Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
The ultimate Thai-Mexican fusion:
This was, again, an awesome leftover mashup. Larb made from chicken is fairly uncommon, but I found a local food stand that makes it really well… At 20 baht per bag, I’m happy whenever it’s available. I added some shallots to the mango salsa from the other day, and used up the rest of our taco stuff from last week. Verdict: SPICY MOVE!
…and some leftover carnitas and beans, topped with fried eggs.
Max wanted curry and Mina wanted steak; necessity is the mother of noms.
I only started commonly seeing these berry-like fruits this year. They seem to be growing in popularity up here in Issan, but I suspect they were brought here from another part of Thailand, where they are apparently have shorter names: Nam daeng and nam phrong.
They are apparently used in India for pickles.
I had started calling these Lao Cherries, but there are a couple other fruits already called that (plus they don’t seem to be from this area), so I finally just looked it up.
So the important thing: Do they taste good?
They taste like vitamin C punched you in the throat. Like the sourest mango and unripe lemon (hence the name? Mamuang = mango; Manao = lemon/lime) in the world are frolicking on your tongue. So naturally, Thais eat them dipped in chili sugar and stupid farang stuff three in their mouth at a time to see if it can be done in a sort of personal stupidity challenge.
So wikicheatia has a long paragraph on names for this fruit which, in the spirit of university plagiarism, I will only only slighty modify before pasting here:
Arduina carandas
Capparis carandas
Carissa salicina
Echites spinosus
Jasminonerium carandas
Jasminonerium salicinum
karonda (Devanagari)
karamardaka (Sanskrit)
kauLi hannu(Kannada)
karavanda(Marathi)
karauna (Maithili)
vakkay (Telugu)
Canta- (Konkani)
maha karamba (Sinhala)
kilaakkaai (Tamil)
karau(n)da (unknown)
karanda (unknown)
karamda (unknown)
kerenda (in Malaya)
karaunda (Malaya/India)
Bengal currant (South India)
Christ’s thorn (South India)
nam phrom (Thailand)
namdaeng (Thailand)
caramba (Philippines)
caranda (Philippines)
caraunda (Philippines)
perunkila (Philippines)
Karja tenga (Assam)
Koromcha(Bengali)
I guess you could call them yardlong beans, but most of the world switched to a better system long ago, and besides, where’s the fun in that?
Google review of Panom Rung Restaurant by Justin Yoshida
https://goo.gl/maps/cShnNWMJMcu
Staring locals. Scary truckers in the dark, broken parking lot… Raw chili and garlic in a dirty center bowl. Unapologetically fatty pork. Best of all, it’s sandwiched between a second rank gas station restroom and minimart. Need I say more?
It’s an epic hole in the wall.
The Thai variant of char siu is often too lean and served with overly sweet sauce… This place does it well, though.
One of Maha Sarakham’s first really cool outdoor pubs. Lots of memories here… It was the first place to offer deep fried larb balls. It was also where T and J hid from the cops upstairs (I didn’t even know it had an upstairs!). One day last week we drove by, and it was just gone.
Noodles are life.
Curry is life.
These are curry noodles.
