meiadeleite.com – Page 104

the cooking class

turns out, thai cooking is a lot of prep work, followed by a very quick cooking process. everything needs to be minced, peeled, squeezed, measured and mashed beforehand — mise en place is everything here.

afterwards, it’s a matter of heating up a wok and throwing stuff there in a specific order. voilá!

under the close supervision of our host/chef, we prepared soups, curries, stir fries and even mango sticky rice, all deliciously filling but way more stuff than we could eat…

… so we ended up bringing pad thai and some other noodle dishes home for dinner. :)

we were also treated to a tour of their beautiful gardens, where the host grows a lot of the ingredients for the lesions like chillies, mushrooms and ginger. he had all kinds of plants there, and it was pretty cool to see a coffee tree or taste stevia leafs for the first time.

near the end of the tour, we were introduced to this funky plant that turns its leaves when they’re touched:

they’re so cool!! aptly named “touch-me-not”, they’re a common weed in thailand. after this encounter, we started touching lots of plants on the side of the road, just to see if we could make that trick again! :D

foooood in thailand

a trip to the market

going to markets and supermarkets has long been one of my favorite activities abroad. they can be a overwhelming at times, but i still enjoy looking at all the produce and finding new things. here’s a quick walk around a market near chiang mai.

rice, rice, rice! glutinous, fragrant, brown… it all has a different purpose.

aaaaaall the veggies! some are funky and some are familiar. i was especially impressed by all the ginger-like roots they seem to use on their cooking, and which i had never seen before. oh! and those little green balls are fresh peppercorns… who knew they looked like that?

curries are what we associate with thai cooking, but making your own curry paste is hard work as we later discovered. so at the market, you can buy them already made or give your specifications to the seller, and they’ll make you a batch.

stinky but delicious fish sauce!

the variety of noodles they sell makes the pasta in a portuguese supermarket pale in comparison.

the fresh section was also well stocked, both with meat (the whole nose-to-tail), fish and frogs! to keep the flies away, ribbons of plastic were attached to the skeletons of fans, and made to spin above the meat. it’s pretty efficient actually, and super hypnotic! :D

so now we got the produce — let’s go cook it!

foooood in thailand

thai bananas

oh my goodness, the fruit in thailand… maybe it’s the exoticness of it all, but i swear fruit just tastes better in asia. take bananas for instance:

these look smallish, almost like the bananas from madeira, but somehow thicker and squarish. the looks might not be great, it’s the inside that counts, so let’s open it…

… and take a bite…

… whoa. they’re extra smooth, dense and so “banany”! :D i have never met a fruit i didn’t like, but these bananas at the top of the list. i want to go back…

analogue wednesdays

analogue wednesday #179

one last frame from R4R-77, double-exposed in collaboration with felix (aka felixsurplus).

in thailand

the green up plant shop

so why were we on the mall? because our friend joy runs a network of plant vending machines which are super cool!

she and her partner started the whole thing a few years ago, and it’s been a wild success. they have several of them set up around bangkok and can barely keep them stocked, as there’s always people around, admiring the plants or buying them. thai people love plants, so these make the perfect gift.

i also like the fact that they’re on a mall, in a format where you don’t have to interact with (or dodge) the salesperson just to buy something simple. and as is now common in asia, the payment interaction is 100% phone-based: just scan a QR code, door opens and you can collect your plant. convenience is the keyword here.

besides, it’s just so cool, and in a way, so very “joy”!

it’s hard to believe we hadn’t seen each other in over 10 years. time goes by so fast, and we’re both different people now from when we first met in erasmus, back in 2005. her hair got shorter as mine got longer, and these days we’re both running around trying to keep a business going while living our lives. but some things stay the same too, and we slipped back into easy conversation as soon as we saw each other.

it’s so comforting to see old friends, and to know they’re doing ok. we should do this more often!