Author: zora

Welcome to the Jungle

How to induce cognitive dissonance: read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, then go to a pig roast. Where the hosts are playing Guns N’ Roses.

That’s how I spent my winter vacation in Bali, and I wrote about it for this month’s issue of Perceptive Travel. You can read the whole thing here: Eating a Personal Pig.

I also liked Jim Johnson’s story about Morocco–specifically, about a guy visiting his octogenarian mother who’s volunteering for the Peace Corps in some Berber village. Ah, squat toilets. They somehow make me happy.

There’s also a far more charitable review of Chuck Thompson’s To Hellholes and Back than I would’ve written. I know he said all that stuff about Muslims just to enrage sensitive flowers like myself, but, dude, those pushy, money-grubby kids in India are not pushy and money-grubby because they’re Muslim. The fact that you nearly got ripped off doesn’t merit several pages of anti-Islam screed that just shows you’re kind of ignorant.

BUT I was interested to read about the Congo, so that chapter’s worthwhile. And of course I’m happy to read anything about how great Mexico is, even though people are freakishly afraid of it. (Man–I just read some random review of a hotel in Las Cruces, NM, that mentioned the guy had stopped there for the night instead of El Paso, because of the violence in Juarez. Uhhhh, what?!)

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 3: Food

So by now, you’ve all got your March issue of Saveur, and you already know L.A. is a great food town.

They can point out all of the specifics, but the big one for me simply is: in February, you can eat beautiful fruits and vegetables. Yes, they’re eating potatoes and kale out there, just like we are on the East Coast, but they’re doing it in the sunshine, and that makes all the difference. Where we subsist on two varieties of tangerine (the only dose of color in my winter diet), they have about 46.

I had the pleasure of meeting the brains behind A Thinking Stomach, and she arrived with Meyer lemons and a bag of snap peas, like it was no big thing. Snap peas! In February! I’m crying.

In part because of this freshness, and in part because L.A. is like Queens but a million times bigger, we ate amazing food three nights in a row, without even trying.

Moles La Tia, on Cesar Chavez in East L.A., is the kind of place we just don’t have yet in New York–Oaxacan food, a little fancier than you might expect, not dirt cheap and all exceptionally good, right down to the clearly housemade salsa and the slightly funky goat cheese grated on the guacamole. Man. I totally misordered (wound up without any mole), and it was still better than most Mexican we get here. And semi-fancy Mexican–I’ve watched a ton of these places go under, just in Astoria. Breaks my heart.

The next night, we went to Soi 7, downtown, for Thai food. Having just come back from Thailand, I was starving for everything, but slightly skeptical that it would measure up. Again with the misordering–following my suggestions, we wound up with chili-basil everything. But whoa–so good. There were wee sweet scallops in the noodles, and the eggplant is something I’d want to eat for lunch every day. And because we weren’t in New York, we could sit for a full four hours at our table and talk and talk. We got about eight rounds of tea (white, with black fruits–so delicate!).

And on Sunday, I went to a Chicks with Knives dinner. I have spent the last nine years or so throwing dinner parties for fun and very occasional profit. I got a book deal out of it, but I’ve gotten precious few reciprocal dinner invitations. And I’ve never gone to someone else’s supper club. (I was just about to go to Lightbulb Oven, but then she moved to Dallas–kills me!)

So I have fresh appreciation for anyone who has ever made the trek to Sunday Night Dinner, showing up totally cold in the middle of a strange neighborhood. And I’m sorry I couldn’t provide them with the fabulous digs I enjoyed at the Chicks with Knives event. Again, we were downtown–this time in a fabu loft. And the food was fantastic–I love hollandaise on anything, but who knew it would be so delicious on fennel? And I have to start making my own butter, stat.

And I have to start rounding up some more smarty-pants friends. New Yorkers–watch your backs. You think you’re the wittiest, most intellectual folks around, but, no offense, because you don’t have to drive home, you get pretty sloppy drunk by Hour Three and start repeating your jokes.

Which is about the only point in favor of a car culture that I can think of: staying sober enough to drive home leads to far more charming conversation. If you’re not sure how to cope without the sauce, please see the Dinner Party Download.

So we come relatively full circle. And because I have no other photos in this post, here’s a random one, from the cathedral downtown:

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown
Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 2: Weirdness

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 2: Weirdness

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about downtown L.A. It borders on weird, because of the architecture and the schizophrenic quality of it. And everything seems weirder when the sun is blazing down–the balmy weather somehow backfires in L.A., and gives everything a slightly dystopian feel. At least to my grumpy New York eyes. But some things are stranger than others.

