during the hot season.

We're staying 6 kilometers from town, in a wood cabin on stilts next to a river. After midnight fog creeps up the river's banks. At 6am we pedal our upright one-speeds through a gauzy grey curtain.

We ride fast to keep warm, gliding past a tumbledown wat where a dozen monks and novices are queuing for their morning alms procession. We pass vendors squatting roadside behind rattan trays heaped with chubby sausages, fish-stuffed banana leaves cross-hatched with grill marks, and waffles (yes waffles, and not for tourists either). Business owners fold back the wooden accordian doors on their shop houses, women and a very few men shuffle into a nearby market. Bustling now, it will be all but deserted by the time the fog burns off.

After we pass the market there are stretches of hushed nothingness, spent brown-stubbled rice paddies stretching from either side of the road. Traffic is light and all I hear as I count kilometer markers (5 kilometers to Luang Namtha town, then 4, 3 ...) is the whir of the bike wheels.

In thirty minutes we've reached the main market in Luang Namtha town. Finally, after three tries on three subsequent mornings, we're in time for the peak of trading. At this hour the front section is liveliest: a concrete square patch-worked with plastic tarps displaying herbs and green vegetables, three types of bamboo, the odd piece of fruit, the carcasses of forest animals, sellers (women all) seated on the ground behind their wares. Akha ladies, some wearing extravagant headwear dripping silver, stand in a corner behind piles of spiky stalks of rattan (as in furniture, but this rattan is for eating). They chat and spit red betel juice and eye Dave and his camera warily.

After an hour of looking and writing and photographing, communicating in whatever language we're able (Thai, mostly) we notice that the fog has lifted. But the sky remains a dull pewter, washed with this slash-and-burn season's haze more than clouds. We're no longer chilled, but not quite comfortably warm yet either.

 

So we make our way to the opposite end of the market for breakfast. Back here, across four women vendors cook over wood fires built in smoke-smudged brick hearths. They all serve the same thing -- soup noodles, fer (Lao pho) and kao soi (rice noodles in soup with a dollop of meat ragu) -- at identical long wooden tables covered with plastic.

On our first morning at this market we threw in our lot with a short, sturdy grandmotherly type. Are her noodles the best of the four? We don't know. That first meal was an investment, a down payment on the smile that we're determined to coax from this serious, bordering-on-dour faced woman before we leave town. So we've forgone comparative sampling in favor of becoming short-term regulars.

Lao kao soi with a healthy helping of fresh leafy greens and herbs

It's no hardship. She serves a delicious kao soi, and the bounty and perkiness of her herb-and-greens plate is unrivaled by those on the tables of her competitors. There's curly leaf lettuce, cabbage, young watercress, tender pea shoots, morning glory, snake beans, mint, Thai basil -- all to add to our bowls or nibble on the side (beans dipped in shrimp paste) at will.

She also keeps a big basket of mixed green leaves under her counter; when I ask her to 'sai pak' she stuffs a handful into her rattan ladle, plunges it into one of her blackened, bubbling cauldrons, and adds the blanched greens to our kao soi.

And on our last morning, she smiles. Twice.

***

Northern Lao kao soi was a surprise. Before heading to Luang Prabang we heard about fer, the Lao version of the Vietnamese noodle soup -- that it's ubiquitous, that in some remote spots where restaurants are thin on the ground it might be all there is for a visitor without access to a home kitchen to eat, and that many travelers get sick of it, fast. But in Luang Prabang and Luang Namtha at least, almost every fer vendor also serves kao soi. And kao soi is so good we can't imagine ever tiring of it.

Maybe kao soi is less known than fer, or less talked about anyway, because its primary ingredient -- an Italian bolognese-like ragu made with minced pork, tomatoes, shallots, chilies, and tua nao (fermented soybeans smashed, formed into discs or cakes, and sun-dried) -- isn't visible to the casual eater. Most vendors keep their ragu in a covered metal enamel pot hidden in the jumble of other ingredients on their tables.

