One of my favorites nights in Surin: when my local sister Fohn took me out for a lovely sushi dinner. The best sushi I've ever had, no doubt. I went for a fresh seaweed salad, a grilled salmon, some seasonal sushi rolls and a tofu soup. Afterwards, we enjoyed a nice, sweet Hoegaarden. Perfect end of a perfect evening!
Past weekend, I tried some fresh (you can take that quite literally, just taken from the field) sugar cane. I also had a very tasty breakie (papaya, oranges, sweet tiny bananas, toast, eggs). I tried some delicious coconut chicken soup and fried fish. The cute little christmas donuts, well I couldn't keep that from you (passed it in a super market). To end the weekend, we did some kind of hot pot, also known as a steamboat. It's a cooking method, prepared with a simmering pot of soup stock at the dining table, containing a variety of Asian ingredients (thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, eggs, tofu and seafood). While the hot pot is kept simmering, we placed our ingredients into the pot and cook it at the table, in a manner similar to fondue. All this, topped off with different kinds of (spicy) dipping sauces.
As it was the last week for one of the teachers (she will go teach in another school soon that is closer to her home), time to say goodbye and time to have... FOOD. What else, right? First we had again a hot pot dinner in the city, the day after we cooked together at school and had a nice party. Slide away and taste the happiness :-)
One of my favorite dishes: glass noodles with pork, fried rice with vegetables, chicken noodle soup.
Everything ends with a good dessert. I tried a very famous local speciality of Surin: tau suan. It's is a dessert coconut soup made with split mung (green) beans.
Mung beans is believed to aid the body in reducing heatiness (cooling), while this starchy and gooey brew definitely warms your stomach as well.
Topped up with loads of youtiao (fried dough sticks) and then you let it soak in the coconut soup for extra texture and aroma.
Okay, I think you get it by know. Thai people never stop eating ;-)
Heads-up: keep an eye on my next food article tackling the Vietnamese kitchen!