Laotian Food - STUNNING LAO FISH SALAD | Village Cooking in Laos!

oh yeah that's a fantastic cup of coffee there's just nothing better than starting your day off with a cup of coffee overlooking the mekong river hey everyone its mark Greene's I am in we NT n in Lao we're on our way to this Conservation National Park and we're gonna go to button hat Kai which is a local la loom village we're gonna have a chance to visit the village they're gonna cook some traditional Lao Lao Shan dishes for us to eat our driver should be here to pick us up very soon and we're on our way [Music] okay these are our Ellis driving our two hours driving okay before vehicle here to the village we stopped at the local market it's about a two-hour drive away and it's just on the outskirts of phu khao qu i which is a conservation national park but on the way driving there we're gonna first actually stop at a market to buy some ingredients that we're gonna cook and then we're gonna be on our way to the village [Music] this looks like a very low-key very relaxed market and we're gonna buy some ingredients here we're just getting some fish here but they have chicken they have your meat selection and I think a snack might be in order - there's nothing like a little meat snack in the morning so she has the whole selection on she's dishing out that sticky rice now but these are all a selection of different dried sun dried meats but III saw the coil skewered up and grilled coil is delicious and so she tosses it on the grill they reheat it and that's gonna be good she was drilling the quail there was another treat that I saw she had that I could not resist which is buffalo lungs sun-dried and then grilled tear off a lung that texture it's kind of kind of shriveled up that eggs that's chewy mm-hmm again the more you chew the more flavors release but your first couple bites you don't really taste anything a very unique textural it's because it's lung so lung is sort of like Airy but then it's dried out so it's crinkly new foods in Lao or new parts lots of ID so they'd have been who's on mama I think I can charm ah oh yeah Buffalo lungs and sticky rice what a combination oil is one of my favorites I mean that's why I could not pass that stall but these are beautiful little guys I'm gonna go ahead and break off the drumstick thigh combo and you can just see how juicy that is and it's oily [Music] Oh Oh I look well it's so moist oily and the perfect kind of work and really really flavorful yeah and it's just fantastic you got to have grilled quail when you're in Lao right now it's fantastic we got to move no okay [Music] the market was fantastic those quills though they're so good and you stayed back in the car but don't worry we bought her a quail and some sticky rice too as Mica's taking a nap but sue I think we probably have about an hour and a half until we get to the village when I travel I have lots of downtime I I'm I am constantly taking buses taking vans we're on airplanes or on trains and I'm all about making the most of my time and being productive and so something that I really enjoy doing is listening to audiobooks and I want to make it really clear to you that this video is paid for and sponsored by audible but I'm very excited to be a part of it because it's something that I actually used in something that I enjoy just the other day I was talking with my buddy Joel who's travelling with us in LA right now and he's a cyclist and he was also mentioning to me that he often listens to audiobooks from audible when he's on the bike when he's riding Joel what was the most recent audiobook you listened to I was living the dream once in a while by Phil diamond the most recent audio book that I just finished listening to is called the language of food and the author he uncovers a number of historical food stories and I sex them by linguistic analysis I especially like audible because they have a huge selection of audiobooks and I particularly enjoy mostly nonfiction especially about history business and food and culture and I'll have the link in the description box but you can go to audible.com slash mark Wiens or text mark Wiens to 500 500 to get an exclusive 30-day trial to audible and a book of your choice to download for free okay next stop will be the village okay welcome to bun hat k village oh that was a great Drive it didn't take over almost exactly two hours oh let's get sticky rice [Music] this is where you're gonna do the cooking this is the village look at this house it is beautiful on top of wooden stilts it's all wood traditional style oh man I can already okay as soon as he just turned the engine off of the car the the piece just overwhelmed me somebody the kitchen is up here on the still oh it's just a whole big big space of wood oh she's just lighting the fire right now she has to soak the rice first alone 102 hours okay this is such a cool