Once the rainy season ends in early October, the waters of the Mekong and its tributaries begin to fall. From swiftly flowing muddy torrents, they gradually shrink through the dry months, only to start to swell again with the early rains in May. As the rivers fall, huge sloping riverbanks emerge on either shore, and wherever there’s a village nearby, people begin to cultivate the riverbanks.
Gardens are planted, vegetable gardens. Sometimes little terraces are constructed, sometimes plots are divided with bamboo poles and bits of string. Over time, the riverbanks become an intricate maze of garden plots, one with corn, one of peas, one with scallions or coriander. At dawn and dusk each day, people carry buckets of water up the bank from the river, then carefully water the growing green plants. There’s sometimes a song or a passing comment as they walk to and fro, or crouch by their plots looking for weeds to pluck.
We’ve come to think of these intensive vegetable gardens as a symbol of the Mekong region, given life by the rivers, and also by all the attentive work of people who live here.
Vegetables are everywhere on the Southeast Asian table, in practically every dish. They’re sliced as a raw accompaniment or parboiled or stir-fried. In jungle areas and in the countryside, people use wild leafy greens and herbs that they gather in addition to the harvest of their gardens.
Many of the best vegetable dishes are the simplest, such as Chinese Greens, Thai Style (page 156) and Quick and Tasty Yunnanese Potatoes (page 162). But in Southeast Asia, vegetables are rarely just vegetables. Often there’s a little meat to give some depth of flavor to a stir-fry, or to a simmered dish like The Best Eggplant Dish Ever (page 159).
In this chapter, we’ve also included dishes that feature tofu or eggs. One of our favorites on a cool evening is Luscious Chile-Oil Tofu (page 168), with its fabulous contrast of cool silky tofu and hot chile oil. Eggs seem made for stir-frying: As they blend with vegetables or cellophane noodles, they transform textures and are wonderfully transformed in the process (see Stir-fried Eggs with Cellophane Noodles, page 169).
As the water level of the Mekong drops in the dry season, terraces of green vegetables take shape on the newly exposed riverbanks. There is a constant coming and going as people carry water up from the river to their gardens.
Greens drying on baskets near Xieng Khuang in Laos before being pickled.
Pressed tofu, also known as firm tofu or doufu gan (in Mandarin), looks a little like cheese. It comes in small firm blocks that may be white, pale tan, or darker brown on the outside (see Glossary for more details). Firm tofu is always smooth and easy to slice. For our children, we often serve it simply sliced and dressed with a little thick soy sauce and a sprinkling of minced scallion or coriander leaves, a dish we first tasted in noodle shops in Taiwan.
Look for pressed tofu in Chinese grocery stores, in the cooler. If you do find a good reliable source, you’ll discover what a versatile, nutritious, tasty food it is.
When quickly stir-fried in a very lightly oiled wok, as here, pressed tofu puffs a little and takes on a good seared texture from the hot pan, yet it remains smooth on the tongue. There’s a little warmth here from the Sichuan pepper, but the dish is not highly spiced. Pair it with a soup and a stir-fried green vegetable such as Yunnan Greens (page 151).
½ pound pressed tofu (2 to 3 blocks)
Peanut or vegetable oil
¼ teaspoon salt, or to taste
⅛ teaspoon Chinese Pepper-Salt (page 309) or Two Pepper-Salt Spice Dip (page 309)
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped chives or scallion greens
¼ cup coriander leaves (optional)
Thinly slice the tofu into 2- by ½-inch slices. Set aside. Rub an oiled paper towel over the inside of your wok. Place the wok over high heat and, when it is hot, toss in the tofu slices. Lower the heat to medium-high and stir-fry, pressing the slices against the hot sides of the wok to sear and brown them but trying not to break them up, until browning well. Add the salt, the spice blend, and the greens and stir-fry for another 30 seconds. Turn out onto a plate, taste for salt, and add a little more if you wish.
Serve topped with the coriander leaves.
