eG Foodblog: melkor - The blog that almost wasn't - se asia with t

[pim]

What is doxycycline?

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It's an antibiotic taken to prevent malaria. It also treat typhus and other infections.

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wimps

[pim]

Seriously though, I'm so happy you were in the north by then. Couldn't reach you but spoke to Malik instead. I already knew you were gone but still was worried.

Edited December 31, 2004 by pim (log)

[phaelon56]

Morning Glory grows as a weed all over the place. What does it taste like, if that's possible to describe?

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I can't speak to the flowers but the seeds taste like crap... even when ground up and mixed into double fudge brownies. But miraculous visions they will induce (not recommended but they were intriguign none the less).

Melkor's - wonderful blog!!! It's an area I one day hope to visit and your trip has been an inspiration. As others have commented, we are blessed and grateful that you're both okay. Keep the great pics and commentary coming.

Just curious... have you sampled much in the way of desserts? I love the mango and sticky rice concotion sometimes available stateside in Thai restaurants but have been advised that it's nothign like the real thing as the mango's there are so muc different. have you tried any yet?

[tsquare]

Morning Glory grows as a weed all over the place. What does it taste like, if that's possible to describe?

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I can't speak to the flowers but the seeds taste like crap... even when ground up and mixed into double fudge brownies. But miraculous visions they will induce (not recommended but they were intriguign none the less).

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There are the weeds commonly known as morning glory or bindweed, and there are the beautiful ornamental vines called Morning Glory (though a google on these is convincing that they are also a pest plant.)

Annual Morning glory "Ipomoea tricolor: The black, angular seeds are called "tlitliltzin" and they contain the alkaloid ergine (d-lysergic acid amide), better known as natural LSD."

Field Bindweed: Convolvulus arvensis (Family Convolvulaceae) - don't know if it has medicinal properties, but it's a total pain in the grass.

Back to the programming.

[melkor]

The morning glory tastes sort of like spinach, but more mild and the stems add a nice crunch. It's hardly a subtle dish as it's served in oyster sauce with lots of garlic. Spinach would likely yield a similar result. It's not at all clear if the morning glory being used in these dishes is the same as the weed that grows all over the place in the states - it'd probably be worth finding out before trying to cook them.

Strangely we've been unable to find sticky rice with mangos when we were wandering around Thailand. We'll go back to hunting for them when we're in Bangkok tomorrow.

We've found plenty of strange desserts though - the strangest being found on a Thai Airways flight from Chiang Rai to Bangkok last week:

This dish clearly wouldn't be complete without the sprinkling of sesame seeds on top. As best we could figure it's a coconut gelatin carved into a perfect cube and dyed blue for some inexplicable reason. It didn't taste bad, but it also didn't taste good.

[SobaAddict70]

Cool!

Star Wars food, right here on eGullet.

Soba

[melkor]

It's an interesting experience trying to upload a bunch of pictures at random internet cafes around Phnom Penh. It's a city of a million people; there is at least one internet cafe per block on the main roads yet this is the third place we've been this morning and I think we've got a 50/50 shot at getting anything online today. We'll be in Bangkok tonight - access is much more readily available there.

Having spent the past 40 minutes waiting for a 2meg archive to copy from a cd here to my webserver in California let's see if we can get ourselves caught up on photos.

Yesterday we decided to take the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh since it takes 5 hours and flights here are often delayed for longer than the entire trip takes over land. A 5 hour bus ride costs $4 USD here and takes the main road through the countryside. The road is mostly paved and 2 lanes wide (1 in each direction in theory). The experience is completely surreal - the general theme for 5 hours is a bus careening down the center line of a narrow road, drivers hand firmly planted on the horn with cars, motorbikes, carts pulled by cows, bicyclists, and pedestrians scattering in all directions. Meanwhile the TV is either blaring Khmer music videos that seem to be a cross of Yanni and Celene Dion which for some reason about half the people riding the bus feel the need to sing along with. The alternate entertainment when the TV isn't playing music videos is a Cambodian comedy routine which was far more entertaining for everyone else on the bus than it was for us. Clearly the volume on the TV has to be brutally loud or it wouldn't be audible over the blaring bus horn.

