Dried river weed from Luang Prabang

Long strands of river weed grow in flowing Lao rivers. In Luang Namtha province they are collected by the locals and served up either as a thick, simmered, spicy sauce or dried in thin sheets which have been sprinkled with tamarind and ginger juice and other aromatics such as sesame seeds, tomato and garlic. The dry sheets are cut into small squares and flash shallow fried for a tasty drinks snack. Kai paen can also be toasted over a fire or in a microwave oven.

Here is the process of collecting and preparing river weed for comsumption and sale in Luang Prabang, shared by Joost Foppes via Facebook. Thanks, Joost!

La with finished khao soi noodles

Kees and I were fortunate to be able to watch 16 year old La make her Khao soi noodles in Ban Siliheuang, Muang Sing. The workspace she uses is shared with other village women on a roster basis. After grinding her rice and water batter La has about one hour to make a large bowl of noodles. Her work is a ballet of time and motion, not a single movement is wasted as she interweaves making new noodles, steaming the noodles, transferring them to a long bamboo pole, and finally folding them ready to be cut and sold. As soon as she is finished, she removes her logs from the fire and inserts the logs of the next woman so the newcomer will have a roaring fire to operate the steaming wok and its cover. La then washes her batter bowl and extinguishes her own firewood with the bowl-washing water, ready for next time.

Khao soi batter is in left bowl, finished noodles in the right bowl

La gets 7 – 10 kg of noodles from 4 kg of plain rice. In the market, Khao soi noodles sell for 5,000 kip (about 75 cents) a kilo. La can make 4 kg of noodles in an hour, not counting the time spent grinding the soaked rice and water into a batter.

A ladle of batter is added to the homemade noodle pan

The batter is thickish like pancake batter or paint that you would want to thin. An oily cloth is run over the noodle tray every 2 -3 times it is used. La works with two trays made from what looked like biscuit tins. Spreading the batter takes around 30 seconds.

Spreading the rice batter in the pan

Khao soi batter is evenly spread

replacing already steamed tray with new tray of noodle

The water in the wok has to be boiling fast to generate the steam which cooks the noodle sheet. As soon as the new tray of noodle is in place the fabric padded lid is put over the wok and a ladle of water swirled around the edge of the wok to generate more steam. The noodle dough puffs up when it is cooked, coming away from the bottom of the hot tray.

Swapping the noodle sheets

Sheets cool as new ones are made

Noodle sheet is hung over bamboo pole

Noodles cooling

Folding noodles ready for cutting 1

Folding the noodle sheets

Final folding of noodle sheet 3

Khao soi noodles are cut and used in the Northern Lao version of Khao soi, a noodle soup topped with a pungent fried sauce of pork mince, garlic and fermented soybean paste (mak tua nao) chopped spring onions, coriander and greens, as well as other noodle dishes. Never refrigerate these noodles as they lose their texture. They can survive about 2 tropical days unrefrigerated and can be refreshed in boiling stock for a few seconds.

Ginger, garlic and fermented bean paste jeow (Tai Neua style)

This Tai Neua jeow was prepared for us in Ban Siliheuan and bursts with flavour. The sweetness of the sugar and the sharp tang of the ginger and garlic are softened by the spicy umami flavour of  fermented soy bean paste.

Mak lod berries

It is served with very sour berries (mak lod ໝາກ​ລອດ) wrapped in spring onion leaves and coriander (cilantro). The berry tree grows in the forest and around the homes of Tai Neua people. The berry ripens and yellows until it is too sweet to eat. Crab apples, cranberries, unripe plum slices or cape and ordinary gooseberries would easily substitute for the mak lod  - the sourer the fruit the better.