SERVES 2 to 4 as part of a rice meal
NOTE: When purchasing pressed tofu, pay close attention to the expiration date, as it isn’t a very long keeper.
A perfect marriage of wok and ingredients, pad pak is a welcome addition to any meal (or a good meal on its own, served simply with jasmine rice). As always with stir-frying, make sure your wok is very hot before you start cooking. The essential ingredient here is dao jiao, fermented soybean paste (see Glossary), which creates a tasty light sauce for the vegetables.
You can make this dish with just one vegetable, napa cabbage, for example, but a combination of vegetables, as in the recipe below, is more interesting. To make the dish vegetarian, substitute ¾ teaspoon salt for the fish sauce. Also, if you are like us, you might look at the 2 tablespoons of oil and think, oh, I can do it with only 1 tablespoon, but in this case it really needs the 2 tablespoons.
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, smashed
½ pound napa cabbage, cut crosswise into ½-inch strips
¼ pound snow peas (about 1½ cups)
¼ pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced (about ½ cups)
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon fermented soybean paste (dao jiao)
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
Heat a large wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl gently to coat. When the oil is hot, toss in the garlic and stir-fry until starting to turn golden. Add all the vegetables and stir-fry until starting to soften, 1½ to 2 minutes. Add the fish sauce, cover, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the soybean paste and stir-fry briefly to mix well, then turn out onto a plate. Season with the black pepper and serve.
SERVES 4 with rice
YUNNAN GREENS
If you’re a vegetarian and planning a trip to China, don’t let anyone convince you that you’ll have a hard time finding good food to eat. With rice, excellent tofu dishes, and fresh stir-fried green vegetables, eating as a vegetarian in China can be pure pleasure, especially so in someplace relatively warm and fertile like Yunnan.
In this simple stir-fry, the bok choi is first parboiled, then stir-fried. Dried chiles and ginger are added to give warmth and a little bite to the beautiful dark green vegetables. The same method can be used with green beans or cabbage, and the result is equally tasty.
1 pound bok choi or Shanghai bok choi (5 to 8 heads)
Salt
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
2 Thai dried red chiles
½ teaspoon minced ginger
½ cup mild vegetable broth or water
1 teaspoon cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
Place a large pot of water on to boil. Meanwhile, cut the bok choi lengthwise into thirds or quarters and place in a sink full of cold water to soak for several minutes. Wash thoroughly to get any dirt out of the base of the stalks.
When the water is boiling, add about 1 tablespoon salt, bring back to the boil, and add the bok choi. Stir with a long-handled wooden spoon to make sure all the greens are immersed. Bring back to a boil, boil for under a minute, drain, and set aside.
Heat a large wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the wok. Toss in the chiles and ginger. Stir briefly, then add the greens and stir-fry for 30 seconds, pressing them against the sides of the wok to sear them a little. Add the broth and let it boil for about 30 seconds. Stir the cornstarch paste well, then add it together with ½ teaspoon salt. Stir-fry for another 15 to 30 seconds, turn out onto a small platter, and serve. (Warn your guests that the chiles are not for eating, just for flavor.)
SERVES 4 as one of several dishes in a meal
Here in Sangkhom, Thailand, the cultivation along the riverbanks is so intensive, with many tiny plots and the narrowest of paths between them, that each small piece of the patchwork is “fenced off” with small sticks or twigs to mark the line between cultivated garden and pathway.
In Menghan, a Dai woman walks back and forth across the wide sandy riverbank, carrying water from the river to her vegetable garden.
It’s strange now to remember first planning to go into Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. In 1989, we had tried to get from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, but the police had threateningly told us that we couldn’t go. It had all been a bit creepy.
Now we were planning to go in by boat, a two-day trip down the Mekong. We knew that things had changed for the better in Laos from the tourism point of view, but still we were feeling cautious. We’d play it really safe, we thought, and not stay long.