house check this out there's a mango tree right here we've got to be kind of careful stepping on this section because there are some there are some missing planks but then you come over here and then yeah this is the main like living social area here hanging out here and then the kitchen is over here and this is this is something that's pretty cool because you normally I mean normally houses like this that I've seen normally they do the cooking on the bottom floor on the ground because of the fire but they have a little platform with earth dirt on it so you can have a fire inside here on the top platform and without it being a safety hazard it's really cool [Music] [Music] she washed all of the vegetables and now she's scaling the fish and chopping up the fish she's gonna be making a couple of different dishes one of them I know for sure is Gaia it's a fish mix she's taking off the filets and gallery we're gonna see what's all in it it's a I mean it's something you have to eat when you're in love it's delicious joel is back here peeling some mint okay the sticky rice is ready that just takes 25 minutes to steam there's a big wooden tray sprinkles a little water on the tray dumped out the sticky rice oh that's just a little ball of fresh sticky rice oh there's a little basket on the bottom like a leave like a little they don't do that everywhere the traditional way anymore but on to the wooden tray she wets her hands she sort of scoops it around needs it a little bit with a paddle and then drops it right into the the wicker basket sticky rice holder and that's gonna be hot fresh sticky rice for it to eat throughout the entire day let me tell you there's just nothing like the aroma of fresh sticky rice that's a cool knife that knife looks like it's cooked some delicious things [Music] [Music] Nene coming like up okay gang she's making some type of a vegetable curry so she's boiling some more water she tossed in a couple chilies and some lemongrass and some salt into the water for the guy she's just flash boiling the fish in a strainer just for about almost like 20 seconds or so just till it slightly cooked but not overcooked and then that's gonna mix with all those herbs it's going to be incredibly delicious [Music] once you have all the ingredients prepared for a guy it's really just about mixing them and getting the ratios right what I like it's it's really heavy on the vegetables lots of mint in there lots of long beans lots of green onions the chilies are in there she added only one squeeze of lime and then she added in a little bit of salt a little bit of fish sauce and oh yeah the final ingredient she added in was Kokua and Kokua is toasted sticky rice which is then ground into a powder oh oh SAP die hmm oh it's so good it's so fresh rather than discarding the bones from the boneless fish to make that dish what she's doing is she's making its they call it a game but it's kind of a soup with the fish bones she added in I'm getting some smoke in my eyes and she added in the some napa cabbage as well as some Park won-soon which is like choice um okay I'm tearing and then yeah so that's gonna be like a simple vegetable stew she's gonna make two different jails one is with eggplant the roasted eggplant and one is what tomatoes and so now she's again roasting the tomatoes over the fire [Laughter] [Music] [Music] well everything is fresh everything she made by hand from scratch and she didn't start cooking until we got here so she prepared everything from start to finish it's what I love is that there's so many vegetables in so many herbs and yeah it all looks fantastic and we have a sticky rice buffet all-you-can-eat sticky rice to eat with all of this okay and we you it's also cool is that we're all sitting together we're all sitting around the food together we're gonna all share this meal which is even better that's the best part because you just grab a whole handful and you can kind of keep it in your hand as you just keep eating you can take a little bite of sticky rice and individual you can kind of play with it you can kind of mold it together and I just have to begin with that guy I already luckily got a taste test but it is just fabulous oh it really really what I love so much about that guy is that it focus is really I mean it's it's made with fish and you think of it as a fish dish but it's really all about the herbs it's really all about those pungent the mint in there comes in so strong you've got the crunch of the long beans you've got the green onions the chilies in there and and it's just kind of like light and refreshing but those herbs just just shine they outdo themselves it's delicious and there really is nothing better than fresh sticky rice I'm gonna grab a piece of vegetable and next I will try the roasted eggplant she roasted the chiles she roasted the eggplant and then she added in just a little bit of