Ingredients

1 knob ginger, the size of three fingers
6 big garlic cloves
15 small dried chillies, not bird’s eye chillies
3 – 4 tablespoons (2 rounded Chinese soup spoons) fermented tua nao paste or substitute such as miso or Korean fermented bean paste
3 tablespoons raw cane sugar
1 tablespoon MSG
Salt, added depending on the saltiness of the khao soi paste

Method

Pound the garlic in a mortar with half a teaspoon of salt for a minute and then add the ginger. When the paste is well integrated and squishy, remove it to a bowl and set aside. String the chillies on a skewer and roast over the fire or gas flame or under an electric grill until semi blackened but not immolated. Deskewer into the empty mortar and pound until well mixed and broken up. Then add thefermented  bean paste and pound again. Put the ginger and the garlic paste back into mortar, pound a bit and add the sugar and MSG until all is well mixed. Taste and adjust the levels of salt, sugar and MSG to suit your own taste.

Wrapping mak lod in spring onion and coriander prior to dipping the morsel into jeow

To serve, take a mak lodt berry (which is VERY sour) and remove the pit with a sharp knife. Wrap the sour fruit with a piece of coriander (cilantro) and spring onion leaf, then dip the little bundle in the jeow and pop into your mouth. A taste explosion will ensue. Any very sour berry could be eaten this way, such as gooseberry, a slice of crab apple etc.

Well cooked khao soi paste after salt and msg is added

The family's khao soi meat paste, naturally preserved with oil and chillies

You cannot go to khao soi village Ban Siliheuang in Muang Sing without making the famous pork and fermented bean sauce which is the key ingredient topping Northern Lao khao soi.

Here is how the Tai Neua make it. Our cookbook shows you how to make this khao soi sauce the traditional way, Luang Namtha (Tai Lue) style. The two ethnic groups have influenced each other over the past 200 years. There is not much difference really, just the type and form of chillies). Both groups insist that soaking and chopping the chillies from scratch gives the best results, but most restaurants and khao soi market stalls in both districts take a short cut by using dried chilli powder and chilli flakes.

Ingredients for the meat and fermented soybean (tua nao) sauce

4 big cloves garlic

1 cup fermented soybean paste (actually 3 heaped Chinese soup spoons)

3 – 4 tablespoons (actually 2 heaped Chinese soup spoons) mild chilli powder, brightly coloured – not from bird’s eye chillies

3 – 4 tablespoons (actually 2 heaped Chinese soup spoons) coarser dried chilli flakes

Mincing pork for the khao soi meat paste

750 g fatty pork such as belly pork, minced (3 big handfuls when minced), or a mix of pork and beef which is evidently especially delicious.

1 cup palm oil (or other vegetable oil, but not coconut, mustard or olive oil)

Salt to taste

MSG to personal taste (Tai Neua use a whopping amount in everything)

2 tomatoes, sliced in small wedges

Method for sauce (soup and accompaniments are further down the post)

Put the garlic cloves and ½ teaspoon of salt in a mortar and pound for a minute.

Nang Jantee pounding garlic for the khao soi meat paste

First the oil is added to the wok

Khao soi paste is added

Slicing tomatoes for adding to the meat paste

In a hot wok or frying pan, add the cup of oil. When heated, slip in the garlic mixture and fry while moving it about until the garlic is browned. Before it burns (!!), add about 1 cup of tua nao paste and stir to mix. Continue to fry together until the oil returns.

Add the two types of chilli and keep on frying, while moving the sauce around the pan.

Add the tomato slices and stir fry until the moisture comes out. The paste is ready when it smells good and the tomato has started disintegrating.

Adding water to khao soi meat sauce

Add the minced pork, 2 teaspoons more salt (or to taste) and 1 – 2 tablespoons of MSG. (Remember, this is a very concentrated sauce expected to last a few days unrefrigerated (hence the oil, salt and pork fat) and to serve many people). Keep on frying until the meat is thoroughly cooked then thin with water to a thick Western savoury mince consistency. Then, um, add another tablespoon of MSG and stir to mix in. Sai told us “If like to live long time don’t put in water.” After a bit of pondering I figured out he meant the meat sauce, ot the person eating it. Continue to cook until the oil returns again and then transfer to a deep bowl to cool. In the cold, the fat in the sauce will solidify. It is the oil, chilli and reduced water content that preserves the sauce.