Very early in the morning, we took a small boat from Chiang Khong, Thailand, across the river to the Lao town of Huay Xai, crossing through Lao customs. Then we ran down the road to another dock and jumped onto a cargo boat just about to head down the river. Like everyone else, we climbed up onto the flat roof of the boat, found a place to call our own, and then sat back. Pretty pleasant.
All day we traveled down the river. Dom and Tashi were thrilled, sitting cross-legged at the very front of the boat, playing cards with other passengers and occasionally looking up at the mountains and forests all around. Along the river there were beautiful long, inviting sandbars, the river being very low in the dry season, and every once in a while the driver would deftly maneuver around a sand spit in our course.
By the end of the day, we had arrived at the village of Pak Beng, where the boat docked, and we went looking for a place to spend the night. Pak Beng had no electricity, no amenities, but a smiling woman fed us dinner at a table set up outside and then we slept in a tiny little cement room with four cots and no windows, the local hotel and restaurant.
Next day, we were back on a boat, though not the same boat, and not as big a boat, and we were told we had to sit inside because the rapids made the roof too dangerous a perch. The inside was cramped with hens and bags and cargo, and it wasn’t as easy to see the river, but we all had a good day nonetheless. As on the day before, the river was absolutely beautiful, but with virtually no sign of people. Vietnam has nearly eighty million people; Thailand nearly sixty million. Laos has only four and a half million people; now this scarcity of population all began to make more sense.
By late afternoon, we came around one last bend in the river and there before us was Luang Prabang. Up high on the banks we could see golden shrines and temples, and suddenly all around us there were boats, people, noise, and action. In an instant, we were stretching our cramped limbs and making sure we had all children, bags, and wits collected. We scrambled like everyone else, hustling up the embankment, waving for a rickshaw.
An hour later, we were in a guest house, unpacked, arrived. At dusk we strolled along the river, stopped in at an evening market lit with candles, snacked on grilled chicken and sticky rice. The kids found an ice cream place, and we found some Lao beer. Luang Prabang seemed pretty nice, wonderful, in fact. We settled in and past worries became a distant memory.
Every evening, it seems, there is a light show on the Mekong in Luang Prabang, as the glow of the sunset lights up the river.
In Cambodia, shoppers can buy finely sliced ginger and lemongrass ready to be ground into flavorful pastes of all kinds.
Our preferred vegetable for this Chinese-Thai dish is the Chinese leafy green known in Cantonese as gai laan and in Mandarin as jie lan, sometimes called Chinese broccoli in English. It has thick round stalks topped with leaves and small white flowers. Because the stalks are tough, it needs a brief parboiling in plenty of water before being stir-fried with flavorings. You can use this parboil-then-stir-fry-and-simmer method for any green from bok choi to broccoli rabe. If you’re using a more tender-stalked vegetable, reduce the final cooking time to 30 seconds or less to avoid overcooking.
1 pound Chinese leafy greens (see Headnote)
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable or peanut oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon fermented soybean paste (dao jiao)
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
½ cup water
Wash the greens thoroughly in cold water. Cut off and discard any discolored leaves. Slice any thick stems lengthwise in half.
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and add the salt. Toss in the greens, bring back to a boil, and boil for 1 minute, then drain and set aside.
Heat a large wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the wok. Toss in the garlic and stir-fry for 30 seconds, then toss in the greens. Stir-fry vigorously for about 1½ minutes, then add the soybean paste and fish sauce. Stir-fry for another 30 seconds, then add the water, bring to a boil, and cover. Cook for about 2 minutes, then remove the lid. The greens should be tender and still bright green. Turn out onto a plate and serve hot or at room temperature.
SERVES 4 to 6 as part of a rice meal
Cabbage is the great winter staple wherever there’s a long cold season to endure, from Scotland and rural Minnesota or Saskatchewan to northern India and Korea. In China, in late fall, especially in northern rural areas, you’ll see stacks of cabbages in fields and markets. They’re stored in a number of ways: dried and then salted, just dried, stored as is in a cool place, or pickled (see Pickled Cabbage, Thai Style, page 311).
