So Good I Chiang'd Mai Pants.

[Ben sez]: A few more 12-24 hour budget SE Asian travel bus rides, a few more stamps in our passports, and we are now back in Bangkok having visited the awesome cities of Vientiane, Laos and Chiang Mai, Thailand. These two cities are somewhat similar, both possessing a similar cuisine, and dealing in the most laid back attitude possible without life completely stopping. We took some cooking classes to fill out our schedule between long periods of doing absolutely nothing.

Vientiane - No Rushing A-Lao'd

[Nate sez]: This city is hot. And I don't mean like Jamie Oliver making pesto, I mean like getting shoved into a 105 degree oven as large as a city. To bake. Or dehydrate. Or mostly want to do close to absolutely nothing. So after a hard morning/afternoon/evening of chilling out in our A/C, we'd venture out to the local Ban Lao, which loosely translates as "Lao Restaurant". If you've had Thai curry, papaya salad, Thai stir-fries, and sticky rice, you've just about eaten everything mainstream offered in Laos. We hear that rat and iguana is also frequently on rural menus, but after seeing Anthony Bourdain's reaction to iguana, we decided it was not on our agenda.

The national dish of Laos is Laab. Or Larb. Or Lahb. Depends which menu you consult. However, this is quintessentially Lao: ground or shredded pork, beef, chicken, or fish dressed with searing chilies, lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, roasted rice powder, and a bucket of mint. We learned how to make the fish version with a very nice French gentleman named Greg and this was truly a great dish.

Simple. Fresh. Tasty. Definitively Lao. The mint and chilies really balance each other out in a deliciously synergistic way. Serve it up with some sticky rice and papaya salad, and a Beer Lao over ice, and you've made it.

Touch Mai Sausage

Chiang Mai is absolutely my favorite city in Thailand. They took my favorite dish, Som Tam (Papaya Salad - I'll make it for all of you when I get back) and made it better. Instead of Papaya, they used shredded green mangoes. My mango salad lady put 8 chilies in, used about twice as much palm/coconut sugar, and created what became a two to three time a day habit for me. I'm adding her to the list of street food vendor ladies I intend to marry.

[Ben sez]: To keep me from feeling left out I found a couple of nice sausage stands in the markets selling succulent, slightly spicy, fresh-off-the-grill pork sausages flavored with kefir lime leaves and lemongrass. One of the best moments of my recent life involved sitting down in a park with a bag of this sausage, some sticky rice and a bottle tea. Sometimes it really is the simple pleasures that are the best.

[Nate sez]: There's been a noticeable pattern of almost all of our best meals being eaten outside in a park, plaza, or squatting against a wall on the street.

Much of the sausages that we've encountered throughout the region have been from the Chinese school: really fatty, really sweet, really not good at all. I'd been craving some tubular meat to put in my mouth, and until northern SE Asia, it was all deeply unsatisfying. The Chiang Mai sausage in particular was so crisp, meaty, and it's contents so well integrated. The herbs and spices perfectly accompanied the pork's sweetness, and sticky rice brings a fantastic texture combination as well as an effect of cooling some of the heat from the chilies.

[Nate sez]: God, Ben really likes sausage doesn't he?

The one real problem with this city is their love of sweets. Not so much a problem as a liability to my waistline. Every corner seemed to have a mango sticky rice stand, along with another one halfway down the block, and I suspect there may have been a lady with a portable setup tailing me through the streets just to taunt me. We even ended up at a buffet which included mango sticky rice in the "all you can eat." Needless to say, I went back for seconds.

Nate and I also learned how to prepare sweet sticky rice in Chiang Mai. Recent news also suggests that Indian mangoes are making their way back to the American market. Word on the street is that they are (I don't know which of the thousand + varieties are getting imported) sweet, non-fibrous, custardy, and will make you appear to have just shot up heroin.

God Bless Mangoes.

Take A Fruit Stand

[Nate sez]: What's sweet, succulent, beautiful, a little prickly, and beloved by all? well...yours truly of course - But the more widely available, and much cheaper, Thai Fruit is a more apt answer to the above query. On practically every damn corner of Bangkok, on every island paradise, in every alley, nook, and cranny is a fruit stand selling whole or prepared fruit.

People take their produce very seriously here. Once you get used to this insane abundance of 30 cent servings of juicy, crunchy pineapple, bizarre but addictive sweet soaked green guava, watermelon, cantaloupe, green mango, asian pear, strawberries, mangosteen....

Let's rap shall we.

The all encompassing, ever popular, Mangosteen.

No other fruit carries such a large following these days in gourmet circles as the mangosteen, with it's hard, green stemmy top and eggplantian body, one cuts the top off to reveal the delicate white flesh segments inside. It has been touted as the single greatest fruit you'll ever eat.

Let me tell you something. We bought a bucket of these, tore into it like ravenous wolves, and when we emerged, we looked at each other - confused - because there was something seriously awry. It's called hype. Now maybe we didn't eat the shining example, perhaps we managed to dig out all of the wrong mangosteens (including the ones the Thai ladies picked out for us), but we've eaten them in central and south Thailand (and Cambodia), and it still tasted like a cross between sweet lime and cherry with a wonderful, soft, juicy texture that was (look, I'll admit) fantastic.

Queen of the fruits? No. Worth the god-knows-fucking what they're going to charge you at your local Chez le Trend d'Semaine for a well plated piece of fruit? Not this one guys.

The Daily Fix

The mangoes (as discussed previously) are the undisputed king of all fruits around here. May his reign be supreme. Nothing has beaten the face contorting deliciousness with which a Thai mango will annihilate you. There is also the much more prevalent (and cheaper) pineapple. They are so sweet, sooo juicy, sooo overflowing with pineapply love that no matter how mundane it may seem, it's just really fucking good everyday. Ben has issues without the stuff. I personally branch out into watermelons, asian pears, and green sugar soaked guavas.

