KennethT

OK, so now we'll fast forward to July 2013 - our second trip to Thailand, mostly Bangkok. For this trip, we decided not to use a guide because there was now a lot more information about local food available online, plus we had already seen many of the major sights. We arrived in the afternoon after spending a couple of days in Koh Samui, mostly to relax and spend some time at the Mo Ang Ko National underwater marine park for snorkeling. I had read about a vendor who made supposedly best pork satay in BKK, located in the Hualampong neighborhood, called Chongki, but as we exited the skytrain station and walked around, we couldn't find it. Of course, we were approached by a couple of well dressed people who immediately spotted tourists and "offered" to help us look around or take us somewhere else, but we were able to escape them. But some other 'non-professional' people did help us, one even took us into a 7-Eleven to ask the clerk if she knew where it was.. turns out, it was closed that day.... So we went next door to Sri Morokot who is well known for barbecued pork over rice. A great first meal in BKK!

OK, so this part isn't Bangkok, but after a couple days in BKK, we went to Chiang Mai - there, we took a cooking class which the first part was a local market tour... I figured people might want to see that... Prepared curries to take home My wife demonstrating how to drink thai coffee served in a plastic bag

After the klong tour, we made our way to Wat Po, a buddhist temple known for being one of the earliest medical colleges in the world. It also has a HUGE reclining Buddha statue. Mother of pearl inlays in the feet There are lots of these types of diagrams. Wat Po also has a very famous thai massage school. This is a snack we had in the airport, on the way to another destination... one of the best airport food I've ever had! Small fried crabs with sriracha!

After breakfast, we toured the Grand Palace, which to say the least, is quite grand... It is a giant complex of many buildings - it's like a small city... very hard to capture in photos... All of the different colors are actually very small tiles... it's unbelievable how much work this must have been to construct. Frescoes depicting history on the walls.. After the touring of the Grand Palace, we looked for some snacks to bring with us on our next activity, a klong tour - which is a riverboat touring the neighborhoods full of people who live on the river that runs through Bangkok: A Water taxi landing area A river view of the Marble Wat Houses on the river We "made merit" by feeding a bunch of fish in the river. Making merit is a buddhist custom where you do something good for someone else which will make your karma better. Our snack - green mango with two different dips - one is sugar/chili, the other is shrimp paste. This has turned out to be one of my favorite snacks when in SE Asia!

Recently, there was a thread about stir frying over charcoal, which immediately brought to mind memories of eating in Bangkok in July 2013. At that time, I hadn't gotten into the habit of writing food blogs, and considering that I had some spare time this weekend (a rarity) I figured I would put some of those memories down on paper, so to speak. Back then, neither my wife nor I were in the habit of taking tons of photos like we do nowadays, but I think I can cobble something together that would be interesting to folks reading it. In the spirit of memories, I'll first go back to 2006 when my wife and I took our honeymoon to Thailand (Krabi, Bangkok and Chiang Mai), Singapore and Hanoi. That was our first time to Asia, and to be honest, I was a little nervous about it. I was worried the language barrier would be too difficult to transcend, or that we'd have no idea where we were going. So, to help mitigate my slight anxiety, I decided to book some guides for a few of the locations. Our guides were great, but we realized that they really aren't necessary, and nowadays with internet access so much more prevalent, even less necessary. Prior to the trip, when emailing with our guide in Bangkok to finalize plans, I mentioned that we wanted to be continuously eating (local food, I thought was implied!) When we got there, I realized the misunderstanding when she opened her trunk to show us many bags of chips and other snack foods.. whoops... Anyway, once the misconception was cleared up, she took us to a noodle soup vendor: On the right is our guide, Tong, who is now a very famous and highly sought after guide in BKK.... at the time, we were among here first customers. I had a chicken broth based noodle soup with fish ball, fish cake and pork meatball, and my wife had yen ta fo, which is odd because it is bright pink with seafood. I have a lime juice, and my wife had a longan juice. This is what a lot of local food places look like:

Bangkok

I've seen charcoal powered woks for stir frying in SE Asia - they typically have some kind of fan contraption that makes the charcoal grill turn into a jet engine... I'll post some pics in a bit.

@liuzhou wow... that doesn't look bad at all, especially for such a short flight!

Don't feel bad @Anna N, I've never had Rice-A-Roni either... but I remember seeing the advertisements for it about 30 years ago... they had a very catchy jingle...