Backtracking to two days ago where we left off with our photos.

pre-lunch refreshment was provided by a can purchased purely based on the name printed on it:

It tastes just like the stuff inside a young coconut plus the delicious flavor of tin-can and sugar.

The view from the restaurant at lunch (with the appropriate number of walls)

watermelon juice

lok lak

vermicelli salad w/chicken

this is what we tried to order for dessert, but unfortunately they were out of ice scream.

mid-day refreshment, this stuff is amazing.

In the afternoon we climbed all over Beng Mealea temple, which is where they filmed Tomb Raider (having been there I'm somewhat interested in seeing the movie). The jungle has spent the last thousand years reclaiming the temple. What isn't rubble is fair game for climbing which makes for a hugely fun, somewhat dangerous, and extremely tiring afternoon.

As MsMelkor mentioned earlier we had tea for dinner, which I believe is the lamest dinner I've ever had. No picture necessary.

Breakfast yesterday still in Siem Reap:

MsMelkor's porridge

Melkor's baguette french toast (redundant?)

the restaurant's resident cat.

For lunch before our bus adventure our driver took us to a restaurant recommended by our guide which he had not previously been to. Depite the fact that it had no walls and had chickens running through it the food wasn't as good as it should have been.

a couple of the chickens are somewhat visible in the center of this pic, uploading a larger one would be far too painful at the moment.

most of the restaurants we've visited in Cambodia deliver silverware to foreigners this way - the glass is filled with boiling water and brought to the table still simmering.

Khmer chicken soup, which is a chicken broth and coconut milk based soup with those little round eggplant similar to thai eggplant, shallots, cubed chicken, onion, cilantro, and minced red chilis. The spice seemed to have been toned down for us, so we added some more chilis and a pinch of sugar.

Cashew chicken, which was stirfried with a bunch of veggies. Aside from being somewhat bland it was pretty good once it was tossed with some chilis.

They brought us the largest young coconut we've ever seen to drink after we finished our iced coffees.

On our grand bus adventure we had a couple of snacks, purchased from stalls at the bus depot.

Packaged foods that we've tried here have had far fewer ingredients than those at home - the chocolate corn (??) thing had all of 5 ingredients all of which are naturally occurring and easy to pronounce. Despite the promising ingredients list the package contained this:

Not that they tasted all that bad (MsMelkor disagreed), sort of like captain crunch that someone had dumped a packet of instant hot chocolate mix on.

These were far better, and we weren't the only people on the bus eating them

We've been sitting here for the past 90 minutes so we'll finish getting caught up later.

(Happy new year)

[Pan]

[...]As best we could figure it's a coconut gelatin carved into a perfect cube and dyed blue for some inexplicable reason.[...]

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Taro?

That coconut baobing looks Chinese to me.

[melkor]

When we arrived back in Phnom Penh we went directly to our hotel. On this trip we've stayed in a huge range of places. In Phuket we stayed in a semi-lux bungalow resort on a hill overlooking the white sandy beach:

It's amazing to think that's what the place looked like a week ago.

In Cambodia, we stayed at a guest house where the toilet and shower are disturbingly close together:

Our next hotel also provided the same toilet/shower system (common in inexpensive guesthouses in this part of the world), and posted a very specific list of rules posted in the room including: no ironing in the room, no explosives, no prostitution in the room(!!), and guests must fill out the registration form. Just for good measure this is the check-in booth:

As we were both dangerously overdue for a proper shower and a comfortable bed we checked into the hotel Amanjaya in Phnom Penh upon our return yesterday.

While the hotel is expensive by Cambodian standards it's a spectacular deal for a luxury hotel. Once we arrived at the hotel we decided to stay in for the rest of the night.

For our New Year's Eve dinner we started with the hotel's welcome drink of pomelo, watermelon, and orange fruit punch

The garnish that looks like a giant slice of lime is a green-skinned orange, which we assume is what all the restaurants we've had orange juice at have been using to create a fresh-squeezed orange juice drink that tastes frighteningly similar to sunny delight.

Once finished with our fruit punch we moved on to a pitcher of mojitos.