[Ben sez]: Seriously, between the 10 baht pineapple (put it in my veins!) and the ripest mangoes you've ever seen I've though about hiring one of the fruit cart vendors to just follow me around and hack up pineapple all day long to supply my fix. When I get tired of that there are countless mango-ladies on the street to peel and cut up mangoes in all of their groan-inducing goodness. The combination of these two delicious yellow fruits is like having god shove a fistful of sunshine down your throat.

Rose Apples (pictured right) are also one of the more interesting (and consequently completely unavailable in the states) fruits. They are really crisp, actually bordering on styrofoam (like the ones discussed from Taiwan), and have a slightly grape-apple flavor that is really refreshing. In Thailand they're much juicier and sweeter than their Taiwanese counterparts, and this makes a regular appearance on my daily fruit consumption list.

What's that smell?

Durians - Jackfruit
[Ben sez]: We finally bit the bullet (and the fruit) and picked up these members of the spiky-fruit-of-doom family (a.k.a the Bombacaceae family). Jackfruit is actually good, a little bit of that Thai fruit funk, but also tangy and banana-y, not something requiring multiple daily indulgences , but not something to be avoided. Nate compares it to the flavor of JuicyFruit gum, I'm not sure if I agree, but I definitely see where he's coming from.

Durian, the stuff of legends, myths, epic poems, and more than one "No Durian Allowed" signs in hotels. On our last day in Bangkok it seemed like it was time to see if all the hype was right. According to various sources this is a stinky, custardy, caramelly fruit - I don't really agree. We got our massive lobe of Durian (in Ben's hands on right) in its plastic bag, and already there was a palpable funk that I couldn't quite place. Definitely soft and custard-like in texture, it barely required a knife to break apart before going into our apprehensive mouths. After some deep sensory evaluation, accessing the depths of our taste memories - it has hints of banana and pineapple, the ubiquitous Thai-fruit-funk taken to a whole new level, but primarily it tastes like steamed/sweated white onions. Maybe a little celery. Somehow this fruit has managed to be a perversion of unsalted mirepoix flavors.

Definitely not what I'm looking for in my fruit - and it tastes even worse when the Durian-flavored burps set in. I think Nate's solution for stinky tofu burps (swilling whiskey) might be required next time I eat durian.

[Nate sez]: And to put this into perspective everyone - we're being ridiculously concise. There are more fruits (RAMBUTANS!), more delicacies, more fascinating and mysterious fruit products that we could actually write a book about. So until we either have the luxury of a financier, or become independently flush, we'll stick with concise.

Holy Crepe, Batman it's dessert time!!

[Ben sez]: Having eaten countless curries in the week we've been here, most of which cost less than $2 per plate, we decided that perhaps it was time to invest a dollar or two in dessert.

Banana Crepe: Walking down an unknown street somewhere in the old section of Bangkok near Chinatown after a long day of walking in 100°F heat with brutal sun beating down on us, we passed through a street market and my dessert-radar began signaling me with an emergency situation, there was a sweet treat nearby that required my investigation!

A few feet away we spotted a pastry-like device of unknown contents being flipped in a shallow-wok, pan frying to golden-brown-delicious perfection. Upon closer inspection (and salivation) we watched a few of these desserts being prepared and discovered that they were crepes filled with bananas and egg.

First the crepe-slinger (as she will henceforth be referred to) grabs a pieces of dough and slaps it out to paper-thinness and tosses it into the buttery wok. After a few seconds of puffed cooking, a mixture of a sliced banana and egg is poured into the middle. A few more seconds of cooking and the sides are folded up to create a beautiful crepe package. The crepe is then flipped and butter and melted palm sugar are thrown under the flipped crepe, increasing exterior caramelization, and thereby flavor. After both sides are browned, the crepe is held vertically to drain most of the excess sugar-love, then moved to sheets of paper to absorb further grease.

Now here's the criminal part. While resting, the crepe-banana-package is heavily doused in sweetened condensed milk by the crepe-slinger's partner in dessert-crime. If that weren't enough the already awesome combination is then given a savage dusting in pure, white sugar. It's like a case of type two diabetes in a little 6"x8" crepe envelop.

[Nate sez]: a veritable glycemic sledgehammer if you will.

You better believe it was delicious, and it took all of our will power not to go back for a second.

Mango with Sticky Rice: We've all had this at one point or another at your local Thai wannabe restaurant. It's good. No, I take that back, it's really good. To put it lightly, when I tried this in Bangkok for the first time for 20 baht (that's 60 cents you currency converters you), I had the rare heroin-reaction.

My blood suddenly races through my body, my tounge swirling around in sweet, salty, sticky foodgasm, and I wasn't the same, I was changed. I really mean it. These mangoes are treacherously delicious with heavy sweetness, deep mango flavor, custardy texture you can scoop with a spoon, and the ubiquitous good Thai tropical fruit stank (a sulfuric substance also found in Durian and Jackfruit).

The sticky rice is sweet and fragrant. It has a glossy, pearly white coat with a perfect chew and mouthfeel. The sweetness is balanced by the jasmine-floral notes of the rice itself and a pinch of salt. I hope to be embalmed in this shit someday, maybe even a great idea for a new edible spa treatment in which you get fatter and sweeter. I mean, Thai food is trendy right?

To make matters worse, you get a small bag of lightly salted and sweetened coconut cream for a bit of that fatty, round coconut taste to tie it all together. There are a lot of food writers who exaggerate things out of proportion, we're sometimes guilty of that, but I can't stress how I'm not doing this glorious creation justice.

It's worth whatever a plane ticket costs to Bangkok to eat this...and some other stuff too, I guess.