That honor is reserved for the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I first read about this place in 1994, in a fabulously disorienting article in Harper’s by Lawrence Weschler; it still stands out as one of the best pieces of art criticism I’ve read. (I will violate all kinds of copyright laws by posting it here, until someone tells me not to. Really, you should read it.) I’ve loved Weschler ever since, and of course hankered to visit the museum.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t recreate Weschler’s experience, of walking into the place cold–I know too much. But I was surprised at just how much the exhibits could pull me in, even though I know their conceit. I spent an hour believing/not believing, and could have spent hours more.

Last fall, I saw David Wilson speak, and he presented a couple of the newer exhibits at the museum. At the time, I fell asleep. But in the context of the museum, with Wilson fully out of the way (behind some curtain somewhere, most likely), the strange Soviet science business and the ponderous films actually all worked together, and I was properly mesmerized.

Alas, I did not have time to enjoy tea and cookies in the salon upstairs. If you go, have some for me.

We also stopped by Watts Towers, which I somehow have never seen. I thought they were bigger. The fact that they’re kind of small makes them all the odder. And I didn’t realize how intricate the metal structures were. Nor that the guy had skipped town and never came back to revisit the place, even when the city got to arguing about the towers’ fate, before he even died.

In other weirdness, I much enjoyed the fact that the counter ladies at the China Cafe in the Grand Central Market (another downtown attraction) all spoke Spanish, and that the bulk-chile-and-beans vendors all seemed to be Chinese.

While I was snapping photos, some guys chatted me up (with the flawless opening line, “Take a picture of this guy–he’s a criminal!”) and made me realize how much I miss hearing the northern Mexican accent in New York. We have Mexicans now, and some of them even live in Astoria, but even they don’t really speak with that same just-over-the-border cadence. Raul and Martin congratulated me for taking the time to slow down and talk to them, even though I was one of those fast-moving New Yorkers. Then I actually had to say, “Gotta go–I hear my mom calling!”

I’ll get into the L.A. food stuff in the next post…

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown

My epiphany, on my most recent trip to Los Angeles: L.A. is like the Queens of California. (San Francisco is the Brooklyn, natch.) As a New Yorker, I am duty-bound to think like this–the world revolves around us!

Queens is spread out, low-rise, disconnected communities with no real center. And it’s bursting with amazing food. Also, New Yorkers hate Queens because it embodies all the horrors of suburbia that they’re trying to escape.

Likewise with Los Angeles. New Yorkers–including my very own husband–hate the place on principle. (In fact, Peter just walked up behind me and saw the title of this post and shouted, “WRONG!” But, but…we live in Queens! We love Queens!)

Humph. I had a great trip! And it was sunny! And there was amazing food!

Some things I appreciated:

Downtown:

I was born in L.A., and I didn’t even know L.A. had a downtown! I guess it wasn’t up to much till very recently, but still. I saw lots of gorgeous old buildings, like the central library, where the murals are outstanding; the Bradbury Building, where the elaborate wrought-iron interior staircases are clearly the work of a deranged mind; and Oviatt’s, likewise deranged with Deco. When Peter’s mom dropped me in front of Oviatt’s to poke around, she advised me, “Sweet-talk your way in.” I suck at sweet-talking, but I did get to poke my in the store-turned-restaurant, where they were setting up for a wedding. Holy woodwork! We also got to leaf through the happy couple’s photo album, which was pretty funny.

But, as Lars von Trier says, you have to take the good with the evil, so there’s also a whole crazy office-park part of downtown, where great slabs of concrete are connected to other slabs by skyways and secret tunnels. Which I got a brief tour of with the guys from The Dinner Party Download (an excellent podcast that I love because I can imagine a world where dinner parties are a common thing, and where people don’t spend all of dinner talking about the food). We got to walk through the Bonaventure Hotel building, which is one of those ridiculous 1970s-vision-of-the-future creations that’s all curves and atriums and external glass elevators.

Aaand, that’s about all the attention span I have for today. More L.A. attractions to come…

Car Insurance in Mexico–My Experience

[NOTE: The insurance details mentioned here apply *only* to people with credit cards issued in the United States, and for bookings made via Hertz’s US website.]

One of the most frequent questions I get from travelers to the Yucatan is “Do I really have to buy all that insurance when I rent a car in Mexico?” In general, base rental rates from international agencies can be cheap–sometimes less than $20 per day–but the full insurance package kicks it up to about $50 per day. And most people’s credit cards ostensibly offer rental car insurance as a perk. But is that adequate?