When we drove south from Dali through Yunnan on a cold day in February, we stopped the first day for lunch at a small family-run restaurant in the country. Among the home-style dishes we were served was this one, the cabbage wilted but still a little crunchy, and well flavored by its searing in ginger-chile-and-anise-flavored oil.
1 small Savoy or green cabbage (about 1 pound)
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
1 ounce pork butt, with its fat, sliced, or 2 slices bacon, cut into 1-inch lengths
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 Thai dried red chiles
Three ¼-inch slices ginger
1 star anise, broken in two
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 teaspoons soy sauce
Thinly slice the cabbage, then coarsely chop. Or grate it on a coarse grater. Discard any tough stems. You should have about 4 cups cabbage. Set aside.
Heat a large wok over medium-high heat. Add the oil and swirl it around to coat the wok. Toss in the pork slices (or bacon) and garlic, lower heat to medium, and stir-fry for about 2 minutes, until the garlic begins to change color and the pork fat begins to melt. (It is important that the wok not be over the highest heat, so that the pork fat can melt gradually without the meat scorching.) Add the dried chiles, ginger, and star anise and continue to stir-fry for 2 minutes longer. Raise the heat to high, toss in the cabbage, and stir-fry for about 1 minute, pressing the cabbage against the sides of the wok. Add the salt and continue to stir-fry until the cabbage wilts and softens, about 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce and then stir-fry for another minute or so, again pressing the cabbage firmly against the hot sides of the wok, until the cabbage is quite soft and wilted, with the occasional very slight bit of crunch. Taste for seasoning and adjust if you wish.
Turn out onto a plate and mound attractively. Serve hot.
SERVES 4 as part of a rice meal
NOTE: The ginger, chiles, and anise are there to flavor the oil, not to be eaten.
Travel, it sometimes seems, is all about luck. And were we lucky to meet a young Englishman named Oran Feild. Oran had been living in China for several years, initially as a language student from his university in England, but later as a “dropout” seriously intent on pursuing his passion for traditional Chinese food and martial arts. He’d found himself a place to live in Kunming, a well-respected martial arts teacher, and a master cook who’d taken him on as an apprentice.
We first met him in Dali, where he was staying for the lunar new year. We started talking, and discovered that he was a serious student of Yunnanese culinary traditions. One day, he ran into us in the market and invited us to a meal he was making for a number of friends, casually met travelers like us as well as longtime China residents of one kind or another.
In the feast he prepared, this ordinary dish stood out because of its intentional simplicity. As Oran explained, every Yunannese meal must have one plain simple dish, without heat or dramatic color or complication. Cauliflower took to the role perfectly.
1 medium head cauliflower
Salt
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic or 3 to 4 whole cloves garlic, smashed (see Note)
Put a large pot of water on to boil. Meanwhile, cut off and discard the cauliflower leaves and cut out the core. Cut the cauliflower into florets.
Once the water is boiling, add about 1 tablespoon salt, bring back to a boil, and toss in the cauliflower florets. Use a long-handled spoon to stir gently as water comes back to a boil. Boil for about 1 minute, or until the cauliflower is tender but still firm. Drain and set aside.
Heat a large wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the wok. Toss in the garlic and stir-fry until it starts to turn golden, 15 to 20 seconds. Toss in the cauliflower and stir-fry for 30 seconds to 1 minute, pressing it against the side of the wok to sear it, being careful not to mash it. Add ½ teaspoon salt, stir-fry briefly, turn out onto a colorful plate, and serve.
SERVES 4 as part of a rice meal
NOTE: We like the look and taste of fried minced garlic scattered over the cauliflower. However, if we’re making this for children, who usually don’t like eating garlic, we leave the cloves whole and just smash them before adding them to the hot oil. The oil takes on the garlic flavor, but the cauliflower remains pristine-looking, perfect for the children (and we end up with lovely large pieces of golden garlic).
The Tai Koen and Shan people who live in Burma’s northern Shan State have a category of dishes called oop. Oop refers to the cooking method: steaming without water in a tightly sealed pot. To make this oop, once you’ve placed all the ingredients in a heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid, you need only check it every 5 or 10 minutes and give it a quick stir, until the flavors have blended and the eggplant has cooked to a softened tender mass. Though the pork and turmeric can be omitted, we highly recommend that you include both. “The best eggplant dish ever!” was our friend Cassandra’s reaction when she tested the recipe.
Eggplant oop is traditionally served as part of a rice meal, but it can also be used, very nontraditionally, as a spread on bread.
3 Thai dried red chiles, soaked in warm water for 15 minutes to soften
¼ cup finely chopped shallots
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 heaping tablespoon dried shrimp
1 teaspoon salt
1 medium tomato, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup (about 2 ounces) ground pork (optional)
½ teaspoon ground turmeric (optional)
1½ pounds Asian eggplants (4 to 5 medium), cut into ¼-inch slices
5 to 8 leaves mint or coriander, coarsely torn
Drain the chiles, reserving the water. Coarsely chop them, discarding the tough stems, and place in a mortar or blender together with the shallots, garlic, shrimp, and salt. Pound or process to a paste (if using the blender, you will probably need to add some of the chile soaking water). Add the tomato and pound or blend briefly, then transfer the spice paste to a bowl and set aside.
Place a 3½ to 4½-quart heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pot with oil. Add the pork, if using, and brown briefly, then add the spice paste and optional turmeric. Lower the heat to medium and cook, stirring, until aromatic, about 2 minutes. Add the eggplant slices and stir briefly, cover tightly, and reduce the heat to low (do not add water). Cook, checking every 5 minutes or so to ensure that nothing is sticking and to give the ingredients a brief stir, for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the eggplant is very tender and shapeless. (The dish can be prepared ahead to this point and then reheated; refrigerate if making more than an hour in advance.)
Turn out into a shallow bowl and top with the mint or coriander. Serve warm or at room temperature.
SERVES 4 as part of a rice meal
NOTE: The Shan also use this technique to cook pak gooed, a fiddleheadlike vegetable. To cook ⅔ to ¾ pound of fiddleheads, double the quantity of pork and tomatoes given here and cut back on the dried chiles, then follow the recipe. The fiddleheads should be bright green and tender when done.
At home, we have an old cherry wood dresser where we keep treasures from the Mekong. In it there are Hmong baby carriers painstakingly embroidered in reverse appliqué. There are Mien cross-stitch women’s pants, and Akha bodices, shoulder bags, and leg wraps, all in the rich earthy colors so distinctive to the Akha. There are indigo children’s shirts and vests made by the Tai Dam, hand spun, handwoven, and bleached by wear and many a river washing. There are elegant silk sarongs, Lao phaa nung, as fine in our fingers as a string of seed pearls. Every once in a while we open a drawer of the dresser and simply browse, transported by a wonderful faraway smell of wood fires and kerosene lanterns, of clothing made by hand, of memories of a way of life very different from our own.
Food and textiles are for us equally full of meaning. Both are art disguised as domesticity, personal expression woven into necessity, care and nurturing transformed into color, taste, and feel. We get the same tingly goose bumps watching an Akha family arrive in the Muang Sing market (see page 133), dressed for the occasion, as we do being taught a new recipe by Mae in Menghan (see page 60). There is a sense of a tradition kept alive, and there is also incredible beauty.
When we are out on the road traveling in Laos, or in Yunnan, or in northern Thailand, often at night we’ll sit in our hotel room, or out on a porch somewhere, and simply marvel at a piece of embroidery we were able to purchase in a local market. Or we’ll work at repairing an old handwoven bag, or a pair of falling-apart indigo pants made from hemp. It’s so satisfying to feel the fabric, to decipher how the embroidery is stitched, to study the coarse weave of the cloth.
