Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
When I told Max not too step on or over headstones, he asked if it was because they are traps.
I remember being told not to do the same thing decades ago in a cemetery in Hawaii. I remember asking if it was because it’s impolite to step on people’s heads.
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A self-explanatory photo series (because I am lazy, although I should state that this was brought by Michiko & Dave for Mina, who watches kawaii Japanese candy-making videos incessantly on YouTube and is learning little girl Japanese phrases as a result):
A friend just posted this to Facebook, and I needed to share it here, just because:
Awesome!
Original post: LINK
Max loves mashed potatoes.
Lao-style somtam, grilled tilapia, beef meatball skewers, rice noodles, sticky rice: Around $5 US!!
When Dave and Michiko visited from Japan a month ago, we had a Mexifood party. Due to what’s available here, we had to improvise a few things, but it all turned out well: I made carnitas pork and refried beans in the slow cooker (in that order, without washing the pot, using pork fat to season the beans) from the night before. A trip to the supermarket only yielded a single, cement-hard avocado, so we nuked it for a minute and mixed it in with locally available (Khon Kaen) sour cream. Finally, we deemed making corn tortillas with the masa I have in the freezer and the tortilla press my mom brought over a few years back too much work, so we made due with flour tortillas for everything, which are available at the Tops supermarket in Central Khon Kaen. Dave kindly brought over many sauces from his stash: Sriracha, Cholula, and hundreds of Taco Bell hot sauce packs from the states.
The final result:
Pan-fried eggs with assorted meat, toast, rice porridge, coffee. It’s hard to find a good breakfast in Thailand if you are tired of the standard fare. We found a good place.
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I still haven’t finished posting all of the food photos from Nam’s phone.
I came to know about Ms. Hen, and spent hens in general, by accident.
I found a ridiculously cheap whole chicken at Tesco a few weeks ago. The thick plastic bag it was packaged in read: “Ms. Hen”.
Ms. Hen was only about 85 baht ($2.60 US), about one-third the price of a normal chicken, but it being a giant supermarket chain that buys in tons and pallets and truckloads and prices accordingly, I didn’t think much about it.
My usual recipe for a whole chicken is a slight variation of the Hainan Chicken recipe my cousin Kris posted on YouTube ages ago (228,000 views!!! Awesome!! When I get that many hits, Google generally bans my videos!), and it bears great results time and time again, as demonstrated by my daughter’s reaction in the photo above.
This time, however, we were in for a horrible surprise. Ms. Hen looked and smelled delicious, however, was as hard and rubbery as a tire. No joke, she resisted being cut with my sharpest knives. Max bravely said he didn’t mind how chewy it was, but I knew dinner was a bust. We ended up eating everything but the chicken. In disgust, I made a barbarian face, let out my best war cry, and with some difficulty, tore the stubborn bird in half. I threw the carcass in the refrigerator with every intention of giving it to some street dogs the next day.
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For some reason, the next day when I was making a small test run of pork carnitas in the slow cooker, I had a sudden flash of inspiration and threw Ms. Hen’s dead body on top of the pork and then let it cook all day. The end result was simply THE MOST DELICIOUS CHICKEN IN THE WORLD. I’m talking better than the best I’ve had in Hawaii (Huli huli chicken), Bordeaux (Les volailles at La Tupina), Japan (Kochin), or my previous favorite from Rayong (animatronically grilled chicken).
The best way to describe it was what my friend who devoured it with me said: Issan turkey. It had the perfect amount of gaminess like turkey, but the heavenly golden fat and skin of a chicken. Somehow, cooking it on top of carnitas seemed to have little to do with it, but a test for repeatability is in order.
So far, I’ve not seen Ms. Hen again at Tesco, but the price tag on the shelf where she would be stocked still remains. One day, I will find her again. One day, we will be together. And perhaps then, I will dress her up and attempt to better my arch rival, Jamie Oliver, by adapting his recipe and giving it an even more eclectic name: Spent Hen in Milk
We have successfully found a local-ish substitute for yamaimo.