Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Nam put out the call on FB for fresh lamyai (longan) branches that I want to try for smoking meats, and a good friend came through.
Her dad cut off some branches from their trees in Ubon Rachathanee and sent them back with her this weekend.
Seeing as how imported apple wood chips cost about $30 US for a 5 lb bag, this should be a great alternative. Thanks, Jay (from J)!!
Mina wants a pizza, Mina gets a pizza.
This pizza disappeared so quickly after it came out of the oven, I didn’t get a pic.
I’ve been trying new crusts and simple uncooked sauces… I now want a better (hotter) oven.
HONDA CRF250m & crew
The spooky one is Ghostface Kitteh. The tabbies are RZA and GZA. Method Meow not pictured… Wutang forever.
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?
There’s this girl from school that likes Max. He’s chatting online with her right now in the other room; I can hear their little voices as they talk about whatever kids talk about. They’re only 10 years old. It feels… strange. Very cute but kinda funny?
All I can think of is:
