...Laos (Shakes and Steaks)

The Mekong gushing past our hut on Don Det, Four Thousand Islands

My word, I can't remember eating so healthily on this trip. We have lost our borek and kebab-induced layers that kept us warm during the cold days and have emerged as toned, bronzed and glossy beauties. Kind of.  

But Lao food is seriously doing us some good. Thanks mainly to the cheap and wonderful fruit shakes available everywhere (this is after all backpacker-central). The fruit is so abundant and amazing here and when whizzed up with ice it's better than chocolate. Having a long lunch on mattresses laid out on a bamboo platform over the river, we sipped fresh, fluffy coconut shakes.

A coconut shake by the river

Rambutan, looks a bit 'spacey', tastes like a lychee

In hammocks outside our bamboo hut, we downed a combination of watermelon, papaya, mango and banana. Our German 'neighbours', who share our addiction, worked out they had so far spent 200 euros on the blessed things. And they're only halfway through their trip. 

At least one meal a day involves a bowl of foe - rice noodles in a broth with a little meat. You receive a basket of herbs including Thai basil and fresh mint and pile it in. On the table you have a variety of bottles of different sauces . Pungent fish sauce, fluorescent chilli sauce, dark soy sauce all vie for your attention. We've learnt the best way to do it is to add a little of everything and then keep adding as you go along. 

Foe

Dinner usually involves lightly fried meat and/or vegetables in a sauce with small cylindrical baskets of sticky rice. You mould the rice into a ball and then dip it into your sauce. It is seriously filling stuff. 

Laos food does get a little monotonous and there are plenty of 'backpacker cafes' offering standard fare. We haven't succumbed as we know it will only end in disappointment. However, on a stop over in Vientiane (officially the most boring capital in the world), we came across the most French French-bistro you can imagine. We gorged on beautifully cooked, plump, rare steaks with roquefort sauce and mustard and quaffed a carafe of red wine. We may be backpacking but you'll be pleased to hear that in a tangle of drunk, white people in vests eating 'happy pizzas'*, we have not let our standards slip. 

* a pizza topped with marijuana

...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.

...China (Dirty Noodles and Pheonix Claws)

In a country so vast and full of such bizarre and wonderful eating potential, it must seem silly for me to dedicate a post to what, in western eyes, is just an immoral and dirty snack. Well the pot noodle here reigns supreme, especially on long train journeys where hot water is readily available and at any time on a journey the smell of spicy noodles stings the nostrils and the sound of contented slurping rings in the ears.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of experiencing one or who have mentally blocked out the experience, here's how it works: Pot+noodle+hot water= pot noodle. The Chinese are masters of eating them with maximum noise at ridiculous speeds. I on the other hand take 10 minutes, break out into a chilli induced sweat and don't make a peep (I tried to eat one with my mouth open in order to fit in but it was physically impossible, thanks mum for instilling such good manners in me).

We are yet to mess around with the standard pot but watched in horror as our fellow journeymen added vacuum-packed meats, liver sausage and pickled fengzhia to theirs. Fengzhia translates as 'phoenix claws'. Isn't that wonderful? You are eating the talons of a mythical bird! Actually, no you're not. You're eating pickled chickens' feet.

The image of the feet being munched down stayed with us, though apparently for different reasons. Rather than seeing it as a very real and very live horror show, Finn saw it as an opportunity to try some weird stuff for the blog. So here you are, Finn eating a chicken's foot. Just the one mind. Who knew they were so big?!

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=UtfVNN65GdM

...China (Comfort Food)

Choosing which fat-tailed sheep to have for dinner in Kashgar market

 Being back in China after the food drought of Central Asia has been like crawling through a desert and suddenly finding an oasis. An oasis with a massive buffet where you can eat and eat and eat. Hooray!

