LUANG PRABANG, LAOS PT.2
Sabaidi pi mai!
The Lao New Year (Pi Mai Lao or Songkran) is April 14-16th, and includes a lot of music, parades, eating, drinking, and general festivities. Also included are the use of water balloons, buckets of water (filled with flowers/dye/fragrance), and water guns on everyone. The theme of the Pi Mai Lao is cleansing - Buddha statues, temples, and homes are cleaned in preparation for the year ahead. We got saturated on the way to dinner last night - although unsurprisingly it was a targeted assault by extremely obnoxious (American) tourists who continuously threw buckets of water at us, despite us having our rain ponchos over our heads. We will try to attend a few things over the course of the next few days, our Airbnb host invited us out with him. You can read more about Pi Mai Lao here https://www.laos-guide-999.com/lao-new-year.html
We cooked with our host, Somsack, this week and also ate at his restaurant last night. We went to the morning market in Luang Prabang with him and his son Kenny, which was very informative. We ate a few types of breakfast sticky rice, including one which is made into a rectangular patty, put on a stick, coated in egg, and grilled. You dip it in a chili paste to eat, and it was extremely filling. The market was peaceful and calm, unlike others we've visited in SEA. The place we grabbed espresso and coffee was very relaxing. Also interesting to see at the markets is the quality of the meat, fish, and produce - some things are imported, but the items that are local are of very good quality. There are so many herbs grown in Laos and used in the cooking, so it was nice to learn his perspective on pairings and use. Somsack emphasized getting ingredients that we would be able to find elsewhere (not just Laos specific) so that we could recreate the dishes without too much trouble. He then walked us through making a simple tom yum soup with pork, a salad with hardboiled eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, and ground pork (which I think was our favorite item), a catfish and eggplant dish - almost in the form of a spread like baccala or whitefish salad - a cucumber and sesame seed salad, and a stew he made us with rehydrated dried wild boar and pepperwood. He gifted us with a few varieties of infused laolao, which is fermented sticky rice, also known as Lao whiskey. Somsack was born on the property, and now has three renovated houses, including 2 Airbnb rentals - he shared with us about the cooking his grandfather and his mother used to do, and how he learned so many of the techniques he uses today from them. Even with an excellent chef in the house, his son Kenny mostly just likes pizza - some things remain consistent across continents.
At his restaurant, Blue Lagoon, Somsack has a diverse menu but is especially proud of his insect offerings. Naturally, we were intrigued, so last night we visited him and had cricket wraps and coconut cream ant egg soup (these were our favorites), as well as grasshopper tagliatelle, tuna tartar with ant eggs, and another tuna dish that was smoked with chili/pepperwood. The sorbet and ice cream were also really well done, and the restaurant itself is in a beautiful setting.
We took motorbikes outside of the city earlier this week as well, which was fun. It is pretty hazy here at this time of year, but even so, the scenery and mountains are beautiful, with an array of very deep greens visible throughout the landscape. We found a few gluten free desserts at a bakery, too. I am still reading a lot and finished Without You, There Is No Us, by Suki Kim which I would highly recommend reading. The author visited North Korea various times between 2002-2011, taught English at a Christian missionary sponsored university in Pyongyang, and while often her reflections and analysis are somber, her observations are useful in better understanding at least some small element of their extremely veiled country.
The local chickens here are quite small and today we made the smallest Sunday roast, cooking the carcass after for soup. I am going to go strain that out now - enjoy the pictures attached, and have a relaxing Sunday!
