Food
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BBQ Prawns
Hope to shovel more of these guys in my tummy later this week. Some friends are coming from Japan, so we are doing an end of year trip to see them in Pattaya, Bang Saen, and Bangkok. Ironically, it’s hard to find good seafood near the sea in popular places here, so we have to scope out good places online before we go. Over the past decade, Google Maps has become the best in gauging places from their reviews, and more importantly, the kind of people posting them.
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Noodle Nirvana
I’m currently on an extended keto and IF experiment which is turning out very well. Starchy noodles, like my beloved bami egg noodles, pictured above, are off the table. But I can dream.
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I’ll have a Red Blue
I’m not entirely sure if this means what I think it means… Taken at a resort we stayed at on Koh Chang.
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S&B Habanero Pepper Powder
This is the shit.
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Thailand’s best Crispy Pork resto
We found the holy grail of crispy pork shops on Koh Chang over the summer. Everybody on that trip still talks about it. We were there to visit students interning on the island, so I was with a couple coworker pals and we brought Max along as well. Tee drove us to Bangkok, where we stayed at his condo for a night, then we set out for a few days of island life. This was probably the best meal of the whole trip because the prices were cheap (less than 2 dollars a dish) and the portions were huge! Of course, the place is a total hole in the wall,…
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Would you like that with or without endocrine disruptors?
The saddest cooking news I’ve heard in a long time: Black plastic products including spatulas are likely being made from recycled electronic waste like computers and televisions, many of which are treated with flame retardants and other chemicals. Flame retardants can dislodge from polymers easily and make their way into the surrounding environment. They are endocrine disruptors, which interfere with the body’s hormonal system and may be associated with thyroid disease, diabetes, and cancer. Full link to the Atlantic story: Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula These are my mainstay utensils for certain things I cook and I surely have a dozen in my kitchen including spoons, ladles, slotted and…
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Scenes from a Hoi Tod Shop
Hoi Tod is a Thai dish made by frying mussels (or sometimes, other shellfish, squid, or shrimp) in an eggy batter and wrapping up beansprouts and garlic chives with it. Those in the know usually prefer this dish to Pad Thai. It’s often served as street food, especially at night markets, but there are also small shops that specialize in it. This particular joint was crowded when we visited at lunchtime on a weekday in a busy Bangkok district, but I thought it was pretty average — I thought it was too stuffed with undercooked sprouts, but that might just be due to my preferences. I’m used to a greasier…
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Sushiro End Stack
I remember using QR codes for product tracking (with Keyence printers and scanners) as a salaryman around Y2K at an electronics factory on monster island. The only other place I’d ever seen them used was at kaiten (conveyor) sushi, on the bottom rim of the plastic plates. The codes would be scanned as they went by on the conveyor so old plates of sushi could be pulled – this was more than 20 years ago! Things certainly come full circle (although the new system seems to be RFID-based): There was a boom in QR code usage here in Thailand from around ten years ago specifically for adding friends in the…
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Makizushi Class
For the past year, Nam and I have been arranging sushi roll-making events for university students and schoolchildren. This video is a typical first attempt of trying to stuff too much into a roll. I would say 75% of people end up making this mistake the first time. But hey, if you don’t make mistakes, you never learn, right? It’s been a lot of fun just trying to do our jobs well.
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Gogi Seki
Max’s auntie took us to a Korean BBQ buffet near her office in Sukhumvit and it’s basically the best yakiniku I’ve had in Thailand. For 500 baht ($15 US), you get the higher tier plan with beef and seafood, and the waitress comes to grill everything for you. This is the second time we’ve been there, and we’ll probably try to make it there whenever we’re on an extended Bangkok trip.