Since we were at a restaurant where the greens are less likely to cause lasting harm to our bodies we ordered a salad with goat cheese and puff pastry. The aged goat cheese and hot puff pastry was nice, but it'd be difficult for it to match the joy provided by the first fresh greens we've eaten in a few weeks.

Fish amok - this was beautifully presented. It didn't look like a lot of food (we've seen it in large bowls previously), but it turned out to be plenty. It could have used a little more sauce, however, since it was a bit dry.

Seared tuna with fried zucchini and an orange sauce - the orange sauce was made from those same green oranges which are nowhere near as sweet as the oranges we are used to and made for an excellent savory sauce. The zucchini, tuna, and sauce worked very well together.

Chocolate ice cream drizzled with melted chocolate for dessert. All of the dessert options were western and they make their ice cream on site.

When we woke up we had tea and the plate of fruit the hotel provided in our room

For a late morning breakfast MsMelkor fared far better than I did with her duck noodle soup:

MsMelkor has been starting the day with rice or noodle soup nearly every day here, but this was the first time we saw duck as an option. The broth was delicious, flavored by lots of duck meat (yummy) and skin (rubbery).

Strawberry yogurt drink. We didn't realize this came with the soup, as it wasn't listed on the menu, and were very confused when it was delivered by our non-English-speaking server. Not bad, though.

A surprisingly good pain au chocolat, buttery and flaky, was the best of the bread plate.

A very bad idea, the doxycyclene pill was the best part of this course aside from the breads.

We're off to the airport, more from Bangkok.

[melkor]

[...]As best we could figure it's a coconut gelatin carved into a perfect cube and dyed blue for some inexplicable reason.[...]

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Taro?

That coconut baobing looks Chinese to me.

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Tasted just like coconut, but really it could be anything.

The coconut baobing was from Vietnam (purchased for 60 cents at a roadside stand halfway between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh during one of several stops along the way).

[melkor]

Since we've got really fast wifi access at the Phnom Penh airport we'll get ourselves fully caught up.

We had lunch at Friends the Restaurant. We were both happy to eat there since it's a great cause - the fact that the food was really good was just a nice bonus.

As strange as it is to eat in a Western restaurant here, this is a place that could be boxed up, staff and all, and deposited in San Francisco and be packed all the time. The menu is all small plates, some western, some regional. We had a fairly light lunch:

Smoked eggplant dip - the stuff on top that looks like dill much to our surprise is actually fennel tops. Otherwise it's just a very creamy and very good version of baba ganoush served with really good baguette slices that are passed under a broiler before being served.

Sweet potato french fries with curry mayo - much less sweet than our sweet potatoes, like a regular french fry (twice fried) but rather than fluffy inside they are creamy and they have a nice crispy outside.

Mushroom and leek springrolls - fairly standard, just good. More mushrooms than leeks.

Total bill was $7, and any tip you leave goes to the foundation supporting the students.

Flight is boarding in a minute, and we've had some iced coffee while posting this.

[Dejah]

Your travelblog is a wonderful read for a snow bound prairie foodie.

Thank you for refreshing my memory on the sugar cane juice! That used to be my childhood treat after I drink my weekly cup of bitter tonic tea at the market in HK.

[LaurieA-B]

The garnish that looks like a giant slice of lime is a green-skinned orange, which we assume is what all the restaurants we've had orange juice at have been using to create a fresh-squeezed orange juice drink that tastes frighteningly similar to sunny delight.

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Yes, our hotel in Bangkok served that very intensely colored orange juice every morning, and then I saw street vendors squeezing it from small oranges that looked like limes. I thought it was delicious.

The first place I tried mango with sticky rice was Sara-Jane's in Bangkok. The atmosphere is kind of odd (it's in an office building, and has a very Western-type decor), but the dessert and all their Isaan dishes were very, very delicious. Eat well in Bangkok!

[pim]

Strangely we've been unable to find sticky rice with mangos when we were wandering around Thailand. 

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It's out of season. During the season, about March to June-ish, they are everywhere. It's possible to find good mango now, but not superlative ones.

There is a very good sticky rice shop in soi Thong Lor (or Sukhumvit 53-I think). You could take the skytrain to Thong Lor, at the beginning of the soi, on the left side of the street there's a Khao Neow or Sticky Rice shop, don't remember the name, but the are famous and there's just the one on that street. You should be able to find it.

