Seen at a library in Mae Hong Son:
Monthly Archive for February, 2010
After a delicious meal of snake in banana leaves, Lauren’s co-workers invited us to continue the celebration with a swim in the nearby river. Since it’s “almost” Songkran (i.e. about 6 weeks away), they’ve started setting up structures on the river for families to camp out on during the week-long throwing of water. Or so we’ve been told. We’ve yet to experience Songkran but have been told it will be wet. There’s nothing better than a river swim on these balmy 32°C days. The river is an easy bike ride from where we live, and we’ll be sure to take advantage of this as we enter the “hot” season (we’ve been told to expect average highs over 40°C come April).
Lauren posing in front of the Songkran huts
Frolicking in the river
My co-workers invited us over for an office party yesterday, and they promised a particularly enticing entree: snake in banana leaves. I was a bit uncertain about eating snake, but had promised to at least try it. When we arrived, we learned that we were actually the targets of an elaborate language misunderstanding turned practical joke; we would instead be treated to a “snack” cooked in banana leaves. The snack started out as a mixture of spring onions, shallots, garlic, oil, rice powder, and water in a large bowl. My co-workers then taught us how to assemble envelopes using the banana leaves that they had been harvesting (from the office property) and cutting all morning.
Volunteers and other assorted expats assembling “snake” packets
Here Kenny models the process of assembling a banana leaf packet:
Step 1: stack a small banana leaf piece on top of a larger one
Step 2: spoon a dollop of snake mixture on top of the leaves
Step 3: use your fingers to make a lengthwise crease in the banana leaves
Step 4: fold the sides to make a banana leaf envelope
Step 5: hold the assembled envelope in one hand and use the other to pierce it with a half toothpick (for conservation purposes)
Step 6 (not shown): use scissors to trim excess banana leaf off the top of the envelope
Step 7: steam
Step 8: enjoy with fried garlic, spring onion root, coriander, and dried red chilies (one chili per bite, we were instructed)
During the steaming process, the rice mixture solidifies and the result is like an Asian tamale. We each ate two of them plain, and they were delicious. Then my co-workers taught us how you are supposed to eat them: garnish with garlic, chilies, and other condiments. This added deliciousness prompted each of us to eat about eight more. :)
To stay abreast of the current situation in Burma and among its refugees and minority groups, here are some sites I check when I get in to the office every morning:
- BurmaNet – a solid roll-up site across multiple news organizations, if I only have time for one site, this is the one I choose
- Democratic Voice of Burma – an independent Burmese TV and news organization
- The Irrawaddy – a regional publication covering Burma and Southeast Asia
- Burma News International – another roll-up site, some overlap with BurmaNet
After researching all of the choices available, I pulled the trigger yesterday on a much anticipated purchase: the Phillips HD4711/60 rice cooker. It had everything we were looking for (quality brand, glass lid with steam escape hole, nonstick 1.8L capacity, steamer basket) and, after some small negotiating, clocked in at just under $20.
This morning we made our first rice cooker meal: oatmeal. It was simple recipe, water + oats + milk in the cooker for 7 minutes, and it came out tasting great. Buoyed by our success, we planned to try a fried rice dish tonight where the rice cooker is used for frying with oil instead of steaming. I picked up the necessary ingredients of brown rice, vegetables, spices, oil and a few eggs on the way home from work.
Alas, our affair with the rice cooker turned out to be very short-lived. On my way to our room, I was stopped by the guest house owners. They said the chambermaid noticed the rice cooker and they wanted to make it clear that cooking wasn’t allowed in the room. I asked them to elaborate. For example, they had given us a hot water kettle for making tea, oatmeal, etc. I pointed out that making rice is not much different than making oatmeal. But it was futile, they were adamant that using a rice cooker is “cooking” (as opposed to “simple things”), and they draw the line at “cooking.” As shops here don’t accept returns they offered to buy the rice cooker from us for the price we paid. It was a frustrating and slightly stressful experience, but we’ve already pre-paid our first month’s rent, and it is one of the nicest places in town. Sigh.
Now that we have explicit criteria around what is regarded as “cooking”, our experimentation will be focused on salads and recipes that involve “add boiling water.” We’re going to scout the grocery store tomorrow to see what ingredients can be applied to this purpose.
So far this year, Lauren and I have chosen to situate ourselves in places where it’s difficult to immerse yourself in a local language. In India, while the north pretty uniformly speaks Hindi, the south is a veritable melting pot of linguistics. Each state has its own language and Bangalore, being very close to multiple states, has all of them represented. People speak Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Hindi. This actually worked out ok for us, as the situation results in everyone speaking English as a common language (plus the average Indian’s English skills are quite good).
