street food

[torakris]

Why is it that street food seems never to taste the same when you make it home?

Is it way in that it is cooked, the skill of the person making it, or does the atmosphere play a part?

Have you perfected any street foods that you would be willing to give the secrets for?

[mamster]

I think it comes down to three things:

1. Atmosphere. There's always going to be a difference between eating som tam on the sidewalk of Thanon Prajatipatai and eating som tam sitting in front of the TV at home. Context is everything.

2. Ingredients. Many of the best street foods are based on ingredients that don't travel well or that vary a lot around the world. Gai yang, Thai grilled chicken, is often made with these scrawny chickens that you'd never see in the US. You have to gnaw the meat off, but it's worth it.

3. Maybe this falls under atmosphere, but: smell, that deceptively powerful sense. Places with bountiful street food tend to have characteristic smells, a mix of the cooking and a lot of other things. There's nothing else in the world that smells like a Bangkok street--fish sauce, diesel, grilled bananas.

Okay, I said three, but of course the skill of the maker has a lot to do with it. I occasionally get a craving for khanom buang, these little Thai tacos filled with golden threads (cooked egg yolk), but recreating them at home would be an incredible amount of work and practice, for a snack.

[indiagirl]

in india, the germs and water borne disease are an essential ingredient!!!

[hedgehog]

My hands down favorite for street food in the Mediterranean is to be found in Tunisia. The soup, a morning soup called leblebi is sold in hole-in-the-wall stalls. What makes it so special is it , is cooked by men for men.

---atmosphere

A large bowl of torn stale bread is covered with a ladleful of long simmered chick-peas, another ladleful of rich broth made with lamb or veal trotters,

---a strong masculine taste if there ever was one!

a medium cooked egg broken on top, followed by a splash of harissa, a pinch of capers, a few juicy olives, roasted sweet red pepper strips, the whole then topped with ground cumin, a lemon quarter, and at the last minute, a drizzle of fruity extra-virgin olive oil. leblebi in the bowl looks a little like a joan mitchel painting.

---fearless to serve something so jarring in the morning and so pleasing.

[Fat Guy]

Street Food At Home would be an excellent cookbook concept and title.

[richw]

I think falafel should be the first recipe in the cookbook...

[mamster]

Street Food At Home would be an excellent cookbook concept and title.

There that book Mediterranean Street Food that's getting great reviews. I have it waiting for me at the library.

Hedgehog, I hope someone serving that dish (which sounds great) has put up a sign reading "Charlie's Trotters".

[funcook]

If you consider hot dogs and burgers, street food they turn out pretty good at home. I think the book idea is a great one.

In Thailand on my last visit in July 02 , street food was fasinating, including a lot of sea food and fresh fruit cut up with some kind of powder topping. In Santa Domingo I found fried fish to be great on the beach side. Surroundings on both occasions were pretty as bad as atmosphere is concerned, may be that adds to the taste.

Fun

[nightscotsman]

I had great street food in Japan - takoyaki, okonomiyaki, baked donut-like things and other stuff I didn't know the name of. I wish I had had the nerve to try some "fish sticks" I saw: literally a whole fish on a stick grilled over coals. Also a similar thing with large squid. I was there during cherry blossom time and the parks were filled with food vendors supplying the drunken revelers.

[Liz Johnson]

Street Food At Home would be an excellent cookbook concept and title.

Too late.

I haven't even had a second to crack it open, but a friend from Australia brought me a cookbook called "Street Food." It's at home, so I can check later to see what recipes are in it...