fish sauce and she added in really it's very light on the seasoning some salt in there and we were just rely on those natural ingredients sorry oh yeah there are so many different cultures around the world that have a roasted eggplant dishes including the Middle East which you know they have a hey they eat roasted eggplant like this it's very similar but that's just delicious it's kind of almost like soupy it's a little bit slimy from that eggplant you've got the green onions in there it's fantastic to go with vegetables and then this one is the other jowl made with roasted tomatoes and again there's so many different cultures this I mean it reminds me exactly of a Mexican salsa roasted tomatoes roasted chilies green onions in here and yeah it looks delicious Oh oh yes that is straight up just up it is it's a tomato salsa Jael absolutely delicious goes fantastic with vegetables it's healthy its nutritious yeah this is a great meal with those fish bones and this is very very simple just boiled vegetables with [Music] yeah very simple just like a vegetable soup flavored with the fish bones [Music] another option of what you can do is you can go in with your spoon you can eat some of the gourd you need some of the dishes and then you can chase them with vegetables so one more notable feature about the Goya set up how the fishes just barely boiled so it's not mushy it's not overcooked it remains it remains firm and just ah and still refreshing oh that's just so good in that smoky flavor mmm sally-ann what I'd do and this is just been boiled that's one of the vegetables you can see how kind of squishy it is what you can do is you can eat this with the dips but you just gotta check this out it's kind of on the inside is almost like jelly you know that kind of slimy component of an okra it's kind of like that it kind of just oozes out from the insides and I will scoop that into the jail so that's so unique it's so runny runny actually and the seeds just kind of ooze up but it's really good it's like a slimy zucchini but definitely the highlight of this meal is that koi and it is just next-level delicious fresh [Music] with that sticky rice combination woman and this is a dish that you could make easily at home I mean there's only there's not that many ingredients in it it's really all about those fresh herbs if you can get those fresh herbs and the fish you can make this at home really easily and it is it's a stunner Joe what's your favorite dish that I gotta go with this roasted eggplant it's just starting the freshness and the fact my when eating at home my favorite thing is usually watching the chef make it you knowing that it's freshly made and then getting to taste it that's just for me you can't beat that [Music] we ate quite a lot of food and what I notice is that I don't I don't feel that full I feel light I mean if you eat a lot of sticky rice you will you will fall into a slumber guaranteed but I ate a lot of sticky rice but I ate a lot of vegetables I was just feasting on that pile of vegetables and the Jo is and the guy it was all good as soon as we arrived she started cooking and we didn't even have a chance to walk around but actually we're just a stone's throw from a river it's a pretty decent-sized rivers [Music] cocktail la Coachella line Thank You Jay Jayla cup one cup my car the river is so beautiful and so peaceful in this entire village bond hot tie it's it's it's it's been fantastic to come and visit that people have been so friendly yeah again the village it's so relaxing here you could get into that type of mood where you just wanna lay around in a hammock and not move for the entire day lunch was superb I love how she prepared everything and again I still I'm I'm blown away by the amount of herbs in the cooking the gaudiya especially that was that was that was the dish and again I want to say a huge thank you to audible for sponsoring this video I'll leave the links in the description box and thank you for watching this video please remember to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it leave a comment below I'd love to hear from you and if you're not already subscribed click subscribe now I'm gonna be publishing lots more food and travel videos and culture videos and also click the little bell icon so that you get notified of all future videos that I publish thanks again for watching good bye from bun Hut Kai and I'll see you on the next video

Channel: Mark Wiens

Views: 2,354,791

Keywords: Lao food, Lao Lum food, koi, Mark Wiens, food in Laos, Laotion food, village, food travel, travel guide, Audible, lao food culture, how to make lao food, how to make laos food, Vientiane, things to do in Vientiane, backpacking Laos, ລາວລຸ່ມ, Laos travel guide, Southeast Asia, Asian food, Asia travel guide

Id: wbYOHEJjtCg

Length: 21min 37sec (1297 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 25 2018