Food From Northern Laos

Every region of Thailand has a hot-sour soup, and the northeast's is the least forgiving. Tom saep — the name means something like "boiled delicious," with saep being the Isan word for tasty in the way a slap is refreshing — is a clear, aggressive broth built on pork ribs or beef and its spare parts, hammered with chilli, sharpened with lime, and perfumed with the holy trinity of galangal, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf. It looks like nothing: a pale bowl with bits in it. Then you take a spoonful. A Broth Built on Bones and Time Unlike the coconut-rich tom kha or the prawn-stock theatre of tom yum goong, tom saep starts with the animal itself. Pork spare ribs are the friendliest version; the traditional one uses beef — shin, tripe, tendon, whatever the morning market provided — simmered until the broth carries the meat's full weight. The long simmer is the point. A rushed tom saep is just hot water with ambitions. Into the pot go bruised lemongrass stalks, slices of...