Sauce finished, we proceeded to make the soup base (there was only one fire). This can be done concurrently if you have two gas rings for example.

Ingredients for the soup base

250 g pork bits (Nang Buawon used slices left over from the pork she minced by hand for the meat sauce)

Half a pot of water (2 – 4 litres depending on how many people you have to feed, ours fed four with plenty left over. Don’t worry about the quantity because all the flavour comes from the sauce and condiments added later. This bland soup is to heat the noodles and cook the pork which is added to the dish when serving.)

Method for soup base

Bring the water to the boil. Add the slices of fatty pork. I saw no salt or MSG added, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some was slipped in while I was not looking. Simmer away while preparing the accompaniments until the meat is cooked.

Accompaniments and garnish

Finely chopped or sliced spring onions and coriander leaves, 1 tablespoon for each bowl being served

Pea or soy bean tendrils (or Chinese flowering cabbage), raw or blanched, to your taste

Lettuce, fresh

Coriander (cilantro), smallest you can get, roots removed, fresh

MSG, Soy sauce (which is also made in Tai Neua villages), lime wedges or juice, and crunchy and feather-light beef rinds, also a village speciality)

Noodle soup base ready for garnishing with spicy khao soi paste, herbs and vegetables

Nang Buawon preparing a bowl of khao soi noodles

About this time Sai disappeared to get some kao soi noodles from another villager while Nang Buawon set the table and sliced some of the pork. When he came back, she put two thirds of a bowl of noodles in each bowl, topped it up with the boiling stock then poured the excess back into the pot. She then added the pork, a good hit of the meat sauce (1 very heaped Chinese spoonful, 3 – 4 level tablespoons) and sprinkled over the chopped spring onion and coriander.
Each bowl was served piping hot and ready for us to doctor with any or all of the condiments and additional spicy meat sauce. (I noticed that Sai added another tablespoonful of MSG to his.) All the ingredients were mixed together and silence interspersed by slurps and grunts of pleasure ensued!

slurping khao soi noodles

The next post will be about the wonderful sweet spicy jeow (chao) made with fermented soybean paste, ginger and garlic which is served with sour fruit from a tree (mak lodt ໝາກລອດ)

Tai Neua tua nao paste fermenting

Ever since I first espied the towers of richly deep reddish brown piles of tua nao paste resting in large basins in the Luang Namtha and Muang Sing markets I have wanted to know how to make this essential ingredient of the local khao soi noodles from scratch. I did some internet research and found some information about the fermented soy bean paste made in next –door Yunnan, China, and further away in Korea.  Determined after several years of making my own pork mince and fermented bean sauce using purchased paste I decided it was definitely time to go to Muang Sing, to track down the people who made it all the time for sale in the market as a local ingredient.

Like in a modern day Wild West, we drove slowly down the main street at sundown in our bright red Honda Jazz as town was wrapping up its business. We were about as conspicuous as a whore in a nunnery so to speak. As soon as we got out of the car Kees recognized a former guide who had accompanied him to photograph the opening of the Akha Experience trek for Exotissimo and GTZ. Well, it turned out that his family made tua nao paste, so at 8.30 the next morning we (Kees and I plus ‘intrepid camper in the freezing cold’, Sharon) set off to find that the font of fermentation lay in a Tai Neua village, Ban Khao Tong (check) have Lao.

Tua nao paste for khao soi

Our guide, Than  Sai Kuatong (Kees’ mate’s little brother who needed to practice his English) took us to the village where we met his Mother, Nang Jantee, elder sister and hairdresser, Nang Buawon, Paw and their elderly next-door neighbour who makes the most superb fermented beancurd – but that’s another story!)