Here’s my experience, based on more than six years of travel there, and more than a dozen car rentals. All but one trip has been completely incident-free, and on this last trip, in September 2009, I got into a small accident. This was mildly stressful, but it turned out to be a great way to test the system!

Since my first trip in 2003, I have been relying solely on my credit card to provide insurance (initially Visa, but now often American Express–both offer 30 days’ coverage; MasterCard’s 14-day limit is not enough for my trips), as I do when I rent a car in the United States. At first, I was too broke to buy extra insurance, and later, once I knew my way around, I figured it was worth the risk–good roads, reasonable drivers and low crime make the Yucatan a pretty safe place to drive. But I admit, I do breathe a sigh of relief every time I return a car intact.

All but once, I have rented from Hertz, and I have never gotten a heavy upsell on additional insurance. I explain I’m using my credit card’s insurance, and they say no problem. The one time I rented from Budget, I also got no pressure to buy the insurance. Back in 2006 or so, I did compare more rental companies, and I noticed that Hertz was the only international rental company that did not say, when making an online reservation, that additional insurance would be required in Mexico. (I just did a cursory check, and I’m not seeing this anymore, at least with Budget or Avis.)

Then, on this last trip, I finally did get into a small traffic accident, which involved another car. I’m 90 percent certain it was my fault, and I did more damage to the other guy’s car than to mine. No one was hurt. We both pulled over out of the intersection; I called Hertz, and the guy called the police. Hertz said they’d send an insurance adjuster immediately, and a motorcycle cop showed up not long after.

The adjuster took down both cars’ details, took some photos and made both of us drivers sign the forms. I took photos of both cars too, just in case. The cop was very kind to me, and didn’t even write me a ticket–“You should get one, ” he said, “but you’re very sweet.” Politeness (and a lot of hand-wringing and apologizing over and over!) wins the day!

It was incredibly lucky that the accident happened directly in front of the Fiesta Americana hotel in Merida–where there’s a Hertz office! So I just drove my car back across the intersection (very carefully and looking both ways!) and took the insurance adjuster’s form into the Hertz office. They looked over the paperwork, and my contract, and said it was all no problem and that I’d hear how much it would cost in about five days (I had two more weeks of my trip left). I got a new car, and was on my way. The whole process, from crash to new car, took about an hour and a half, and everyone was exceedingly kind and polite.

But enough of the soft info. Here’s the hard data: I called American Express later in the day, to let them know what had happened. Again, no problem–they advised me to fill out an online claim, and they’d sort it all out when I closed the contract on the car. No alarm that I was in Mexico, no worry that I didn’t have more than a doc from the Merida Hertz office (they’d taken the adjuster’s form–though I took a photo for my records) or anything. I was just warned that AmEx would pay only for the damage done to my rental car–the damage I’d done to the other guy’s car was my responsibility.

I was a little worried about this, but I figured in all I’d saved in not paying for insurance over the years, I could definitely pay $500 or so out of pocket, and still come out ahead.

But when I returned the car at the end of my trip, I found out I didn’t need to worry. “Our company’s liability insurance covers the damage to the other guy’s car,” the woman at the desk told me when I checked out. Great!

AmEx had advised me not to let Hertz charge my card for the damage–about $800. But I was unable to convince Hertz of this, so signed off on my rental fee plus the damages. Again following AmEx’s advice, I called up the billing department and asked them to lodge a dispute on $800 of the total Hertz charge–this meant I didn’t have to pay this amount on my next bill.

Then I sat back and waited. I could check the status of my AmEx claim online, and after a few weeks, I saw that Hertz had still not supplied a lot of the documentation. I emailed all the extra photos I’d taken, just in case they were needed, but never even got acknowledgment that they’d been received.

About six weeks later, I received a letter in the mail letting me know the claim had been settled, and the charge had been cleared from my account.

So, the whole process was a breeze, and worked exactly the way it was supposed to. The Hertz woman’s comment about their liability insurance makes me think this may be the difference between Hertz and the other international rental agencies that require extra insurance–perhaps Hertz is the only company that carries its own liability insurance? (I wanted to sit down with a Hertz rep in Cancun and get a straight answer on this, but in the end I wound up with someone else who didn’t speak English well, and I don’t trust my Spanish for these things!)

