Light Snacks Will Be Served

Show and Tell: Yasothorn Parasol

Bun Bang Fai, Isaan's (and Lao's) annual rocket launching festivities, fall on some of the hottest days of the year. This past weekend, the sun there was magnetically hot -- about 41 degrees centigrade -- and it glued your shirt to your back, and your feet to the parched earth. But people improvise nicely.    

 

On Isaan, Bitterness and Politics

 

Here in Bangkok, our city awaits an uprising, a showing of great strength, a sudden burst of violence, a failure to mobilize, or just an inconvenient weekend. People could die, or cocktail parties could be cancelled. It all depends upon who you talk to. 

I have been learning as I go here, trying to explore the intricacies (and they are endless) of Thai politics. In doing so, I've mostly kept opinions about what is right and wrong, and which side might prevail, to myself. Each camp has a story to tell - each side is right, and often wrong. Plus, this is not my country, and it's not my struggle.

But there is one thing that I often want to say to people, but don't: That much of Bangkok is way out of touch with the rest of Thailand. This electoral majority of Red is treated dismissively, written off as a dangerous liability, or a puppet army paid to protest. It's far more complicated than that, and these people deserve better. Until the reds get the consideration they demand, and the ruling elites realize that these people deserve some respect, the divide can only grow wider.

On that note, here's a story I wrote recently about cooking upcountry. It's about food, but it's also about the perceived divisions between Thai people. 

It's impossible to cook a meal these days in Isaan, and not discuss politics. It seasons everything these days.  

Eye Candy

 

The primary reason I began taking photos in earnest is because I came to a humbling realization a few years ago, while editing a city magazine. A single photo really could say more - to more people - than a story we had spent far more energy trying to write. It's a cruel arithmetic: reading takes time and energy and attention, but looking at a nice photograph is like eating a piece of candy --fleeting, pleasant, easy. 

Which brings me to my point. I wrote a story about cooking in Isaan that is now up at The Atlantic. You should read it. But I don't want to scold. Instead, I'll show you two simple pictures that I took there, that somehow say more about the food and the cooking process than I might be able to muster here. Above, freshly roasted chilies and ground, glutinous rice. Below, the weathered mortar and pestle of my hosts, A-Nong and Thew. Aren't they beautiful? Now go on and read the story. 

  

 

Sour Snausages

I've had the good fortune to cook with some pretty talented people in my days, from grandmas to celebrity chefs. And few made a complicated cooking task seem as simple and enjoyable as Git and Ton, a couple in Chiang Khan whom I made sausages with last week. 

Readers of this blog and my other scattered writings may be catching on to what is certainly an obsession: I love eating stuff stuffed inside something.  And once I had eaten a well-aged sai krok Isaan, with that unmistakable whiff of ferment and creamy fat and garlic and stickiness, I've been dreaming about making them ever since. Finally, I got around to it, while taking a break from the Bangkok heat in Isaan. Read the rest of the story here. 

I am now desperately fighting the urge to make a link joke. 

Ok, that's passed.

 

New Year Country

I was going to make a list of all the delicious things I ate last year and tell you how awesome it was eating them, but then I thought that, well, everybody's probably done that already. But I did have a great year of eating on the road. It started brilliantly with a feast in Nahorn Si Thammerat in the south of Thailand, and ended up on the banks of the Mekong in Nong Khai, in Isaan. In between, I married my wonderful wife and started a new life here. 

I also scoured Goa for colonial Portuguese food and sausage, got sick in Java, ate great Chinese food in Kuala Lumpur, gambled for pork links in Taipei, cooked hairy crabs with my grandmother in Shanghai, made tofu in Lombok, got silly in Seoul, learned what its like to dine in exile in Taiwan, headed to Dharavi for a little Oscars celebration, roasted water buffalo and set off rockets in Yasothorn, and got straight up gluttonous in Sydney. 

That's just a sample. A lot can happen in a year.

One thing I did do that most people probably didn't this New Year was kick it with some tobacco farmers in Isaan, who happened to be cooking a boar in a thicket on the side of a dirt path. Isaan is a remarkable place to get off the road and explore, as the people there are some of the most generous on earth. And they like a good party... See?

So we're dancing a little, and we have a few swings swigs of rice whiskey, and they invite us for a bite to eat. From, um, there:

Which was an enormous pot of bubbling water filled with tough bits of boar. Which, when washed down with warm whiskey, felt like an especially festive treat on a hot winter's day.

 And in the end Chris and I even got kisses for the road...

 

Here's to happiness.