Bangkok, Delicious

Alright, the post you’ve been waiting for (I’m sure you’ve been checking non stop to see if I’ve posted…It’s only the weekend, what else could you be doing? :))! I’ve mentioned this already, but I loved the food situation in Thailand. Speaking of situation, did you see “the situation” on the Roast of Donald Trump…oh man, it was painful. Anyway, back to the food. There are street food vendors everywhere in Thailand. It was the perfect place to try all sorts of new foods!

Our first day in Bangkok, we were lucky enough to get lost and roam into a local market. Nobody spoke english, but it was still fun to check out local fruits and veggies that I’ve never seen before! Luckily, we did have the chance to try a few of them. Here are some of the new fruits we tried!

Jack Fruit

These babies are everywhere in Thailand! We were so intrigued by them because they’re huge. Finally, on our last day in Bangkok, we saw a food vendor cutting them up and selling them. The only time we saw them for sale! I think I know why…they look like a huge pain in the butt to cut open. It almost looked like lots of little pods within the fruit. Each pod had a seed too so the lady had to remove every seed.

These looked a little funky, but tasted really good! They had a thick texture and tasted like a mix of banana and cantaloupe. For $1, we got a big ol’ bag of the fruit pods and they were great!

Dragon Fruit

This was such a beautiful fruit on the outside: hot pink with green spikes. This was served more often than jack fruits. We had this multiple times, especially at hotel breakfasts.

We really liked these! They reminded me of kiwi. They’re filled with little seeds (like kiwi) but the taste isn’t quite as sour like kiwi can be.

I’m so glad these were tasty! They’re so gorgeous to look at. There were a couple other fruits we tried that were a little disappointing…

 

Rose Apple

We saw these everywhere! They looked like a cross between a red apple and a pear. Finally, we had the opportunity to try them at breakfast one day.

Unfortunately, the fruit didn’t have much flavor. It wasn’t bad….but I wouldn’t say it was that great either. I definitely prefer the dragon or jack fruit.

Star Fruit

I’m sure you’ve seen these before. Maybe in the grocery store or on some exotic fruit platter. They’re another very appealing looking fruit. I was so excited to see they were served at one of our breakfasts!

Unfortunately, it was another disappointment. It didn’t have much flavor either and the skin was a little tough. It’s such a pretty fruit, I wish it tasted better!

 

Those were a few of the exotic fruits we tried. We also stuffed our faces with mangos, pineapple, and watermelon. All three of them in Thailand were so delicious! The mango’s were always perfectly ripe and juicy. The pineapple (I’ve already talked about) was amazing. I almost bought some in the store here the other day, but I know it won’t be as good!

I ate mango’s with sticky rice nonstop. It’s a dessert dish, but I had it for breakfast, snacks, and desserts. So good!

They also eat mango’s when they’re under-ripe. I bought some (because I didn’t know what it was) and it was a slightly green color with basically no juice. Kind of like an under-ripe pear…or mango.

So, we ordered pineapple and watermelon for dessert one night and were given a mix of salt, sugar, and chili pepper to dip it in. It was kind of interesting. Not bad!

 

Alright, time for all the food randomness!

Food Markets!

These are basically like our farmer’s markets, except much cheaper and clearly their form of a grocery store. It was really fun walking through them seeing the different fruits and veggies and meats! There were buckets of live fish splashing around…and lots of dried fish too. Sort of like fish jerky. We witnessed a vendor smacking a fish on the head to kill it…that was quite a sight.

We walked through the markets ourselves, but also were lucky enough to go with the teacher of our cooking class.  It was great because she explained what a lot of things were and what the Thai people primarily used them for.

So, the story with the pink eggs. They’re eggs that are preserved for several weeks causing the inside to turn black and gelatinous. They color the eggs pink in order to differentiate them from the white eggs. They technically call them “horse pee eggs.” Appealing name isn’t it?

We were told they’re very similar to hard boiled eggs. They’re called horse pee eggs because the rumor is, they used to be preserved in urine. I wish we were able to try them actually. They sound so weird and look disgusting but it definitely would have been something unique. Next time maybe?