On several trips, we have taken with us a patchwork quilt in a state of semicompleteness, a quilt we can work on in the evening or when waiting for a bus to come. It covers our bed at night, it gives a simple two-dollar-a-day hotel room a sense of home, and it is fun to have something to share with women who are always curious and appreciative (even though our skills are so crude by comparison).
When we walk into a Mien or Hmong village, someone is always embroidering: a young woman, an old woman, a group of women. A mother will be standing in a doorway, keeping an eye on toddlers playing outside, and in her hands will be a needle and thread, working away at a piece of embroidery. When we look closely at the fineness of the work, a minuscule Mien cross-stitch or Hmong reverse appliqué that demands the tiniest piece of cloth being turned over and stitched down, it is unimaginable to us how someone simply stands there casually and sews so meticulously.
And if we walk into an Akha village, or a Tai Dam village, or into practically any village in the region and look around, sooner or later we will find someone weaving or spinning. And when we watch Dominic and Tashi watch a woman as she spins or weaves, studying her feet and hands as she manipulates the wonderfully mysterious and complicated process, and out comes cloth, we realize we are just like them. We’re in awe.
In a small Akha village perched on a hill, we came upon a woman at her loom, weaving cloth from cotton she and her husband had grown and then spun into strong thread. Every once in a while she’d stop to mend a broken strand or adjust the loom or speak to a nearby child. Gradually, the fabric took shape beneath her fingers.
QUICK AND TASTY YUNNANESE POTATOES
This is slightly chile-hot and very, very good, either hot from the wok or at room temperature. Serve as part of a rice meal with grilled or stir-fried meat, some lightly flavored Chinese greens, and a soup. It also makes great leftovers, cold or reheated. We like the leftovers topped by lightly stir-fried greens and a fried egg. No extra seasoning needed.
2 pounds potatoes (see Note)
3 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
5 Thai dried red chiles
1 cup finely chopped scallions or a mixture of scallions and chives or garlic shoots
1 teaspoon salt
Wash the potatoes well but do not peel unless the skins are very old and tough. Boil the potatoes in a large pot of salted water until just cooked. Drain and put back in the hot pot to dry. When cool enough to handle, slide off the skins if you wish. Coarsely chop the potatoes or break them into large bite-sized pieces.
Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the pan, then toss in the chiles. Stir-fry briefly until they puff, about 30 seconds, then add the potatoes and stir-fry for about 3 minutes, pressing the potatoes against the hot sides of the wok to sear them. Add the chopped scallions or greens and salt and stir-fry for another 2 minutes. Turn out onto a plate and serve hot or at room temperature.
SERVES 4 to 6 as part of a rice meal
NOTE: You can use leftover boiled potatoes for this dish. The proportions above are for about 6 cups cut-up potatoes. If you begin with less, reduce the amount of greens and chiles proportionately. And your potatoes may already be salted, so be cautious as you add salt to taste.
Scallions displayed at the market in Laos.
These round eggplants, sometimes called Thai eggplants, are often used in curries in Laos and Thailand.
The best time to visit Wat Xieng Thong, which sits high above the Mekong in the old section of Luang Prabang, is when the warm light of the late-afternoon sun lights up the glittering mosaics on the buildings in the temple complex.
River weed, or khai, as it’s known in Laos and northern Thailand, grows in the Mekong and also in all the smaller rivers that flow into the Mekong. When it is first pulled out of the water, it looks like a mass of fine seaweed, very green in color. It’s harvested in the winter, from November to January.
We first saw river weed in the market in Chiang Khong, a small town on the Mekong in northern Thailand. We had no idea what it was. Then, as seasonal things tend to go, we began to see it everywhere, great huge bright green bundles drying on railings and bamboo screens in the sunshine. In Luang Prabang, sitting down by the Khan river one afternoon, we watched a father and his two sons as they went out into the river, then emerged a few minutes later looking like three large bushy Boston ferns walking down the beach.