Another detail, however, before you go running out and not buying insurance in Mexico: No one was hurt in this accident. It is true that in Mexico the police have the right to take you in if it seems you’re at fault (the “guilty until proven innocent” approach). So it is possible that if I had injured the other driver (or perhaps even if there had been a dispute over who was at fault), I would have been taken into police custody and forced to post bail if I wanted out.

At this point, though, I’m not sure whether additional insurance would actually help. Would it pay bail money? I have no idea. Would either the car agency or AmEx provide legal advice in such a situation? I seriously doubt it.

So–I wish I could answer all questions, but at least this provides a little first-hand account of a very satisfactory system (if only health insurance worked so well!). Keep in mind that it may be very specific to Hertz and American Express. If you’re curious about any other details, ask in the comments.

By the way: when you use your credit card’s insurance, the rental agency (Hertz and Budget, in my experience) puts a hold of about $7,000 on your card (that’s for the rinky-dinkiest Dodge Atos). That sounds alarming, but…it’s just a hold, not a real charge. (Though, obviously, you do have to use a card with a decent credit line.) Yes, if the car is totaled, presumably the full $7,000 would get charged to the card. But I assume the procedure would continue as I experienced–you can dispute the charge and wait until the claim is settled.

Also by the way: I do not have car insurance in the United States (because I don’t own a car–not because I’m an outlaw!). Occasionally this is mentioned as another reason to buy additional insurance, but again, I don’t think this has any bearing on the situation in Mexico. (Is it true in the US, though? I have had Enterprise try to upsell me based on that argument.)

[EDIT in 2015: Hertz now posts a notice at its pickup counter in Cancun, warning that if you don’t buy the “supplemental liability insurance,” you may be held in jail after a collision, and may not even be able to get “life-saving medical care.” So that does imply that paying for additional insurance would somehow give you more leverage in case of a really bad accident, unlike the one I was in. Though I’m not sure how that would play out on the ground.

Also, Hertz has given the heavy upsell on insurance to many people I know in recent years. The last time I picked up a car, in December 2014, the only way I could end the conversation was by saying, “But Hertz does have basic liability coverage, yes? I’m fine with that risk.” The question, of course, is how fine you are with that risk.]

Thailand, Digested: Bonus Bug Round

There’s a lot of weird stuff to eat in Asia: dogs, snakes, sketchy-looking eggs. And bugs.

I like food. I’ll taste almost anything. But I refuse to play the macho “what’s the weirdest thing you ever ate” game, and if I’m just not hungry, well…I’m just not hungry.

That’s what happened to Peter and me the day we finally saw bugs for sale. We had just spent several hours grazing heavily at Chatuchak and Or Tor Kor markets. First, we had some strawberries:

Strawberries

Then we had some fried chicken:

Chatuchak Chicken

Then we went to Or Tor Kor and ate all kinds of beautiful fruit. We didn’t have any durian, though, partially because they looked so menacing:

Sneaky Durians

Straight out of a sci-fi film. Imagine the stinky but strangely custardy aliens that would burst forth!

Anyway, we were finally trudging back to the SkyTrain when we passed the cart selling bugs. They were all deep-fried and covered in salt, and you could mix and match about five different varieties. Peter stopped. “Bugs?” he asked, halfheartedly. “Enh,” I answered, weakly. It was 3pm–naptime–and 95 degrees. We kept walking.

“I thought you’d be the one to talk me into it!” Peter said, with a shade of disappointment in his voice.

“Sorry–I’m stuffed,” I sighed. I did feel a little regretful.

Not long after we got home to New York, we invited a few people over for a bonanza Thai dinner. Peter pedaled off to the Thai grocery in the next neighborhood over. He came back with durian chips, dried shrimp, lemongrass, perky little ‘mouse-shit’ chilis…and frozen bugs.

They were labeled “crickets,” but lord help me if I ever see a live cricket that big. These crickets had full-on biceps and quadriceps. Even through the plastic wrap, I could see the texture in their wings.

To make them extra unappealing, they were labeled “fish bait”–to convince the FDA that no nutritional labeling was required. I gulped.

“How do we cook them?” Peter asked.

I told Peter that was his department, and tried to put the whole thing out of my head.

Fast-forward to dinnertime. A crowd of hungry friends is in the living room, eating crispy spring rolls. The fat is still hot in the wok.

“I’m gonna go ahead and cook these,” Peter said to me, “but I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to eat them.”

They sizzled and popped in the frying oil, and came out looking even more creepy and glossy. Peter sprinkled them with salt and sugar and whisked the plate out to the coffee table.


