Stomachs on legs are proud to present

I am in distress, because I was eating this crispy deep-fried dried fish in the mountain... the white thing in the middle...


... and my premolar split in half. Ouch!

I hurried down the mountain and made an appointment with a dentist.

I am cursing myself for having brought the evil dried fish to my mountain host family myself.


I bought these at Aor Tor Kor Farmers Market in Bangkok.

... and it was deep fried crispy with the rice bran oil I brought.

Now I will have to pay for the dentist bill. Aaaagghhh.

Earlier this year I also cracked my molar while eating sticky rice in the mountain.

My life is pretty much about cracking my teeth while traveling.

German bread did it too, twice.

sorry I haven't blogged for a while. I don't really know who I am apologising to exactly and whoever you are I'm sure that you'll think apologies unnecessary

nevertheless....I am moved today to alert you to this outrage in the Sydney Morning Herald...

Wake up, Sydney, and smell the lemongrass. Do you know what's under your collective nose? Anyone who has lived away from this city for any time suffers withdrawal symptoms for Thai chicken curry, deep-fried snapper with sweet chilli sauce, pad thai noodles or Thai beef salad, whether from Longrain, Chat Thai, Spice I Am, Sailor's Thai or (insert your favourite local Thai here). Even Sydneysiders who have moved to Thailand suffer post-Sydney-Thai-fabulousness syndrome.

Slap hand to forehead...pad Thai???? sweet chilli sauce.....ugh

This particular piece of dribble was written about Sailor's Thai which I had the displeasure of eating at some years ago. I made the further blunder of taking some Thai relatives there who are in the restaurant business in Thailand. I was embarrassed by the food and humiliated by the price, $300 for four people.

It was flavourless, bland, and fussy.....the bill was like rubbing salt in an open wound.

Sydney Thai food as good as Thailand...give me a fucking break....only if you spent your 2 week holiday in Thailand eating in shitty tourist stalls and being completely over charged.....maybe you went to Phuket...maybe you got in a fight....maybe you were drunk most of the time....or maybe you have the palate of a garbage disposal

Encountered at a street-side eatery & juice place near Silom.

I've been debating what to call this blog post over in my head for a while now, I was thinking about calling it Mae Hong Son, The Other Provence, or Cooking with the Stars.

Let me explain. A couple of weekends ago I headed to Mae Hong Son for the weekend, where my long suffering beloved was taking a week long bromance with Thai food aficionados Austin Bush and Andy of Pok Pok fame. I got to stay for a single weekend, during which it mostly rained. So we decided to stay in and cook. We went to the markets and bought a huge array of not-so-exotic mushrooms other required ingredients for making gaeng hed.



I insisted on buying stink beans.



We also got the ingredients for Burmese pickled tea leaf salad and picked up some larb kuat, larb dip and grilled chicken on the way home.



Cooking got under way.




Some people would and do spend a fair sum of money to cook food with AB and Andy, instead I got bossy and insisted that someone invent a new yummy dish involving stink beans. Andy delivered big time with a dish of stink beans with kapi and mushrooms



Our other favourite Thai food expert was unable to attend the gathering as he was busy in Bangkok promoting his new fish sauce brand Mega Chef and couldn't make it to MHS, he was however present in fishy spirit.



We sat down to an astoundingly good meal





In an outdoor dining room located next to this picturesque rice field



Mae Hong Son is truly beautiful and I wish that I had gotten to spend more time there. Initially my plan was to finish writing my PhD up in MHS but this plan was scrapped after hard words from my supervisor and the realisation that job hunting from the sticks probably wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had. Nonetheless I plan to go back. It's not quite Provence however, as it was apparently described to my friend in New York by a hi so Thai acquaintance, but if fish sauce is your balsamic, stink beans your broad beans and larb dip your beef tartar, it could well be even better.

This is my fridge in Thailand where only cooking I did was cooking rice (and go buy something to eat with rice) and cold noodle occasionally:


Left side:

• soy milk
• butter
• tempura crispies from Japan (brought back for a takoyaki party at my friend's)
• shelled tamarind a villager gave me
• Leo beer (giveaway from a party back in... winter, I just do not drink by myself)
• lychees,
• isotonic drink left over from my flu hospitalization last year (I never drink it except when I am sick),
• organic roselle jam,
• organic pickled plums,
• organic soy sauce,
• miso that I never cooked, and
• eye cream (so they don't go bad in the Thai heat).