Another famous vendor is Kor Panich, near Sao Chingcha (the giant swing used in old royal celebrations). I can't give you direction, but just go to the vicinity of Sao Chingcha and ask anyone around,. This vendor is the most famous in Bangkok and most people shouldn't have any problem pointing you there.

Both of these sticky rice shops will have some out of season mango as well--not great, but still far better than what we get here.

[arbuclo]

Melkors, fascinating stuff! Thanks for sharing it all. Must be hectic trying to see what you want to see plus posting this all for us to enjoy. Much appreciated and you're makin' me very hungry!

[melkor]

Yes, our hotel in Bangkok served that very intensely colored orange juice every morning, and then I saw street vendors squeezing it from small oranges that looked like limes. I thought it was delicious.

The first place I tried mango with sticky rice was Sara-Jane's in Bangkok. The atmosphere is kind of odd (it's in an office building, and has a very Western-type decor), but the dessert and all their Isaan dishes were very, very delicious. Eat well in Bangkok!

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We've seen those small green oranges all over Thailand as well, but in Cambodia they have baseball sized green oranges that make genuinely bad orange juice. The best OJ so far this trip came from an orange grove near Tha Ton in northern Thailand, fresh squeezed from orange oranges.

We're having dinner tonight at Sara-Jane's - we'll post about it tomorrow, but having found sticky-rice and mangos at lunch today we'll likely order something different tonight.

[melkor]

Last night dinner was provided courtesy of Bangkok Airlines.

Fish which seemed at first to be coated in some sort of breading turned out just to be gummy-skinned, overcooked, bland white fish. The rice was passable and the veggies inoffensive. The best part of the meal was the coconut ice dessert which was surprisingly decent.

Today we didn't so much have breakfast as snack on stuff as we wandered around Bangkok.

Grilled potato and corn dough balls - very heavy and a perfect start to the day. At least until we made it to the end of the block by which time they were cold and no longer delicious, having turned into balls of lead.

Random chocolate/hazelnut filled almond cookies from some bakery along the road - crispy and satisfying.

After walking around the garment district near our hotel for the morning we took the sky train to the weekend market which is absurdly huge and packed full of vendors, tourists, and locals. We'll likely need to purchase another bag to bring home all the crap we've bought. All that bargaining required sustenance.

Clean kitchen, busy restaurant, no tourists inside - perfect.

Pineapple shake, which is simply a pineapple, some ice, and a few moments in a blender.

Healthy deep-fried cashews - salty, a little spicy, with some chopped green onions.

Strange fried spring rolls - the skin was like 10 layers thick and it was stuffed full of unidentifiable veggies and served with curried peanuts on top. Tasty if a bit odd.

Finally found sticky rice with mango - As Pim said earlier there are green mangos all over the country (which MsMelkor loves to eat with chili powder/sugar/salt) but the ripe ones are far harder to track down. This one was quite good, nicely ripe and sweet. The rice could have been a little creamier though.

Off to Sara-Jane's for dinner then a flight to Hong Kong after breakfast. We'll likely have wireless access at the airport lounge in Bangkok so we may post from there.

[Pan]

Too bad about the mediocre food on Bangkok Airlines. I remember Royal Thai Airlines as probably the best airline food I've ever had (I suppose Sabena would have been second). I recall a savory curried chicken. But times change, and that's a different airline, anyway.

[melkor]

Too bad about the mediocre food on Bangkok Airlines. I remember Royal Thai Airlines as probably the best airline food I've ever had (I suppose Sabena would have been second). I recall a savory curried chicken. But times change, and that's a different airline, anyway.

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In economy class the food on Thai is pretty bad, in business it's OK. Bangkok air is worse and President is even worse. Singapore has really good food in business class, having never flown in economy on Singapore I've got no idea what the food is like. Our flight to Hong Kong in a bit is on Thai, hopefully the food will be better this flight.