Mrs. Sum's long-cooked pork ragu makes her kao soi the best in Luang Prabang's a.m. market

Kao soi assembly goes like this: rice noodles -- thin, wide, or spaghetti-round and rough-textured -- are boiled to order and placed in a bowl. Then bean sprouts or, if you ask, lots of leafy greens. Perhaps a dash of Maggi sauce and always a soupcon of MSG (it's endemic in Laos, in cooked foods and in tabletop condiment trays so that diners can add more to taste). A couple of healthy spoonfuls of ragu, then broth to almost fill the bowl, and finally cilantro minced with scallion greens. Kao kob, crispy cakes of glutinous rice and/or crispy pig skin might be crumbled over the top (we quite like the former).

 

Kao soi with the addition of kao kob, crispy glutinous rice cakes

The Lao version of kao soi (which folks in Luang Namtha say is actually the Luang Namtha version of kao soi) has nothing in common with Chiang Mai's egg noodle-packed, coconut milky kao soi.

The rice noodles and chopped pork suggest Shan kao soi, but for us it most closely resembles the Thai specialty nam prik ong -- which isn't a noodle dish at all but a 'relish' of chopped pork and tomato that's eaten with fresh and blanched vegetables.

We absolutely love nam prik ong and ate lots of it on this last trip to Chiang Mai. With every version I thought, "Spoon this over rice noodles, add some meat broth, and you've got northern Lao kao soi."

In fact that's just what northern Thais often do with their leftover nam prik num -- eat it with noodles.

***

There's no trick to eliciting a smile from Mrs. Sum.

As the sign at her noodle stall announces: "Mrs. Sum Smile Free!!!" And she does grin easily, especially when you tell her that her kao soi is the best kao soi at Luang Prabang's morning market.

It is. This we know to be a fact, because in Luang Prabang we did do some sampling.

We loved the selection of sliced and chopped herbs and vegetables (banana flower, cabbage, cilantro, bean sprouts, Vietnamese mint, bamboo shoots) displayed at a stall on the market's main artery. The vendor is friendly and there are always customers packed around her L-shaped half-in, half-outdoor table.

But her ragu is a bit wan, and on some days too salty as well. It lacks the long-cooked depth and complexity of Mrs. Sum's. (She does do a lovely fer though, made with whatever porky bits and bobs you choose from the meat and offal filled bowl on her table).

 

Mrs. Sum grabs a handful of our favorite rice noodles

So it's to Mrs. Sum's stall that we return again and again. It's the last place we eat on our last morning in Luang Prabang.

We choose the floury rice noodles that remain springy even after a good long soak in hot broth, ask Mrs. Sum to 'sai pak', and request an extra spoonful of her delicious ragu for each of our bowls. Mrs. Sum smiles down at the table, quietly pleased, and asks if we'd like her to add some fresh tomato as well. Why not?

When she places the bowls in front of us we add heaps of Chinese la jiao-like dried chili paste and a squeeze of lime. We raid the veggie baskets on her table, tearing curly lettuce into strips, snapping watercress stems in half, and picking mint and basil leaves from their stalks. Everything is added to our noodles, stirred under and wilted in the soup.

A last bowl of Mrs. Sum's kao soi on our last morning in Luang Prabang

Mrs. Sum chuckles and shakes her head when I tell her again that she makes the best kao soi in the market. She raises her eyebrows at our between-slurps oooohs and aaaahs. Her neighbors hoot as Dave photographs, and she busies herself rearranging condiment bottles on the table, embarased. We're oddities, making such a big deal over a humble bowl of noodles.

Still, when we've finished and she sees that our bowls are empty (not a drop of broth), she smiles again. We didn't need to tell Mrs. Sum she makes a good kao soi; she already knows it. But there's not a cook in the world who doesn't love to see her food enjoyed and hear it praised -- no matter how humble or how ordinary it is.