...Laos (Cooking)

A temple in Luan Prabang, Laos

Perched on the edge of the Mekong in the humid evening, a British contingency sat supping cold Beer Lao. A bucket of hot coals was brought to the table and plonked in a hole in the centre. The bucket was then capped with a slitted, metal dome with a deep ring around the centre. Baskets of vegetables, eggs and rice noodles were placed beside it along with plates of thinly sliced meat. Preparations for our Lao barbecue were ready, all we had to do was cook it.

Once the dome was hot, we rubbed squishy pieces of pork fat over the cap and then fried slices of meat. In the ring we poured the hot stock, adding chillies and garlic for flavour. The noodles went in to cook, then the eggs to thicken the broth and finally, the vegetables. The fat from the meat dripped down into the broth, giving it a delicious smokey flavour, contrasting nicely  with the freshness of the vegetables and the squidges of lime we added. We cooked and ate, cooked and ate and left with full bellies and a sense of achievement. We hadn't 'cooked' for months. So, all inspired, we booked ourselves onto a day's cooking course. 

Cooking dinner with Ben, Abbie and Melissa

We would cook lunch and dinner and learn about the varied and unusual key ingredients in Laos cooking.  First we took a trip to the market where we were introduced to specialities including dried water buffalo skin (boiled and then left out in the sun to dry), bowls of fermenting fish that was so pungent it stung our noses and sweet chilli sauces in plastic bags. Back in the kitchen, we were ready to prepare lunch. We made two dishes, the first a salad with an egg mayonnaise dressing. Pretty boring I hear you say. Ah but what was special about this mayonnaise was that it used boiled egg yolks instead of raw. This meant there was no panic over the mixture scrambling and it also means it will keep longer. Clever! The second dish was fried sticky rice noodles with chicken. Controversially, we didn't separate the noodles when we fried them, instead adding a beaten egg to bind them together into a pancake. This was then chopped up and we mixed in fried chicken, spring onions and tomato, adding oyster sauce, soy sauce, lime and chilli. 

The result (the sweat pouring off us is not from hard work!)

We sat down to enjoy our creations (secretly eyeing up our fellow students' attempts). But not for long, as there was dinner to prepare...

Our teachers prepared five dishes which we tasted and then chose three to cook. I won't bore you with all of them but the favourite had to be the fried aubergine with pork. Incredibly easy to make and really rather tasty. The basic ingredients were aubergine, pork, garlic, spring onions and oyster sauce with a little sugar to caramelise the aubergines and even less salt. For so few ingredients we had a dish rich in flavour. One that we will definitely recreate at home.  

The last three dishes

 

Through the cooking course I discovered how meat is predominantly used to add flavour and protein rather than be the main focus of a dish. And in a country where a high percentage of the population only live on one dollar a day, meat is considered a luxury. I also learnt how much power flavouring has in a Laos dish. This may sound stupid but a lot of the ingredients we used for the dishes overlapped but through different splashes of this and that we had very different results. Finally I was also surprised to find how noticeable the absence of a glass of red wine was when I was cooking. Worrying.