Healthy Village Food - Tamarind Leaves Salad + Tomato Chili Dip! | Mae Hong Son, Thailand

hey everyone hope you're having an amazing day it's mark wiens i'm in a place a village called mongbon which is a shan also known as the taiyai people it's a village a community in the mehongsan province of northern thailand and the food is incredible there's so many unique dishes here so many unique ingredients we're staying at a homestay and tonight for dinner this afternoon they are gonna make for us a completely vegetarian plant-based sham meal especially some of the local salads some of the salads are so good and so unique so different from anything i've tried so some of the antis have arrived at the house we're gonna get started cooking and i'm gonna share these unique shan salads with you for dinner tonight [Music] we've been hanging out with auntie for the last couple days at the homestay and she is one of the funniest aunties you'll meet she always cracks jokes she's laughing she and she is the the expert cook so tonight she's making vegetarian food i know there's going to be a salad made with a type of bean kind of like almost they almost look like thick snow peas which are called lablab lablab in english i believe um and then also a salad or a mix made from young tamarind leaves which are there in the in the bowl yum pasta [Music] kind of like a salad and mixed salad so she first chops up some shallots adds them to the young tamarind leaves [Music] so peanuts are the next ingredient going into the mortar and pestle she's going to pound that up [Music] pounding up the chilies and then also there's going to be a another salad i believe made with the fern okay so actually these chilies she's moved on to another dish the chili's that she's pounding is for a nam prick a chili dip uh which one of the names is called nam piktua nao which is a nam prick a chili dip made with fermented or actually rotten soy beans the little discs those are the that's the ultimate ingredient of shan cuisine all used in almost every dish uh as an umami boosting flavor enhancer but they're fermented soy beans dried into disc shape and yeah they pound it they're included in soups they're included in dips they're included in the curries she's mashing up a few discs of fermented beans mashing them up into powder and that's going to go into the young the young tamarind shoot leaves salad sets that aside and now is pounding up some chili's dried garlic or carrot chilies those are some of the best chilis ever they're so fragrant they're so spicy she specifically wanted dried chilies instead of fresh chilies for that salad [Music] [Music] okay a couple of charred roasted tomatoes are also going to go into that chili dip so i just peeled off that skin and into the now it includes chili's and it includes the fermented soy beans [Music] and the coriander here it's so vibrant it smells so good it all comes from the garden uh in the backyard and that's going into that chili dip too they're kind of almost like a cross between snow peas and long beans or green beans almost have that same kind of taste and texture they boiled them slicing them into thin strips and then she actually they're so juicy filled with so much water that she squeezes them out before adding them to the to the mixing bowl she already added some coriander in there as well okay i think most of the paste all the pounding all the prep work is done and now it's time to start mixing and frying and cooking [Music] okay so she simmers some oil adds in chops and air slices and a couple tomatoes sizzles those down and then she adds in some of the paste that she pounded with the chilies and the fermented beans soybeans um and then just stirring that around it's so aromatic as soon as he starts frying that she said that's also going to be a dressing for the lablab salad [Music] hey okay that's ready that salad is ready another dish that she's gonna make for dinner is a boiled soup with mustard greens i believe and then the soup again the base for the soup includes tua now so she added some of the tuanao powder the fermented soy bean powder she added some of the pounded dry chili uh into the base of the soup too and then here goes in the vegetable oh i think it's it's either mustard greens or i think it's uh yuchoy once she pounds up that soybean uh and then adds it to water it's very similar to miso acts very similar to miso the biggest difference between the the soybean disks and miso is that these soybean discs they're not salty at all the king that's uh ginger from again from the backyard that she just smashes and that goes into the soup that smells so good the fermented soybean the ginger in there [Music] the prep work was done all the mashing and slicing and pounding the cooking is done and now she says time to do the yum do the salads to mix all the salads together and this is the final step before we're ready to eat [Music] oh this looks vibrant flavorful so much umami is going to come from the fermented soybean and that's just a beautiful spread of different dishes many of the ingredients and