Jeao Maeng Dah / Durian

Jeao Maeng Dah

Yesterday Sengthian bought some of those large water beetles at the market to make Jeao Maeng Dah. If you’ve been following this blog since November Maeng Dah is the big beetle I took a photo of next to my cell phone.

This morning while feeding the kids I ate some for breakfast. It met my criterion for eating strange foods. The taste is not objectionable. It does have a strong flavour, but it isn’t necessarily a bad flavour. The kids ate bananas, milk, and the light sausage called yaw. Both breakfasts were eaten with kow kneeow. I don’t like the maeng dah as well as I like the maen kii kwai (buffalo beetle) but it does lend itself to jeao better and I'd certainly eat it again.


Too-lien

The other food of this post is durian, or as the Lao say, “too-lien”. I’d never eaten it before a few weeks ago, now I can’t get enough. The smell is described as being sweet almost to the point of smelling rotten. I don’t know. When I go in the kitchen all I smell is fresh durian.

One summer I lived in Sri Racha where durian grow in abundance. I didn’t mind the smell then either, I wish I’d tried some. I’m paying about a dollar and a half per kilo at the big Dalat Si Kai out past the airport. So far that’s the only market I’ve seen that carries them, pretty steep for fruit of course, but they are imported from Thailand, probably the south. Describing the flesh part of the fruit doesn’t do it justice. It’s extremely rich, almost like heavy cream, but in a fruit.