Having finally clued in to khai, we started to notice strange blackish sheets that looked a little bit like thick nori seaweed in the market in Luang Prabang. When we looked closely, we could see that there were dried tomatoes pressed into the sheets, like pressed flowers, and the sheets were often dotted with sesame seeds. We learned it was khai pen, dried river weed. People cut it into strips and use it as a flavoring in vegetable dishes or fried rice, or fry it as a topping or condiment. Khai pen is relatively expensive in Laos, about a dollar for four sheets, astronomical in a country where a laborer might get paid only twenty-five cents an hour. But it’s dense and flavorful; a little goes a long way.
Like many foods we encounter in Southeast Asia, we put both khai and khai pen down as foods we’d be able perhaps to describe but never to cook with at home, but we were wrong. A few months later, when we arrived home, there was a package from Lotus Foods in California, deep in the stack of mail that had accumulated while we were away. When we finally got around to opening it, there was a little package of khai pen, beautiful dark dried sheets, flavored with sesame seeds. “Thought you might be interested,” said a nice little note. “Just received this river algae from Laos.”
If you ever come across these sheets of dried river weed, now being imported from Laos, buy a package or two. Use it sliced into ribbons and quickly fried, as a flavoring for rice.
On the other hand, if you ever have fresh sun-dried river weed to work with, here’s how to prepare it: It should be a bright green cloud of soft strands. For 4 to 5 cups loose river weed, the Shan way is to pound together about ½ cup garlic cloves, 3 tablespoons chopped galangal, several dried red chiles, and salt. Heat a wok over high heat and add about ¼ cup of oil. When it’s hot, add the flavor paste, lower the heat to medium and stir-fry gently for 3 to 4 minutes, then turn off the heat and toss in the river weed. Turn and toss to moisten thoroughly with flavored oil. You might want to stir-fry a little chopped tomato or some sesame seeds, before you add the river weed. Turn out onto a plate and serve hot. It will melt in your mouth.
And while you eat, please picture those three big Boston ferns walking down the beach!
Once the huge piles of freshly gathered river weed have spent several days drying in the sun, they are divided into small bundles, then again put back in the sun to dry.
Monks busily preparing for a temple festival, cleaning statues and climbing up bamboo scaffolding to erect a banner.
LUSCIOUS CHILE-OIL TOFU
A kind of Yunnanese mapo doufu, this dish of fresh tofu flavored with a little pork, Sichuan pepper, and a generous dollop of chile oil is a great midwinter standby. Not only is its hot and spicy warmth welcome on a cold winter day, but we think of tofu as an ideal food at a time when our selection of fresh seasonal vegetables is limited.
Sichuan pepper, common in Yunnan, gives a pleasant numbing heat, while the chile oil is hot in a different way. You can increase the pepper to ¼ teaspoon, or more if you wish. Serve with rice and a vegetable dish such as Chinese Greens, Thai Style (page 156).
1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil
3 scallions, trimmed, smashed flat with the side of a cleaver, cut lengthwise into strips, and then cut crosswise into 1-inch lengths
¼ cup (about 2 ounces) ground pork
4 blocks fresh tofu (about 1½ pounds), cut into ¾-inch cubes
2 to 3 tablespoons Hot Chile Oil (page 310 or store-bought)
1 teaspoon salt, plus a pinch
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground Sichuan pepper, or more to taste
1 teaspoon cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
Place all the ingredients near your stovetop. Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat, then toss in the scallions, reduce the heat to medium-high, and stir-fry briefly. Add the pork and stir-fry, breaking up any clumps with your spatula, until it has all changed color, about 1 minute. Pour off any water that has drained out of the tofu cubes and add the tofu, chile oil, salt, and pepper to the wok. Raise the heat, turn the ingredients gently to mix well, and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Stir the cornstarch paste, add to the wok, stir to blend, and cook for another 20 to 30 seconds until the sauce thickens.