This family IS tua nao paste. At least twice a year they make the paste using 100 – 150 kg of dried soy beans, and set it to ferment in ceramic jars and Chinese plastic tubs for 1 – 2 years (up to 4 years). The older the better. They start selling it at 4 – 5 months.

Nang Jantee with tua nao paste

There are only five Tai Neua villages in Muang Sing and only 9 in the whole of Laos, and this paste and the associated dishes is THEIR local dish. They take their noodles and paste down to Luang Namtha to sell at the market. They also tell us that in Luang Namtha they make a different type of rice noodle (round sheets that are then cut) and that the Tai Neua way is the proper way. (Again, that’s another story.)

The night before, Nang Jantee had dry fried 10 kg of soybeans until the outsides started to blacken until nearly burned but the insides were yellow. She then set the dried fried soy beans in a big pot with water on the fire at around 7 pm , where they simmered until the fire went out. Nang Buawon got up early and reset the fire so they continued to cook. By the time we arrived, they had been simmering for about 12 hours. They were soft but whole and certainly didn’t look burned.

Preparing soy beans for tua nao paste

The next step usually is to set the beans and their liquid aside in a covered pot for 3 days to start the fermentation process. This step produces the best fermented bean paste. Sadly, we didn’t have three days because of commitments in Luang Prabang. However, our demonstrator said you could do make the paste without the 3 days fermentation but it would not be the best although we would be able to learn all the steps involved. Deal. Also, not wanting to condemn all the beans to becoming inferior paste by skipping the three days, we only used a big bowl of beans, probably about 1.5 – 2 kg and gave the rest to the family.

Steaming soy beans ready for pounding

Using a dipper, Mother transferred this smaller quantity of beans into a colander to drain and we trouped over to the pounder at the next house to pound the beans while adding the extra ingredients of chilli, and then salt.

Cooked soy beans are transferred to the giant mortar for pounding

It took about 25 minutes in total to pound the beans because they had not started their fermentation process. When the beans have been left for 3 days they break up faster and more easily to form a sticky, gooey paste which is darker than the paste in the photos.

Pounded paste before adding broth

After the beans are pounded to initially break them down, chilli powder is added in the proportion of 1 : 10 (1 kg chilli powder to 10 kg dry beans) and pounded throughout the beans.

Nang Jantee adds chilli powder to the pounded beans

Nang Buawon pounds soybeans for tua nao paste

Then salt is added, which is done by taste. Some pastes are saltier than others according to personal taste.

Our small tua nao paste sample had half a large packet of salt added (about 500 g), a ratio of 1: 20. The salt was then thoroughly pounded in. Finally three ladles of bean cooking liquor were added, pounding between each so that all ingredients were mixed into a smooth paste. The consistency was a bit wetter than either smooth peanut butter that has been newly opened or a Thai chilli paste.

Broth from boiled soy beans is added to the tua nao paste

The finished paste was transferred to a bowl and covered with a plastic bag to keep out the air. It had begun its 1 – 2 year journey of fermentation. I now have it in a plastic lidded container in the back seat of the car and we will take it to our home in Bang Saray, Thailand where it can happily ferment away. I learned that although the family say the fermentation process is one to two years, they were using 5 month old paste themselves and had taken some out of a big tub to sell at the market while the paste was still a teenager by tua nao paste chronology!

Tua nao paste after pounding is completed

My earliest recipe on file was a printout from the web back in 2001, from Thaifolk.com. The recipe was translated by Aketawan Manowongsa from Mom Luang Nuang Nilaruttana; 1994; 14,28.

