What's Cooking

Today I tried to come to grips with a small part of Lao cuisine by cooking it.We did the obligatory market tour in the morning led by an English lady who's Lao partner runs the cooking school. She gave excellent descriptions of the various ingredients and the seemingly endless herbs that are used in the local dishes. Then it was off to the cooking school and straight into the food. First up was the preparation of sticky rice and Jeow Mak Keua, a spicy eggplant dip. while we were snacking on that we made preparations for our next dish, Mok Pa or Fish steamed in banana leaves. This was an interesting challenge to me as I never eat fish but under Joy, the teacher, his guidance it turned out well and to my surprise it didn't taste fishy at all! As you can't have just one or two dishes for lunch we continue our lunch preparations by preparing a combination of minced chicken and herbs and proceeded to stuff this in a basket made out of lemon grass which is the deep fried. The result is a lovely lemon tasting chicken dish. Last but not least we made Orlam a traditional Luang Prabang stew and finished it all off with purple sticky rice in coconut sauce. I just love those sweet coconut dishes. Our group had the diverse make up that you only seem to get when you travel around with the range running from a carpenter to a Harvard professor. I still was the oldest one there though.

Plenty of greens

and plenty of meat

The cooking school