the vegetables come from right here in the backyard okay i'm just going to start with that chili dip the num prick to a now fermented soybean chili dip so many uh dried chilies in here now those are the fresh chilies the fresh chilies the roasted tomatoes coriander i think she added some peanuts in here too and salt oh wow that is so good it tastes like roasted toasted soy beans with a tomato tartness with a freshness from the coriander it's nutty that's just refreshing salty tart and just umami from the soybeans and nutty oh yeah it's still good this is the one i really cannot wait well all the salads i cannot wait to try but the young tamarind leaves the shoots full of shallots tomatoes in here um dried chili and the paste or the um the pounded powder of the fermented soybean [Music] i think what makes it i mean everything makes it but again i probably said fermented soybeans like like 25 times in this video but that it's the key it's the umami boosting ingredient to almost every single dish here actually yes every single dish here and almost every single sean dish it's similar to miso um i mean it's similar even to soy sauce and that boosts the flavor and just the rounds out every dish so you taste nuttiness in here you taste the shallots the tomatoes the sourness of the tamarind leaves themselves oh that is so good so refreshing such such a burst of sour nuttiness okay next up for the fern salad and this one includes the extra ingredient of sesame seeds on top and then she did heat some oil to pour on top of this one so that sizzled and just lightly oh and then also the ferns are also blanched as well so they are they are cooked rather than just completely raw that one is amazing too a bit more of a saltiness to it and without the sourness like the tamarind leaf but the shallots the sesame seed adds so much to it too and she did add chilies she added in um again fermented soybean everything has fermented soybean i love the texture of the of the fern it has a crispness to it but it slightly has a little bit of a gummy jelly texture to it as well what a salad mixture that is amazing [Music] the next one is the lablab salad or the hyacinth beans which they do kind of look like big thick uh snow peas but this one was a little bit of a different method instead of the raw dressing she actually cooked down the dressing made almost a paste of a dressing by simmering off some tomatoes and then boiling some oil and then mixing that together so it was a kind of a cooked dressing for this one and then hand mixed it all together as well oh wow it's so juicy the soybeans the tomatoes just burst the refreshing taste of the coriander oh man all three of the salads are just award-winning and totally different flavors and additionally different from other salads anything i've tasted before and then the last dish we have here is the green soup with again the stock oh ginger in there young ginger but again the stock made with fermented soybean and you can see that does almost look like miso soup if you look at it oh i love that the bitterness of the the mustard green coming out in that broth and this one is made so it's not salty i don't even know maybe she just added just a tiny bit of salt but that's kind of a palette cleanser [Music] just clean and juicy extremely healthy tasting i love the flavor of those mustard green show [Music] it's another beautiful evening in montparn uh and this meal oh man the flavors the spices the fermented soybean incredible food or taiyai food i want to say a huge thank you to the aunties who cooked this meal who prepared it with so much love uh and to kunkuy who arranged it uh this is her family her home stay here uh but outstanding meal i'm gonna sit here and probably yeah definitely keep on eating for me it was also a learning experience these combinations use the use of the fermented soybean discs which can add i think that's an amazing idea because i think you could use it in so many different dishes and add a burst of completely natural plant-based uh umami to every almost everything that you eat you could add that and it would burst it would boost the flavor so that's given me some ideas as well on how to use uh the fermented bean discs anyway that's gonna be it for this video i wanna say a huge thank you for watching and please remember to give this video a thumbs up also remember to subscribe to big on spice where we're gonna be learning and eating unique fruits and vegetables um eating just food that's good for us and food that's big on spice and today seriously big on spice every dish seriously big on flavor so that's gonna be it for this video thanks again for watching and i will see you on the next video

Channel: Big On Spice - Mark Wiens

Views: 210,152

Keywords: Mae Hong Son, Thailand, Thai food, Shan food, Thai Yai food, Shan, vegan food, Asian vegan food, Asian vegetarian food, vegetarian food, plant based food, plant based Thai food, plant based Myanmar food, village food, country food, healthy food, Burmese food

Id: naU5Ad9KgwU

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022