I adore Chinese cuisine but before I go any further I must clear up a common misconception. Chinese cuisine bears little resemblance to the stuff the takeaways dole out in the UK. Our Chinese food is a poor imitation of Cantonese food, Chinese immigrants generally being from Hong Kong. Cantonese food for me is heavier and sweeter. But still when I talk about 'Chinese food' I'm pouring four main schools of cuisine and millions of 'sub schools' into one massive pot. To experience all the schools would require a lot longer than our 30 day visas allow. Instead, I thought I'd focus on the food that brings me comfort and joy.

My absolute favourite 'school', which gets me drooling at the mere mention of it, is the Sichuan school which is famed for its use of chillies and the tongue-numbing wonder that is Sichuan pepper. So when I use the word drooling, that's in a literal sense too. I met an Australian who'd developed an ulcer on his bottom lip from eating too much spicy hotpot (a chilli infused broth). Living the dream.

Dried Fried Beans

  
A Sichuan classic. This is one of the first dishes we ate when we came to China 6 years ago and we've never forgotten it. Fresh green beans are fried until blistered with crispy pork fat, dried red chillies and Sichuan pepper are added nearer the end. The result is a dish that manages to be spicy, sweet, salty and mouth numbing. I haven't met another dish that can do that. I cannot put into words how delicious this dish is. We ordered it one night with new friends who instantly fell in love with it.

Da Pan Ji

On an uncommonly rainy evening in Kashgar, Finn and I decided to go in search of the ultimate comfort food, Da Pan Ji, again another favourite from our last trip here. The name basically translates as 'big pan chicken' which is exactly what it is. Due to its humongous size you need at least three people to eat it. Having twisted the arms of four other people with the words 'big' 'pan' and 'chicken' we headed to a restaurant and made our way to the back, past tables splattered with sauce and picked our way over gnawed bones.

Soon enough, a huge bowl of tender chicken pieces on the bone, dried chillies, green peppers, fresh spring onions and potatoes arrived in the centre of the table. We dug in with our chopsticks, swigging green tea to try and regain feeling in our numbed tongues. Halfway through the dish, a mass of thick, fresh noodles were dumped on the top to help mop up the sauce. Heaven.

Yunnan Goat's Cheese

After too long without cheese, our taste buds were getting all excited about heading to Yunnan Province in the south west of China. The Chinese generally don't do cheese (a digression: six years ago we were in Shanghai for Christmas and managed to get our hands on some blue cheese. Leaving it out on our balcony while we went out, we returned to find the cleaner had found it and thrown it away. Needless to say Christmas was ruined. End of digression). Yunnan DOES cheese. Unfortunately it's goat's cheese but, at this stage, beggars can't be choosers. Thin slices are fried in a little oil and arrive with ground sichuan pepper and salt to dip them in. It doesn't have the strong (old goat) taste goat's cheese normally has, instead resembling haloumi. Which isn't a bad thing. I ate enough of the glorious stuff to take my mind off the fact that a fish in a net on its way to our table had taken a leap for freedom and ended up inches from my chair. There were tears but the fish was duly deemed fit for cooking and although I didn't partake in the gobbling myself (having a crippling fear of the little devils dead and alive), Finn and others gallantly devoured that fish in revenge.

Steamed Buns 
 In China we embraced the fact we could eat dumplings and steamed buns for breakfast and dedicated ourselves wholeheartedly to this task. Steamed buns arrive in a bamboo steamer and the bready wrappers are generally either filled with pork or greens. 

With your basket, you each have a small saucer into which you put vinegar and chilli flakes and then dunk the bun, hoping it won't all fall apart from saucer to mouth. Chinese vinegar is this rich, delicious dark liquid and, to be honest, for me the bun is often just a vehicle for absorbing all that beautiful, dark, tangy, gloopy... Sorry, had a bit of a Nigella moment there. Your normal dumplings are readily available, with a thinner, more pasta-like wrapper.

 

Just as tasty as the buns but well, quite frankly not as absorbent.