Galanga! This is a form of ginger. The thai people use it a lot in their soups. Our teachers claimed it wasn’t quite as spicy as our ginger, but we tried it, it’s way more spicy! Maybe a different kind of spicy….but pretty intense! We bought some and are hoping to make our own Tom Yam soup!

An ear! Just kidding it’s a mushroom. I can’t remember the name of the mushroom but it’s much different than the mushrooms we’re used to. The texture is collagen like, almost like an ear!

Coconut cream! They use coconut cream and coconut milk in everything (including the delicious sticky rice with mango). If I understand things correctly, coconut cream is straight from the coconut and coconut milk is just cream diluted with some water.

Limes! Also used on a lot of dishes in Thailand. An interesting way they used it was squeezed on papaya. It was actually very refreshing that way.

Eggplants! These are a couple types of eggplants I’ve never seen before. We used the little eggplant in one of our soups. I have to say, I wasn’t a huge fan. It was pretty bitter. The bigger one we never had the chance to try. It almost looked like a little green apple. I didn’t even know there were other kinds of eggplant!

They sell lots of different snacks at the markets too including cashews, dried fruit, and seeds.

They sell tons of different types of rice from jasmine, brown rice, to sticky rice! It was interesting to find out there’s “cheap” rice and then there’s more expensive kinds. The cheaper rice breaks easily whereas the more expensive rice keeps its’ form.

I didn’t know this either, but sticky rice is actually made from, well, sticky rice. I thought it was just jasmine rice mixed with coconut milk but it’s actually a different type of rice. I gotta find that here!

There were several different types of live fish sold at the markets. I believe these were catfish. They also had buckets of live shrimp too!

These are literally mini bananas!

We noticed they use the whole chicken. They even fry up chicken heads and sell them on the street. We passed those up…

Every kind of spice!

After a hot market stroll, we happened to hear the sound of Alan Jackson music coming from a tiny, outside coffee shop. I was so happy to see she had a menu in English and amazing iced coffee! It was just what we needed…

 

Street Food

Ah, the street food. I was at the grocery store here in Dallas a few days ago thinking about how bored I was. I missed walking the streets of Bangkok or Chiang Mai deciding what yummy food to try.

First dinner of fried rice, thai omelet, and spicy soup!

Roti! Roti is a muslim dish (I believe). It’s sort of like a crepe, but is a little thicker. We ordered it dessert style-with chocolate and banana. They also serve it up with eggs, eggs and corn, eggs and banana (interesting combo), and honey. It was awesome!

Pad thai! In Thailand, pad thai is served with sides of sugar, chili, vinegar, and peanuts. Once the pad thai’s on your plate, you add what you’d like, like sugar and peanuts to the side. I’ve never seen that before but it was definitely delicious with more sugar and peanuts :).

We saw people walking around the streets in Thailand drinking this weird looking concoction: black jelly liquid. Cliff thought it was blood, I didn’t so I was willing to buy it one night in Chiang Mai. Let’s just say it was not my favorite drink. The gelatinous chunks were a little too weird for me and the liquid tasted like bbq sauce. As much as I love me some bbq sauce, I don’t want to drink it. So, this drink, also known as grass jelly, is not for me.

They served an amazing coconut juice in Chiang Mai. We think it was sugar cane and coconut milk. It was so good!

Okay, this wasn’t street food but I had to put it up anyway. I ordered an American breakfast in a cafe and got 2 cute heart shaped eggs and “sausage,” which was actually a hot dog. They sell hotdogs everywhere in Thailand, it’s so funny! On menus they’re called weiners or sausage, but they’re always hot dogs- minus the buns.

We did not order the Spa Getty.

These were delicious, sweet coconut balls. The outside had the same texture of mocchi and inside was shredded coconut with sugar cane maybe? They were really good!

Here are a couple pics from our cooking class:

The sauce was amazing!

Man, that’s a lot of food! We both ate constantly even when we weren’t hungry. We were trying to keep our eyes opened for any exotic looking goodies so we could stuff our faces with them.

The culinary experience alone was amazing. So many great foods and dishes, usually very simple but delicious.

Hope you enjoy the pics! I did manage to pickup a thai cookbook so I’ll be trying some of these fun dishes at home :).