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<\/a><\/p>\nI also have to figure out what to do with the rest of the bottles of this stuff – we’re not back to this part of the world for a WHILE, and I don’t think Latvia is going to be using a lot of crab paste.<\/p>\n
The version of the recipe we decided to go for is out of the cookbook “Hawker Fare”, by James Syhabout, so no recipe link this week. While you can make laap with any number of different meats, we decided to go with pork, as it is fairly traditional, and not as expensive as, say, duck.<\/p>\n
First up, we minced up about half a pound of pork shoulder.\u00a0 This was an extremely noisy process, and we apologize to any neighbors who may have been disturbed. This is then browned off in a saucepan.<\/p>\n
Next you mix in the sauce, consisting of shallots, rice powder, chilis (ground and chopped), fish sauce, fish paste, and MSG.<\/p>\n And the salad is not JUST flavored meat – there’s also a big pile of herbs, including cilantro, culantro (yes, spell check, that IS a real word), mint, and scallions.<\/p>\n And… that’s it.\u00a0 The TL;DR on the preparation here is – chop and brown meat, dump in a lot of flavorings and herbs, and stir.<\/p>\n The ubiquitous side dish would be\u00a0Tum Som Mak Hoong<\/em>, or “Green Papaya Salad.”\u00a0 In theory, this could have required substantially more fussiness than the laap, in that you need to julienne a papaya.<\/p>\n The traditional \/ cheffy way to do this would be to peel the fruit, make a large number of vertical cuts very tightly spaced around the outside, then shave layers off to get a pleasing variety of sizes of crunchy papaya strips.<\/p>\n OR, and hear me out, you could realize that you have a julienne peeler sitting unused in the back of your knife drawer.<\/p>\n We’re not normally fans of single purpose kitchen gadgets (except the rice cooker, of course), but I was so happy to find this thing.\u00a0 Papaya dispatched, it was time to make the dressing.\u00a0 And THIS is where we really went full ham with the fermented seafood sauces, to badly mangle a metaphor.<\/p>\n The dressing for this one included shrimp, crab, and fish pastes, as well as fish sauce, garlic, lime juice and sugar.\u00a0 It was also supposed to include actual salted crabs, but darned if I could find those at Supermarket 88.\u00a0 Frankly, there was probably enough going on already.\u00a0 Sauce and cherry tomatoes in, and you have your salad.<\/p>\n The final, absolutely mandatory, accompaniment to any Lao meal is sticky rice.\u00a0 There are a number of ways to prepare this stuff.\u00a0 Traditional would be to presoak for a long time in cold water, then steam.\u00a0 We opted to use the method given here<\/a> by “Hot Thai Kitchen,” and use a shorter boiling water soak, followed by steaming in a metal sieve.\u00a0 Unfortunately, our sieve was a little too small for the quantity of rice, so the inner rice didn’t get done at the same rate as the outer layers.\u00a0 But after some mixing and patience, and we eventually got a tolerable product.<\/p>\n And with that, here’s our complete Lao meal:<\/p>\n This one was GREAT.\u00a0 All the fermented sauces made for some punchy, intense flavors, but we LIKE those. There was a ton going on in each dish, and the sticky rice let us scoop it all up and enjoy it.<\/p>\n I joked earlier that I have to figure out what to do with all these pastes now, but I think the answer is likely to be just: “Make it all again.”\u00a0 Nothing says we have to go to the effort of chopping our own ground pork of a random weeknight – we try to make the full effort for the blog, but this could EASILY be a quick dinner on a Tuesday if you just use pre-ground pork.\u00a0 Green papaya is a bit more of a specialty ingredient, but still readily available in Vancouver.<\/p>\n If you like Thai food, you’ll probably like Lao food, since there’s a LOT of overlap.<\/p>\n Next up, our first trip to Europe since Italy – Latvia!<\/p>\n No recipe link, but here’s the cookbook we used: Happy Canada Day, everyone! Let’s celebrate by turning to a country that’s adjacent to northern Thailand, Laos. Laos has had a rough time of it in the 20th century.\u00a0 Historically an important kingdom in its own right, it was occupied … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nHave I mentioned that by itself, the fish paste is brown, chunky, and has an\u00a0intensely<\/em> fishy\/cheesy aroma?\u00a0 It is strong stuff.\u00a0 But of course, you’re not eating it by itself, you’re mixing it with all the other ingredients and using it as flavoring.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nHawker Fare<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"