@Kim Shook This dish, among many others, is very easily customizable. In fact, many times, when you order this in a local food place, it won't have any chili in the dish at all, but will have a dish of chili on the table for you to add as much as you want. I've found that Viet food is not usually very spicy - there are a lot of flavors, but tongue-tingling, make-you-sweat heat is not usually one of them, unless you add tons of chili yourself. ETA: There are actually no chili flakes in my version either... when I marinated the chicken, I used a bit of chili paste, but that paste isn't that hot, but has a good chili flavor. And I put a bunch of thinly sliced "spur" chilis - long hot red chilis (that aren't that hot) in the dressing, but I defanged them so their mild heat was even milder - my wife is not a huge fan of very spicy food. But they have great flavor other than heat, which is why I put them in.

Inspired by @liuzhou's trip to Vietnam, I made a dish found all over Vietnam, although originating in the Central part of the country: Bun ga... you can't see the noodles in there - they're buried under the lettuce.... but there were plenty..

I had an amazing goat biryani in Singapore... the meat was tender, but yes, there were lots of small bones.

I'm guessing their larger size is what makes the second ones their "professional" series? Is that what they mean by PRO?

Somtum Der in the EV makes a raw shrimp dish that is awesome... On the less spicy side, I also really enjoy getting sweet shrimp (raw) in sushi form too....

@Pan Ha! I joked with the owner about the lack of babi guling! What we had was very well prepared... we will definitely be going back.

What are fruits of babies?

@DiggingDogFarm I like the emulsifier idea if the OP doesn't want to change the recipe or change the flavor by using a roux. A little bit of lecithin will go a long way and keep it from separating.

I've bought frozen fish that said that on the vacuum pack. The reason the company gave is that the fish is first flash frozen without the packaging, and then sealed under a hard vacuum once frozen solid. The company said to remove from the packaging first because they thought that the pressure would damage the fish once the fish was soft and have a bad texture when cooked.

Ha!! Here's a pic looking at the bottom of the machine... It can only go one way! Here's it in action You can't see the motor but the bottom of the spit looks like a flathead screwdriver and the motors shaft has a slot to accept it. Notice the chicjen grease on the spit - I expected it to run off onto the drip pan, but some just ran along the underside and down the shaft into the motor... unbeknownst to me at the time!

It can also be supremely frustrating - a couple months ago, I got a vertical rotisserie... after 2 uses, it died... the autopsy revealed that the design was really stupid - the spit motor is located directly under the spit, so as you're roasting away, some grease or juices runs down the shaft and gets into the motor. Just as I discovered this issue, the 30 day Amazon return expired... I've been trying to find replacement motors - I've looked everywhere - I can find many similar motors with the similar speed, the same mounting, but the end of the shaft shape (where the spit plugs in) is wrong so I'd either have to remachine the spit or the motor shaft... It's a shame because the heating elements and reflector work great. Making a new spit myself, or redesigning how the motor interfaces with it may wind up costing more than the rotisserie did!

$5 is certainly a challenge here in Manhattan where everything is more expensive... Also, lots of dishes that I make use things like fish sauce or whatever which can't be bought in small quantities, except for Red Boat, which is extraordinarily expensive and I haven't had the nerve to pull the trigger on it yet. But even still, my $3/liter of fish sauce works out to like $.001 per serving. Also, many of the curries I make may cost $20 worth of ingredients (many of them have to come from who knows where, and there isn't a lot of competition for it) but that batch of curry is good for usually 4 meals for 2 people (so 8 servings) - I can't justify doing all work for 1 meal. While I understand weinoo's philosophy, I looked at the OP as a challenge of how to eat well for very little money, not just to eat for sustenance. I would hardly compare beef stroganoff to rice and beans. I was pretty impressed he could pull off a stroganoff for $5. Exactly munchymom - I think that's a great idea!

Yay!!

I haven't made any of the recipes per se yet, but she is engaging to watch and her food certainly looks good: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/

Great! Rather than just twisting with electrical tape, I would rather use wire nuts - they're self insulating and make a better connection than just twisting wires together. (Actually, personally, I would use a crimped connector, but that's just because I have access to them and the appropriate crimping tool - but the wire nuts would work fine). BTW, if you don't want to purchase wire strippers, in a pinch, I have used a knife - just be careful not to nick or cut any of the stranded wires

It looks like you will need a set of metric hex keys for the screw with the hex shaped indentation... Metric keys are a little hard to find in the US, but I've seen sets bundled with Imperial measures at the Home Depot. You can either hold the nut with a socket wrench, nut driver, or even a pair of pliers.