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?
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:
This is my Kujira’s VIN. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Well, actually, there are probably a thousand or so left in the world. This one’s still mine, tho.
The storm dragon chased us all the way over the bridge.
This is probably the best Matsushita knockoff name, ever (combined with a retailer’s misspelling) – and that’s saying a lot since Matsushita and National brands were folded into Panasonic years ago. These trusted brand names live on in developing countries, even if new product lines do not.
I’ve seen quite a few Matsushita, National, and Panasonic knockoff names (and that’s just a few from this electronics group), but the most often honored here and elsewhere is probably Mitsubishi, including the following permutations:
Mitsuboshi:”Three hats”
Mitsubashi: “Three bridges”
Mizubashi: “Water bridge”
Matsuboshi: “Pine hat”
etc.
“Mitsubishi” literally means “three water chestnuts,” but “-hishi” is what we call a diamond mark so it’s just descriptive of the logo.
