What I Ate in Bangkok (Part I)

I swear the god of blogging and cooking has been against me – all sorts of computer issues like you wouldn’t believe. Either I am just really really lazy. The facts remain: I spent two weeks in Thailand. I spent last weekend in Sydney and I’m due to spend a week in Vanuatu during Easter. I have much to blog through. Guess what? I still haven’t finished all Japan stuff. And that was our honeymoon. Let’s just soldier on, shall we?.

Anyway, the above picture is the Thai-style chicken rice (khao man gai), which is basically rice cooked in chicken fat, chicken stock, garlic and ginger (and maybe some times pandan leaves). It gets served with boiled chicken, chicken blood cubes, giblet, liver, etc. I generally just stay away from the innards because they get cooked until they are tough. Menolikey.

My crazy mother, on the other hand, has no such qualm. And she loves the sauce which is made up of pounded chilli, ginger, garlic, yellow bean sauce and various other seasonings. The dish also gets served with a little bowl of chicken broth on the side.

This is the Thai-style wonton noodles. As you might actually notice, a lot of these dishes have strong Chinese influence. So here we have egg noodles, blanched bok choy and some yummy wontons. These were good. And they were 30 baht. About a dollar.

This is a pad grapow, here made with squid. The eternal Thai favourite. The squid is stir-fried with garlic, chilli and Thai sweet basil leaves (grapow). Served topped with a fried egg and a condiment of fish sauce. This time, I had a mission on mind – to master the pad grapow. Hoorah! Happy to report that I did it too! More on that later.

Deep fried school prawns – slightly battered and deep fried and served with sweet chilli sauce. Oh yeah.

Banana roti. As I am a self-respecting Thai, I do not condone the touristy banana-stuffed roti drizzled with chocolate sauce. Josh, on the other hand, is a white boy and has no such qualm. He loves banana and chocolate roti. Eugh. Give me plain sugar and condensed milk anyday.

I am too disgusted to continue now.