Meat and Veggies

This fellow and his friends started to appear at the beginning of the hot season. His name is Maeng Sahn, elephant insect. Quite the name for such a little guy. Perhaps it's the tusks. To catch him spread a plastic under the tree and shake. In season there are a lot and it doesn't take much work, eaten like grasshoppers and the taste is similar. Maybe next time.


This jackfruit, (Mahk Mii) is more well known. They still weren't ripe by mid March.

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.

Milk Fruit (Mac Nam Num)

Mac Nam Num
I guess the name fits. When cut open it immediately pours out a milky looking liquid. Hard to describe the taste except to say it’s wet sweet and juicy. Trickiest part is getting them down from the tree without dropping. Never have seen these for sale at the market. Am told there are other varieties.

Fruit

This morning I thought about a food and veggie post but realized veggie was just too broad a category, when attempting to narrow it to fruit I counted the fruit on hand and came up with nine, we finished the longons yesterday as well as the oranges or it would be eleven, didn’t count the two varieties of lime used as a seasoning either, well, I guess bai kee hoot isn’t really a lime but the fruit looks like one and is called one in English.

From the left then clockwise, obviously bananas off our tree, papaya also from yard, dragon fruit, watermelon, then the lamout both with skin and then peeled and cut in half to show the dark black seed, cut up watermelon and pineapple, and at the bottom white cut chunks of and a partially peeled man pao.

Man pao is currently 15 cents a pound.
Watermelon 30 cents a piece
Lamout 30 cents a kilo
I’m guessing at the dragon fruit for 80 cents a kilo
Pineapple 45 cents a piece