Right side:

• shiso powder,
• ground organic black sesame (good with cold noodles),
• leftover isotonic drink powder,
• rustic cane sugar blocks a villager gave me,
• facial toner,
• sugarfree Mentos,
• wasabi,
• rice germ sprinkles,
• brown sugar,
• organic jasmine rice, and
• the Thai refrigerator staple: drinking water.

Right now I am sharing an apartment with two Taiwanese people in the US, so sharing the fridge as well:


Not much of the stuff is mine.

I put:

• organic soy milk,
• cage free eggs from "vegetarian-fed hens",
• butter,
  
• multi-grain English muffins,
• Cabot cheese,
• organic soy sauce,
• leftover black beans,
• organic mushroom pasta sauce,
  
• plum tomatoes,
• red onions,
• yellow Spanish onions,
• zucchinis, and
• an unopened jar of kimchi (made in New York).

I am not sure why somebody is refrigerating a box of dry pasta.

And a freezer that seems to resist frost a lot better than my Thai fridge:
Half of the bottom row is my stuff:

• frozen spinach,
• frozen peas & carrots,
• frozen sweetcorn niblets,
• frozen vegetarian dumpling, and
• frozen blueberries.

Somebody seems to believe that used brita filters work as a deodorant in the fridge and freezer. Does it work??

"Kedgeree" with brown rice and split mung beans, boiled egg, lime pickles and raita and crossword


"Kanom Jeen" creative reconstruction attempt



"Kanom Jeen" and macbook



Wakame and silken tofu soup with crossword


Parsi style scrambled eggs and silken tofu with avocado on rye


Udon Salad


Lentil, spinach, celeriac, onion and carrot soup with chorizo


My latest excellent Sunday morning fry up creation - paratha bread, with chickpea vege pattie, fried egg, tomato kousondi and raita

Bo.lan

Soi 26, Sukhumvit, Bangkok.

Ph 02 260 2962

Go now!

Before it is booked out solid.

Currently Bangkoks best Thai Restaurant.

Bo & Dylan are at the markets by 2 am most days.

End of story.

Here's my five cents attempting to spice up this blog a bit with my not so spicy beige food review.


It's easy to go vegetarian in Chiang Mai, thanks to several veggie-friendly places like Pun Pun and Khun Churn.


Unlike Pun Pun that closes around 6:30pm, Khun Churn is open from breakfast through dinner, and is conveniently located off the popular Nimanhamin Road.


While their dinner offerings are still of great value, most entrees within 60-80 baht range, their best value is the lunch buffet. The price went up from 65 baht two years ago to 80 baht as of today, but is still a good value.


For the price of 80 baht a person, they offer all-you-can-eat buffet featuring a big salad section with three dressings to choose from, a big jar of brown rice, boiled veggies with Thai dips, three-four different kinds of spicy and non-spicy soups, four-five pan-fried entrees, kanom jiin or khao soi, Thai dessert, and all-you-can-drink herbal beverage. You can eat as much as or as little as you want, which is also the great thing about the buffet.


The place is vastly popular with a mix of Thai and non-Thai crowds. Like my friend szephing says, it is indeed a Chiang Mai staple. You can check out some of their dinner entree pictures on szephing's blog. All my pictures here are from lunch buffet.

For a restaurant of this scale, we can't expect everything to be organic,,, as a matter of fact once I inquired where their veggies are coming from sometime ago, they told me it's from talat muang mai, the Chaing Mai's biggest vegetable market, most of them conventionally grown in bulk. But they do sell what they claim to be organically grown oranges, so, at least they are aware of those things.


If you prefer to go vegan, you have to watch out a bit here, because this place is rather มังสะวิรัติ (mang sa wi rat) that eggs are sometimes included in the dish, and not strictly เจ (jae). Indeed you have so many choices and you can always ask the friendly staff if you want to make sure.

You'll be welcomed by this sign.
They only refer to beverage and meat in both Thai and English, but their pictogram also suggests smoking and dogs are not welcomed either... I wonder if the dogs are part of the meat and smoking part of the beverage? Just kidding.


Khun Churn
Soi 17 (they moved from their old location at Soi 7), Nimanhamin Road
Lunch buffet from 11am to 2:30pm
Dinner 5-10pm
Closed every 16th of the month