Miang Lao (Pork version from Thaifolks.com)

Ingredients
Pork with slight amount of fat. Big dried shrimps, pounded or chopped and fried. Roasted peanuts. Fried shallots, Fried garlic, Ginger, Finely chopped tamarind, Fish sauce, Palm sugar, Oil, Tea leaves or Pickled lettuce, Hot chilies, Fried crispy rice, and Crisped pork fat. (I think he missed out either salt or fish sauce/padek as there is no salty ingredient in this list DLC)
Preparation
Dice or coarsely chop the pork, then fry it in the pan and add some sugar, palm sugar. When the pork is done, put it in a bowl and mix it with finely chopped tamarind until it tastes sour. After the pork tastes 3 flavours; sour, salty and sweet. (Here’s where I think the salt or fish sauce would come in). Then mix it with pounded roasted peanut, finely pounded-crisped pork fat, finely pounded or fried dried shrimps, ginger, fried shallot, and fried garlic. When it has 3 flavours; sour, salty, and sweet, it is then ready for serve. Wrap it with Chiang Mai tea leaves or pickled lettuce but, surely, it doesn’t taste as good as wrapped in tea leaves. Eat it with fried crisped pork or, if preferred, chew it with hot chili.

 Next I looked up the heavy hitters of the cookbook world (well, in my opinion), Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s superbly put together “Hot Sour Salty Sweet: a culinary journey through Southeast Asia” Artisan, New York, 2000, which, by the way, is a MUST HAVE book for your bookshelf, and you can buy it on Amazon. Yep, they did not disappoint, featuring Hot and Spicy Leaf Wraps (miang kham, pp 264-5), Beef and Lettuce Roll-ups (Miang neua, p 68) and Green-wrapped flavor bundles with pork (miang lao, p 269). Phia Sing (Traditional Recipes of Laos), also available from Amazon  has a recipe for Miang Som Khai using fish eggs, pork, shrimp and fish. He describes how to make lacy egg skins, but if that is too much hassle suggests using salad leaves instead

From Eating Asia (Robyn Eckhardt, Freelance Food and Travel Writer and David Hagerman, Photographer, comes this wonderful blog about Thai miang, including a recipe for miang Lao.

Lao Voices features Luang Prabang miang muang Luang: . The post by LV has good photos of how to dry sticky rice for the miang. Below is an abbreviated version of the post, without the photos. A photo of the finished dish can be found here:

Miang Muang Luang (Sticky rice version from Lao Voices)

Preparing the sticky rice

For this recipe LV assumes that you know to cook sticky rice. It needs to be dried completely. This should take a few days when you are drying the rice inside. Start by breaking down the cooked sticky rice into tiny pieces on a bamboo tray or any tray and let the rice dry out. You’ll know when the rice has turned clear, it is ready to be deep fried. When you are ready to fry the dried rice, sort out the big pieces and using the mortar and pestle, gently break down the rice into smaller pieces. By doing so the rice would be easier to fry and taste better in the end.

 Making the Miang Mixture

1. Deep fry the dried rice using vegetable, corn, or sunflower oil (your choice) until golden brown and let cool completely. Then using a blender, grind the rice popcorn into fine pieces.
2. You’ll need the following ingredients: 2 cloves of garlic, two shallots, sugar, fish sauce, salt, monosodium glutamate/MSG (optional). Chop or grind the garlic and shallots. Add a teaspoon or two of oil (vegetable, corn, or sunflower) in a wok and fry the garlic and shallots until golden brown. Remove them from the oil. Add a tea spoon of sugar to the oil. When the sugar is golden brown, add water to the wok. The amount of water depends on the amount of ground rice that you have. This should be a 3 to 1 ratio, meaning 3 cups of water for one cup of ground rice. When you have the desired amount of water, then add fish sauce, salt, MSG, and more sugar until you get the taste you want.
3. Add the ground rice gradually and stir the mixture constantly until you get a thick mixture that looks close to oatmeal. Remove the miang mixture from the pan and set aside for serving.

Accompaniments

You’ll need the following ingredients: lemon grass, green egg plants (the small round ones), galangal, ginger, roasted peanuts, roasted dried chili peppers, lettuce, and phak i leut (wild pepper leaves, often called betel leaves). Slice lemon grass, green egg plants, galangal, and ginger into small serving pieces and place them next to roasted peanuts and roasted dried chili peppers.

