Food From Northern Laos

Stand near an open jar of pla ra and you will know it before you see it. The fermented fish paste of Isan and Laos — padaek on the Lao side of the Mekong — has a smell that stops visitors mid-sentence and makes locals lean in like it is perfume. Both reactions are correct. Pla ra is the foundation flavour of an entire food culture: the salt, the depth and the soul of som tam, soups, dips and stews from Nakhon Ratchasima to Luang Prabang. Understand pla ra and the whole northeast starts to make sense. Fish, Salt, Time The method is older than the countries it feeds. Small freshwater fish — river fish, rice-field fish, whatever the wet season delivered — are cleaned, mixed with salt and roasted rice bran, packed into earthenware jars, and left to ferment. Months pass. A year is better. The fish dissolves into a thick, grey-brown liquid-paste with an aroma that can clear a room of unbelievers. The rice bran is not filler; it feeds the fermentation and rounds the flavour. Villages made pl...

Every region of Thailand has a hot-sour soup, and the northeast's is the least forgiving. Tom saep — the name means something like "boiled delicious," with saep being the Isan word for tasty in the way a slap is refreshing — is a clear, aggressive broth built on pork ribs or beef and its spare parts, hammered with chilli, sharpened with lime, and perfumed with the holy trinity of galangal, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf. It looks like nothing: a pale bowl with bits in it. Then you take a spoonful. A Broth Built on Bones and Time Unlike the coconut-rich tom kha or the prawn-stock theatre of tom yum goong, tom saep starts with the animal itself. Pork spare ribs are the friendliest version; the traditional one uses beef — shin, tripe, tendon, whatever the morning market provided — simmered until the broth carries the meat's full weight. The long simmer is the point. A rushed tom saep is just hot water with ambitions. Into the pot go bruised lemongrass stalks, slices of...

Banh Xeo: The Sizzling Turmeric Crepe Photo: Asian Inspirations You hear banh xeo before you see it. The batter hits a smoking-hot cast-iron pan and erupts in a loud, joyful sizzle — xeo , in Vietnamese, is that very sound, and it gives the dish its name. Seconds later a lacy, golden crepe comes out, crisp at the edges, folded in half over prawns, pork and a tumble of bean sprouts, its colour a deep, sunny yellow from turmeric. It is cut into pieces with scissors, wrapped in lettuce and herbs, dunked in nuoc cham, and eaten while it is still crackling. Banh xeo is Vietnam's sizzling turmeric crepe, and it is one of the most fun dishes in the whole country to eat. South, centre — and two different crepes Banh xeo belongs first to the South and Centre of Vietnam, and the two regions make it differently. The southern crepe, the Saigon style, is large — cooked in a wide pan, thin and shatteringly crisp, generously filled, and often enriched with coconut milk in the batter and s...

Every old capital has a dish that could only have been invented there, and for Luang Prabang it is or lam. It is a stew, but not a curry and not a soup: a thick, dark-green tangle of eggplants, beans, mushrooms and meat, perfumed with herbs and heated not mainly by chillies but by pieces of peppery wood. Visitors expecting the fire of Isan or the coconut richness of central Thailand get something else entirely — woodsy, bitter-edged, warming rather than burning, and unlike anything else on the Lao table. The Pepper That Is Wood The signature ingredient is mai sakhaan , the dried vine-stem of a pepper-family plant gathered from the northern forests. Cut into thumb-length pieces and simmered in the pot, it gives or lam its slow, mouth-tingling warmth and its unmistakable woody depth. You do not eat the pieces; you push them aside as you go, the way you would a bay leaf — except that by then they have flavoured everything. The second quiet trick is the thickening. A spoonful of soaked sti...

Hat Yai Fried Chicken: Shallots on Top, Always Photo: Hungry in Thailand Every fried chicken has a signature, and Hat Yai's is not the crust — it is what lands on top of it. Gai tod Hat Yai, the fried chicken of Hat Yai in Songkhla province, comes out of the wok with a thin, shattering, deeply seasoned skin, and then the vendor does the thing that makes it Hat Yai: a generous shower of golden, crispy fried shallots over the chicken and over the sticky rice beside it. The shallots are sweet, savoury and impossibly crisp, and they perfume everything they touch. Take them away and you have very good fried chicken. With them, you have one of the most loved plates in southern Thailand — a dish so popular that stalls selling it have spread from Hat Yai's markets and train station to street corners all over the country. A railway city's famous chicken Hat Yai is the great transport and trading hub of Thailand's Deep South — a busy, multicultural city where Thai Buddhis...

Beef Rendang: The Slow Curry That Outlasts the Day Photo: RecipeTin Eats Some curries are ready in twenty minutes. Rendang is not one of them — and that is exactly the point. Beef rendang is a slow, dry curry from the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra that found a second home in Malaysia, where it is now one of the country's most loved dishes. Chunks of beef simmer for hours in coconut milk with lemongrass, galangal, turmeric, chillies and toasted coconut, until the sauce has all but disappeared and what is left is a dark, fragrant paste clinging to meat so tender it falls apart at a touch. It is rich, warmly spiced rather than fiercely hot, and it tastes even better the next day. If you make one Malaysian curry at home, make this one — just give it the time it asks for. From Sumatra to Malaysia Rendang began with the Minangkabau of the West Sumatran highlands, a people famous for travelling far for trade and work — a tradition called merantau. A dish that could survive a ...