At first glance, Thailand is a much simpler place. The national language (and most residents’ primary language) is Thai. However, there are a few complications for us. Lauren and I are both working with Burmese refugees, and the language situation in Burma is much like that of South India. While Burmese is the national language, each ethnic minority has their own primary language. So our foreign language exposure is:
- Lauren’s NGO: mostly Burmese (since there are multiple ethnicities involved), and bits and pieces of two different ethnic minority languages
- My NGO: a different ethnic minority language than either of the two at Lauren’s NGO
- Restaurant and shop owners: Thai
On top of it all, all of these languages are tonal, which always throws us off. We are still picking up bits and pieces of each language (one of our waitresses is determined to teach me Thai), but our experience is definitely scattered. Our response – teach lots of English to the locals. :) Fortunately, that’s part of why we’re here anyway.
After a weekend tour of all of the guest houses in town, we chose one of the nicest ones, with A/C, hot shower, refrigerator, TV, and a very comfortable bed (well, actually two beds that we had to push together). I almost feel guilty about how posh our accommodations are, but of course the room is still quite cheap by Western standards. We also thought the A/C would be nice once the mercury starts regularly blowing past 40° in April.
It also only took us a few days to become regulars at a couple of local restaurants. One is a small shop selling fresh Thai papaya salads (som-tam thai). We like ours “hot,” which is the highest on their spice scale, and served with sticky rice. They also make a delicious som-tam fruit salad. The other restaurant we’ve been frequenting is a brand new place near our guest house, with very high quality classic Thai dishes. It’s like our local version of Jamjuree, which we frequented almost as often in Seattle.
It’s a small town, but I think we’ll do all right. We just started our NGO assignments today; more about those soon.
Kenny and I will be staying in a guest house for the next three months, and those who followed our India adventures will not be surprised that we are feeling a bit of angst about not having a kitchen. We presumed that our “landlady” (i.e. guest house manager) would not be amused if we installed a propane-powered stove in our room, so we’ve been trying to come up with a lightweight mechanism to get our cooking fix.
Strolling down the streets of our small town yesterday, we noticed a few shops selling kitchen gadgets, most common of which was the rice cooker. And as we browsed through the displays, it dawned on us that one can probably use a rice cooker to cook much more than just rice. After we got home, a quick web search for “rice cooker recipes” revealed all kinds of crazy ideas, like rice cooker potatoes, lentils, dumplings, fish, steamed vegetables, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, spaghetti, even carrot cake!
Here are a few sites that look promising:
- Suite 101 Rice Cooker Recipes
- 80 Rice Cooker Recipes
- NYTimes: The Steamy Way to Dinner
- Teczcape (a blog written by the author of The Everything Rice Cooker Cookbook)
- Panasonic’s Rice Cooker Recipe Guide [pdf]
As usual, you can expect that if we make any culinary breakthroughs, we’ll post them here. I don’t know whether our experiments with the rice cooker will be quite as exciting as those conducted with pressure cookers, but they should at least save us from having to eat out for every meal.
And boy are our arms tired! We have arrived in our NGO assignment city, near the Burmese border. We need to check out the town and find ourselves a place to live for the next 3 months.
Criteria: Western toilet, hot water, comfortable bed, refrigerator.
Desirable bonus features: air-con for the “hot season” (it’s only 32°C now), good natural light, kitchen facilities (yeah, right!)
As Kenny mentioned, I purchased 3m of Indian silk on MG Road in Bangalore back in December, with the intention of getting a Western-style dress tailored. I ran out of time to get anything made in India, so I carried the fabric in my backpack all around SE Asia, hoping that one of the many tailors here in Chiang Mai could make something for me.
Little did I know then that finding a tailor is actually quite a process. Most of the tailors in town seem to specialize in men’s suits, and few of them actually do any sewing on site – they take your measurements, sell you some fabric, and then send the material out to a sweatshop to do the bulk of the work. So the “tailors” are basically fabric salesmen.
Fortunately for us, Lasanna at Pat’s (our guest house – highly recommended) knew about Uangdoi Design School, the only accredited fashion design school in Thailand.
Uangdoi Design School
We immediately had a good feeling about the teacher, Krisna, a sweet Thai woman who welcomed us into her shop and offered us water. It seemed like a good omen that an incarnation of Vishnu would be the one to handle my Indian silk. :) She was excited to hear that we were from Seattle, as she had a former student from Seattle who had recently won a fashion design contest in Friday Harbor. I provided a photo of a dress to use as inspiration, and after a quick analysis she described how she would construct the dress – how many pieces of fabric she would use, how she would make the buttons and design the A-line skirt. Then she took a few measurements and told me to come back on Monday, when she would have the lining completed. A few shots from the Monday fitting:
Krisna making a few adjustments to the dress lining. I was apparently very intent on standing still.
Krisna describing her plans to add a backing layer of fabric on the silk so that it wouldn’t catch
On Thursday evening, we returned to pick up the final product. The dress came out exactly as I had envisioned, and there was even a bit of fabric left that I may use for a small purse.
Krisna showing off her creation
Final dress fitting