Serve the wild pepper leaves alongside so that people can make their own miang. (You could also use lettuce leaves, or pickled cabbage leaves, and American Lao seem to be fond of spinach as a wrapper DLC).

 Other recipes for Miang can be found in Daovone Xayavong’s Taste of Laos  (Fresh spinach wraps, Miang Kam, p22).  And don’t forget “Lao Cooking and the Essence of Life” by Xaixana Champanakone (formerly Vincent Fischer-Zernin), his miang are on p 93.  Xaixana’s spirited book is an inspiration for creative cooks worldwide.

I can’t resist this Thai miang kam because of the yummy sauce.

Well, all this has made me hungry. Guess what snack I’m  now going to have!

Ma's mother transferring stew from the bamboo in which it was cooked

This is not Lao food, but this post describes how to cook food in a bamboo tube, as was common in Laos. While in Mondulkiri province, Cambodia, we were lucky enough to visit a Bunong village about 12 km from Senmonorom. Here Ma and her mother demonstrated two indigenous Bunong dishes for Birgitte (a local social anthropologist), Bill Tuffin (our dear friend), Kees and I.

Bunong food that has been cooked in a bamboo tube

The first was Trau prung plarn (food bamboo eggplant), in which chunks of eggplant and pieces of pork stewed in a long piece of bamboo (a process called lahm in Lao). I’ve always wanted to see this style of cooking but these days many Lao simply use a pot, as do the Bunong and other Cambodians.

Bunong Trau bpai goray! beltum

The other dish, Trau bpai goray! Beltum (bpai is pounded soaked rice, goray! is rattan and beltum is pumpkin)) featured prahok, the fermented salted fish so beloved in Cambodia. This flavoured a thick soupy stew of rattan, beef and ripe pumpkin, thickened with soaked rice which was pounded with a variety of aromatic greens, chillies and garlic.

Both dishes can also be made with fish, but in this case the fish is cooked first and the bones are removed before adding to either dish.

Bunong pottery jars for wine and preserves storage

The kitchen of the house was separate to the sleeping and living building. Most of the floor was a raised platform where large jars of rice wine and spirits, and fermenting preserves are stored. The home-made alcohol is used in traditional ceremonies and there is a strict protocol about what is used when.

Bunong fireplace

Food preparation is done on the platform, where of course no shoes are worn and it is kept spotlessly clean. Above in the rafters are bamboo baskets and other objects kept in the smoky atmosphere for preservation, and some ceremonial objects that must also be kept in the kitchen. The single cooking fire was on the dirt floor in a corner. Water was kept in a big pot on the platform, refreshed from well water daily.

When we arrived Ma set to washing and preparing the vegetables and meat for both dishes.

Stuffing eggplant into bamboo tube

For the Dtrau prung plarn, Ma peeled strips of skin off three long eggplants and cut them into wedges and put them to soak in some cold water along with 11 de-stalked green birds eye chillies. I didn’t see any salt get put into the water, but I think it was quite possibly added. Normally, apple eggplants would be used instead of the long eggplants, but there were none in the garden or market that day. Ma stuffed about two thirds of the cut eggplant down the bamboo tube along with the chillies, thumping the tube to get the eggplant to slip down to the bottom. She then finely sliced a palm-sized piece of pork tenderloin with a little fat and stuffed this down the tube. Ma also did not have gee salabob, a green leaf that normally goes into this dish so she added two pounded cloves of garlic instead on top of the pork. She said that finely sliced spring onion and lemongrass can also be added at this stage. Ma then topped up the tube with the remaining eggplant.

Poking the water and eggplant down

Once full, she took about a cup of water and poured it slowly into the tube, using a long stick so that it could pass by the pork and eggplant pieces.
After topping up the tube with water, her mother placed it slanting over the fire propped up by a y-shaped stick.

Cooking in a bamboo tube (larm or lahm in Lao)

There it simmered away. After about 20 minutes, a long thick stick was inserted into the bamboo and the eggplant was pulped and pork mixed in. It was left to continue cooking and was removed from the fire when it was making a sizzling glopping noise.

