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Bolaven Coffee: Laos' Highlands in a Cup

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Photo: Slow Forest Bolaven Coffee: Laos' Highlands in a Cup Drive up out of Pakse, where the air is hot and the Mekong runs wide and brown, and within an hour everything changes. The road climbs onto a broad green plateau, the temperature drops, waterfalls appear in the forest at the roadside, and on both sides of the road the coffee starts — row after row of dark glossy bushes, red with ripe cherries in harvest season. This is the Bolaven Plateau, and the coffee grown here is southern Laos in a cup: strong, sweet, earthy and quietly proud. A plateau built for coffee The Bolaven is an ancient volcanic highland in Champasak province, sitting roughly 1,000 to 1,300 metres above sea level. That height matters. Coffee loves exactly what the plateau offers: rich volcanic soil, heavy rain, cool nights and warm days that let the cherries ripen slowly and build sugar. Slow ripening means denser beans and more flavour in the cup, which is why this one corner of Laos produces almost ...
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Larb Isan: Minced Meat, Toasted Rice Powder and Mint

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Photo: Aree's Kitchen Larb Isan: Minced Meat, Toasted Rice Powder and Mint Warm minced pork, still steaming from the pan, tossed while it is hot with lime juice, fish sauce, dried chillies, shallots and a handful of fresh mint — and over it all, the nutty crunch of toasted rice powder. That is larb Isan, the meat salad that sits at the centre of Isan and Lao tables from Udon Thani to Luang Prabang. It is sour, salty, fiery and herbal in a single bite, and it is eaten the way it has always been eaten: scooped up with balls of sticky rice and a plate of raw vegetables and herbs to cool the fire. Lao roots, Isan heart Larb — also written laab, laap or larp — comes from the Lao food world that spans both banks of the Mekong. In Laos it is a celebratory dish, made for weddings, festivals and honoured guests; the word itself is often linked to good fortune. Across the river in Isan, where the language and the cooking share the same roots, larb became everyday food as well as feast f...
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Location: Udon Thani, Mueang Udon Thani District, Udon Thani, Thailand
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Moo Hong: Phuket's Soy-Braised Pork Belly

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Photo: GolfAsian Moo Hong: Phuket's Soy-Braised Pork Belly It comes to the table dark, glossy and unhurried: big cubes of pork belly braised so slowly in soy that the fat turns silky, the meat falls apart at the touch of a spoon, and the sauce shines like lacquer. That is moo hong — Phuket's signature braise, and the dish that tells you more about the island's kitchen than any beachside menu. It is sweet first, then deeply savoury, warm with garlic and black pepper, and it has been simmering in Phuket's Hokkien and Peranakan family kitchens for well over a century. A Hokkien braise that became Phuket's own Moo hong travelled to Phuket with the Hokkien Chinese families who came to work and trade in the island's tin-mining boom, bringing their soy-braised pork with them. In Phuket's mixed Thai-Chinese — Baba-Peranakan — households, the braise settled in and became local: palm sugar for a rounder sweetness, generous garlic and cracked black pepper, star...
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Location: Phuket, Thailand
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Bánh Mì: The World's Best Sandwich Argument

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Every great sandwich has a story, but only one sandwich has an argument — a friendly, worldwide, still-unsettled one — about whether any other sandwich comes close. That sandwich is bánh mì, and if you've never had a proper one, warm from a Saigon street cart, bread shattering onto your shirt, this is your starting point. Vietnam week on this blog begins with phở's broth and patience; bánh mì is the other pole of the cuisine: fast, cheap, handheld, and built in under a minute. A French Loaf That Went Vietnamese Bánh mì simply means "bread" — specifically the small baguette the French brought to Vietnam in the colonial era. The French original was a meal of privilege: wheat bread, butter, pâté, cold cuts, cheese, eaten sitting down. Vietnamese bakers and vendors took the loaf and quietly rebuilt the whole idea. First, the bread changed. Bakers lightened the crumb and thinned the crust — many add a little rice flour to the dough — until the Vietnamese baguette became so...
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Khao Pad American: The Original Thai-American Fusion

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Photo: Ajinomoto Thailand Khao Pad American: The Original Thai-American Fusion It arrives like a diner plate that wandered into a Bangkok kitchen and decided to stay: a neat mound of orange-red fried rice studded with raisins, peas and diced carrot, a fried egg with a runny yolk, a sausage, slices of ham and a piece of golden fried chicken, all on one plate. That is khao pad American — American fried rice — and despite the name it was not invented in America at all. It was invented in Thailand, for American tastes, and it may be the original Thai-American fusion dish. Born in Bangkok, not in America The usual story places khao pad American in Bangkok in the years after the Second World War, when American ingredients — ketchup, canned peas, raisins, hot dogs and ham — became easy to find, and it grew further during the Vietnam War era, when American servicemen on leave filled Bangkok's hotels and restaurants. Thai cooks did what Thai cooks always do: they took the foreign in...
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Location: Bangkok, Thailand
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Mataba: The Stuffed Roti Pancake, Sweet and Savory

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Photo: Ketchup with Linda Mataba: The Stuffed Roti Pancake, Sweet and Savory On a hot griddle in a Thai Muslim shophouse, a ball of dough is stretched paper-thin, filled, folded into a neat parcel and fried until golden and crisp. That is mataba — Thailand's stuffed roti pancake, and one of the clearest, tastiest signs of the Arab and Indian Muslim cooks who shaped Bangkok's food. Savoury mataba comes stuffed with spiced minced beef or chicken, onion and egg; sweet mataba hides sliced banana and egg inside the same crisp shell. Cut it into squares, spoon over sharp cucumber relish, and you have a snack, a breakfast and a light meal all in one parcel. A traveller that settled in Bangkok Mataba is Thailand's version of murtabak, a stuffed pancake found from Yemen and India through Malaysia and Indonesia. Muslim traders and cooks brought it along the old sea routes, and in Bangkok it took root in the city's Thai Muslim neighbourhoods — most famously along Phra Athi...
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Location: Bangkok, Thailand
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Mohinga: Burma's Fish Noodle Soup, the National Breakfast

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Photo: DishRoute Mohinga: Burma's Fish Noodle Soup, the National Breakfast Ask in Myanmar what breakfast means and the answer, almost everywhere, is a steaming bowl of mohinga. Thin rice noodles in a rich, fragrant fish broth — lemongrass, ginger and garlic, thickened just enough with chickpea flour so it coats the noodles — topped with slices of banana stem, a boiled egg, crispy fritters and a shower of fresh herbs. It is savoury, sour, gently hot and deeply comforting, and it is eaten with the kind of devotion other countries reserve for their national dish, because that is exactly what mohinga is. A morning dish with deep roots Mohinga comes from Lower Myanmar, the delta country around Yangon where rivers, rice paddies and fish go together. Street vendors have sold it at dawn for generations — a big pot kept warm over charcoal, noodles blanched to order, broth ladled over in seconds. Workers, schoolchildren, monks and office staff all start the day the same way: perched ...
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Location: Yangon, Myanmar
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