[MsMelkor]

In economy class the food on Thai is pretty bad, in business it's OK. Bangkok air is worse and President is even worse. Singapore has really good food in business class, having never flown in economy on Singapore I've got no idea what the food is like. Our flight to Hong Kong in a bit is on Thai, hopefully the food will be better this flight.

Of course, in the US you would never get a hot meal on a 1-hour flight.

[melkor]

Of course, in the US you would never get a hot meal on a 1-hour flight.

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Or a cube of blue for dessert!

[melkor]

Dinner at Sara-Jane's was excellent. Having eaten curries of one kind or another for most every meal the past few weeks this was a nice change. The restaurant as was mentioned earlier in this thread is in an office building and is quite strangely decorated inside, looking more like a cafeteria than decent restaurant.

The sign didn't instill much confidence in the place either.

Thai-Esarn and Italian?!

Lemon juice and tea - the tea arrived both hot and cold having been brewed and then poured over ice and delivered without stirring at all, quite strange to sip through a straw a beverage which is both hot and cold - switching from one to another completely at random.

Gai Yang (chicken and sticky rice) - chicken marinated in coriander root, chili, garlic, and black pepper. Since we are all "curried out" it was a great departure from what we've been eating for the past few weeks. Very balanced flavors and moist meat.

Beef Larb - minced beef with shallots, chilis, mint, and chives. This had good texture and flavor, but we both preferred the gai yang.

Another fruit-juice welcome drink at the hotel bar

Breakfast this morning was perfect on all counts.

Roti on the griddle on the food cart. Roti starts out as a tiny ball of miracle-dough, it somehow stays together while the roti-guy stretches it from a ball maybe 2 inches across to a disc that is 18 or so inches across. It then goes into the oil on the griddle, crisps up a little and is folded into a square, it's flipped over and fried a little more. Then it goes onto a piece of paper, has a little sweetened condensed milk drizzled on it and it's ready to eat.

Perfection - it even passes the Dr Nick test. Crispy and greasy, the perfect thing to eat first thing in the morning in the cab on the way to the airport.

MsMelkor's real breakfast in the Thai lounge in Bangkok Airport.

[melkor]

Lunch and snacks on a Royal Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong.

Champagne and orange juice before takeoff - both were better than expected with the champagne being fresh and clean with a bit of citrus (Lanson is the producer, neither of us have seen it elsewhere).

Cashews with an ingredient list that includes 11% butter can't possibly be bad.

This was just strange. That's some sort of wasabi mayo in a hollowed out tomato. Each of those two slices of stuff are from different terrines, salmon makes the center of one and the outer layer of the other, and kapong fish fills the same role in reverse.

A surprisingly tasty pretzel (once salt was added) and a roll - it's not clear why we were served a pretzel to go with the fish, but it tasted good nonetheless.

Duck breast cooked in red wine sauce (to an interior temp of 500*F it would seem) - MsMelkor found it completely inedible, I was hungry enough to overlook its flaws. The noodles and veggies were reasonably good. The veggies included pumpkin, a translucent white thing, a non-beet beet looking thing, and a bunch of standard mixed veg - carrots, zucchini.

Cheese plate with no description - one was a mild semi-firm cheese which was fine, the fruit-studded soft cheese was less fine.

Green tea cake and cappuccinos - the bottom layer was a green tea sponge; the middle layer was sweet bean paste, and the top was a green tea mousse.

While we were checking in at our hotel in HK we had afternoon tea and some berries.

English breakfast tea, raspberries, blueberries, whipped cream, a couple of tarts - all very good and a welcome improvement over the no-guns/no-whores check-in booth in Siem Reap.

Bowl of fruit in the room - grapes are in need of a bath and neither of us is motivated to clean them so our fruit intake will have to wait till we leave the room.

We've got excellent connectivity here, so updates will be more frequent. We're here for another three days and have planned little more for this leg of our trip other than the next hour so any ideas/recommendations are welcome.

[Pan]

Starting with this post, there is some discussion of what to see and do in Hong Kong in Shanghai and Hong Kong, A girl's gotta eat! Have fun! I found Hong Kong a very beautiful location and fun city when I was there in 1987. Good eating, too.

[bleudauvergne]

Looking forward to your stay in HK! Great international blog! I really enjoyed a meal I had at Felix at the Penninsula