Stripping outer layer from the rattan

Slicing pumpkin for Trau bpai goray! beltum

Smashing the garlic

The second dish, Trau bpai goray! Beltum, was more complex to make, so I’ll list the ingredients:

Ingredients

1 cup rice, soak in water for at least 20 minutes

3 cups of peeled and deseeded pumpkin or orange coloured gourd (like a butternut)

1 bunch of rattan (or one jar of Thai rattan)

3 large cloves garlic or two finger-widths bunch of spring onions

1 handful of forest leaves (salek rannyow)

2 T lemongrass leaf or 1 T of fresh stalk (to be finely sliced)

5 green bird’s eye chillies

2 cups beef leg meat with some fat, sliced into 1 cm pieces

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons msg

1 tablespoon prahok fish

Method:

To prepare the vegetables: Strip the rattan and add the soft inner core to cold water to prevent from discolouring. Cut the rattan into 2 cm pieces. Slice the pumpkin wedges into the water. Finely slice the spring onions and pound two garlic cloves, and set aside for the bpao. Drain the vegetables.

In a pot, cover the vegetables with fresh water to one finger joint and set on the fire to simmer.

Slicing spring onions into the bpai being pounded

Adding the dried leaves to the bpai

Pounding the bpai

Stirring the bpai mixture

Drain the soaked rice and add the green leaves (salek rannyow), I have not been able to identify the scientific name. They are also called bpao leaves, and are becoming scarce as the forests are chopped down. Ma used dried ones that had been given to her by a friend that still had access to the right sort of forest. Transfer to a mortar, and finely cut in the spring onions and lemongrass leaves.
Pound, then add the chillies and two whole garlic. Pound until well blended. Remove to a bowl big enough to also add 1 cup of water to the mixture. Stir to mix and remove any lumps. Leave to swell.

The final touches: After the vegetables have softened add the meat, salt and msg. Simmer, skimming any scum as necessary.

Prahok fish

Put a small piece (about 1 T) of prahok in a bowl and add half a cup of water.
Pour off the water to remove saltiness. Add some of the vegetable broth to the fish and squash the fish to make a sauce. Set aside.

Stir the rice mixture into the stew and keep stirring until well mixed. Cover with a lid. Simmer, but stir often so the rice does not burn on the bottom while thickening.

Adding the bpai to the stew

Finally stir in the liquid of the prahok, holding back the fish sediment. Discard the sediment. Let the stew sit for a few minutes and transfer to dishes to serve.

Serve with plain rice.

Bunong meal cooked by Ma and her grandmother

Salad

Vandara’s organic garden has a profusion of fruit, herbs and vegetables. In our cook-up Vandara produced a superb salad using firm but creamy avocados as the main ingredient.

Whopping great avocados

Torch ginger petals for salad

To the salad bowl she then added crimson dragon fruit and the inner petals of the torch ginger flower (Etlinyera elatior Zingieracae) which had been soaked in water to keep fresh, rose petals and finely sliced cucumber. For greens, mint (pak hom lahp Mon), Asian pennywort (pak nok, Centella asiatica Hydrocolylacae) and fish-cheek plant (pak khao tong) were tossed in.

Salad ingredients

Finally, she added butterfly pea flowers (clitoria ternatea Pailonacae).

Adding the spicy dressing

The savory salad dressing was a mixture of finely sliced garlic, salt, lime, ground black pepper and the pulp of a passionfruit which was then spooned over the salad, and hand mixed with the other ingredients. Superb flavours and textures, and so colourful!

Vandara slicing garlic using soi technique

A second dish prepared by Vandara was sa paedek. Vandara very finely sliced fresh young galangal, lemongrass, garlic, traditional ginger and shallots (about 2 tablespoons of each) using the soi technique, while her niece painstakingly removed the pin bones from a piece of paedek fish and shredded it. A large handful of village-raised pork was minced with a cleaver and dry-fried, and two small red chillies were also finely sliced. All these ingredients were combined together and little tufts of dill, finely sliced sawtooth herb and mint leaves and finely chopped puffed pork skin were added as a finishing touch.