Turn out onto a plate or into a shallow bowl. Serve hot or at room temperature, to accompany rice or noodles.
SERVES 3 to 4 with rice and one or more other dishes
The first time we visited the town of Dali, in Yunnan, was in the spring of 1984 (see Fish Heads and Fat, page 40). Dali had been “open” to outsiders for only a short time, so there were just two small restaurants, and one hotel. The restaurants were basic, but as they were the main meeting places for travelers in town, they were fun.
This simple egg and tomato stir-fry was a frequently ordered dish in both restaurants. The eggs were good, the tomatoes were good, and, served with a hearty bowl of rice and a little Yunnanese chile pepper paste, it made for a very welcome meal.
Serve with Yunnanese Chile Pepper Paste (page 27), a plate of simply dressed cooked vegetables, such as Simple Dali Cauliflower (page 158) or Yunnan Greens (page 151), and perhaps a soup.
3 large or extra-large eggs
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 scallions, trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths
2 large half-green to semiripe tomatoes (just under 1 pound total), coarsely chopped
Coriander leaves for garnish
Break the eggs into a medium bowl and whisk well. Whisk in the salt and pepper and stir to mix, then set aside.
Heat a large wok or heavy skillet over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the pan, then toss in the garlic. Stir-fry for 15 seconds, then add the scallions and stir-fry for another 15 seconds. Add the tomato chunks and stir-fry for 2 minutes, or until softened and heated through. Add the eggs and stir-fry vigorously for 2 minutes, then turn out onto a plate and top with the coriander leaves. Serve hot.
SERVES 3 to 4 as part of a rice meal
This is a fresh-tasting cross between a stir-fry and a warm salad; the lime juice dressing on the noodles meets the pepper and the softness of the egg. After taking us shopping in the market in Phonsavan, Sivone (see The War, page 186) made it as part of a late lunch, with a plate of pad pak (Classic Mixed Vegetable Stir-fry, page 151) alongside. Try to find free-range eggs; their flavor and color make the dish very special.
Serve as part of a rice-based meal, or serve as a main dish for lunch, accompanied by a salad or greens of some kind and rice.
3 large or extra-large eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
Generous grinding of white or black pepper
1 bundle (about 1 ounce) dried cellophane noodles, soaked in warm water for 20 minutes, drained, and cut into approximately 2-inch lengths (see Note)
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
¼ teaspoon dried red chile flakes, or more to taste
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
¼ cup chopped shallots
3 small scallions, trimmed, smashed flat with the side of a cleaver, and cut into 1-inch lengths
Coriander leaves for garnish
Whisk the eggs in a medium bowl with the salt and pepper; set aside. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Drop in the cellophane noodles and simmer for 30 seconds, or until soft; drain, refresh with cold water, and drain again. Place the noodles in a bowl.
In a small bowl, mix together the fish sauce, lime juice, and chile flakes, then pour over the noodles, toss, and set aside.
Place all the ingredients near your stovetop. Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the wok. Toss in the shallots and stir-fry until softened and starting to change color, about 45 seconds. Add the scallions and stir-fry for about 15 seconds, then pour in the eggs and tilt the wok to spread them. As the eggs set against the hot wok, use your spatula to lift up one section and turn it toward the center, then tilt the wok to make more liquid egg flow onto the hot pan. Repeat the folding and tilting until all the eggs are starting to set, about 1 minute. Add the noodles and continue to toss and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute. The eggs will be broken into pieces and distributed through the noodles. Try not to shred them too much; they should still be in bite-sized or larger chunks.
Turn out onto a platter or onto individual plates, garnish with the coriander leaves, and serve.
SERVES 3 to 4 as part of a rice meal or 2 as a main dish for lunch
NOTE: We find it easiest to cut soaked cellophane noodles with a large pair of scissors, picking up a clump from the bowl of drained noodles and snipping off lengths into another bowl.