Salad vegetables for wrapping sa

Accompaniments were a dish of soaked and drained khao poon noodles, and a nicely arranged dish of perilla (pak meng kheng, Perilla fruitescens Lamiacae), wild pepper (betel) leaves (phak nang leut), fish-cheek plant (fish mint) leaves, torch ginger flower, sliced cucumber and chillies.

I cooked an Akha bean dish flavoured with roasted garlic and sesame seeds, Tai dam pork aw, and sa low. Once finished we carted all the dishes down to the riverside sala and dined to the thundering of the rapids and sounds of the forest. Bliss!

Vandara holding edible torch ginger flower in her garden

Vandara Amphaiphone is an amazing woman and a Luang Prabang institution who’s creativity and holistic life approach imbues all she does: weaver, culinary expert, guesthouse owner, mentor and organic gardener.  I met Vandara in print in 2005 but it took until 2011 for me to meet her in person at the opening of a photography exhibition at Project Space in Luang Prabang. Vandara  co-authored “Food and Travel Laos”, the first English language Lao cookbook published in Thailand. Now out of print, the Thai edition is still available. She also gives cooking classes at her guest house using her own organic produce.

I was delighted when Vandara suggested that we come to her riverside guest house and have a big cooking/sharing session as we’d both heard of each other and were very excited to get together. I didn’t know about Vandara’s magnificent organic garden so in the morning Kees and I took off to the local market to get vegetables, herbs and meat – which later of course we found out that Vandara had in abundance! But it was fun in the market. What Kees did not realise was that Vandara was actually at the market buying padek fish. I only found out when I was going through his market photos as I did not see her myself.

Vandara buying padek fish at the Luang Prabang market

Rapids at Vanvisa 2 by the dining sala

We were picked up in town by Vandara in a tuk tuk and made our way to her guest house/ home stay, “Vanvisa at the Falls“, on a river outlet of the Kuang Si Falls. The water was raging when we arrived as it was the rainy season, with water swirling a footstep from where we had our amazing dinner that night. Vanvisa is set in Vandara’s local Khamu village, and she has spent years planting what seems a wild jungle paradise crammed with food-bearing and traditional medicinal plants and trees. Its an ongoing passion – we shared our tuk tuk with bags of cuttings and plants on the way out and stopped off at Vandara’s bigger garden (if you can imagine such a thing) to pick up sweet bamboo.

Sweet bamboo from the big garden, destined for a Buddhist ceremony in Vientiane

The garden is absolutely not in straight rows, everything grows in association with other plants and trees creating little ecosystems. It was hard to walk anywhere because even the ground cover was edible! Not being a botanist or avid gardener I just knew that there was a wealth of expertise and precious species behind this seeming wilderness and I will certainly be taking more time to learn and explore in future.

Colourful produce from Vandara's garden

Meanwhile, if you are into food and wild organic gardens and a real Lao experience you MUST visit this place and meet Vandara.

Hand crafted bed

Don’t expect a three star or above hotel experience, this place is basic but so creatively authentic – even the beds, toilet roll holders and shelves are made on site using local bamboo! And the passion fruit juice is freshly made with local honey.

Vandara picking butterfly pea flowers for her salad

Building with bamboo on site

Vandara dyeing yarn

Below are some photos of vegetables in the garden, but there are many more – papaya, basils, pennywort, avocados, many types of eggplants, plants for dyeing, gingers, galangal, taro etc.

Sawtooth herb

Unripe passionfruit

Freshly picked salad ingredients

Holy basil with strong cloves taste

Vietnamese mint

Ginsing leaves and flowers

Perilla - phak meng kheng

Avocados from Vandara's garden - HUGE - note her hand in the background!