There was a short pause, a collective moment of anxiety, and then our friend Katie shrugged and popped one in her mouth.

“Huh, they’re good,” she said, shrugging again.

Well played, Ms. Trainor. Well played. Now of course we all felt like idiots and had to dig in. I eyeballed mine. His glossy head and torso looked like they would explode with goo when I bit in. I closed my eyes and chomped off the back half of the cricket.

In a single instant, the cricket transformed from horrifying over-large bug to…tasty bar snack. It was crispy and salty and would go great with a beer. And it was nearly hollow–any inner goo had been cooked away in the deep fryer.

As I marveled at the capacity of the human brain to transform everything into food, I chewed. And chewed. And chewed. I started to gag–I could feel the cricket’s hairy little legs scraping around in my mouth. They refused to succumb to my teeth, the bastards. I finally had to spit a nasty wad of gray, gritty stuff out into the trash. I was glad I wasn’t doing this on a Bangkok street.

About this time, I heard Katie–who is known for her ability to eat a chicken leg clean down to the bone–say from the other room, “Oh, yeah–they’re a little better if you pull the legs off first.”

I didn’t try another. But a couple people, including Peter, ate two or three. They were a hit. And now I know: next time I’ll rip the legs off. Because I’m an omnivore with an incredible capacity for rationalizing what I’m eating…but my teeth are not that powerful.

Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 5

Last of the top 5 Thai delights, but certainly not least…

5) Crab omelet and tom yum. We took advantage of one of our fine Bangkok hosts, Jarrett Wrisley. He had treated us splendidly one night, introducing us to excellent people and feeding us Isan-style grilled chicken, an amazing eggplant salad, scrumptious larb, etc., all under a big old tent by an expressway. Heaven. Then he took us out and got us drunk, the Thai way, on a bottle of whiskey and club soda and a splash of Coke. (Well, first there was drunkenness the Thai hipster way, with radioactive-color slushies.)

And then, at the end of the night, he happened to drop the fact that he was having dinner with Rick Bayless the next night. Our eyes bugged out. Rick Bayless, Ambassador of Lard! (Peter and I imagine that he pops up out of nowhere every time we use lard–“Oh, Rick Bayless! Thanks for joining us!”–and he tells us fun facts about it.) Rick Bayless, Mr. Mexico! Seriously, he’s a chef I’m impressed with no end.

So we tagged along when Jarrett met Rick and his family at a restaurant called Raan Jay Fai, and in addition to getting to meet this guy and talk lard facts with him (and it turns out he has read and liked Forking Fantastic!–astounding!), we also got yet another amazing meal.

Raan Jay Fai--Inside

The crab omelet was, as Peter said, the best crab cake ever. Really–that’s how much crab was in it. Decadent. And the tom yum, the hot-sour seafood soup, was so bright and sharp and intense that it just sliced through my brain–and that was before I saw the shrimp in it that was bigger than my fist. (Does that still count as a shrimp?)

And that was also before I admired up close the restaurant’s kitchen: a couple of woks set on top of charcoal fires, in the alley next to the dining room.

Raan Jay Fai

That was our last real dinner in Bangkok. As usual, I wish I’d eaten more. But here’s another remarkable thing about Thai food culture: all the food comes in refreshingly small portions. And because there’s so damn much bounty everywhere, we never felt anxious, like we had to stock up on the tastiness, and so paced ourselves admirably, and managed to eat very moderately the whole time.

Which does me no good now, sitting here in the freezing blandness that is the northeastern United States. Peter and I have cooked a ton of Thai food since we got home, but of course it’s not quite the same. It’s not 95 degrees and humid, and there aren’t hot-pink taxis whizzing past, for one. We’re not eating with spoons, for two. (OK, yes, we are–it still doesn’t help.)

To take the edge off a little, I started reading David Thompson’s massive Thai Food book a little more closely. (Ack! Thai Street Food coming this October!)

In the history chapter, there’s a quote from a Thai ambassador to France in the 17th century. The guy says, “Here are few spices and much meat, and an attraction of quantity replaces piquant wholesomeness.” Oh, snap!

I’ve ranted a little on this blog before about how annoying it is that the French went and made themselves the bosses of the food world. It seems even more ridiculous now.

All that’s getting me through: how soon can I go back?

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***

Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 4

I’m usually a sweet breakfast person. (A wise friend once said: “For breakfast and dessert, you’re totally allowed to stick with your own culture.” This was after she’d had to endure too many nasty Japanese “desserts,” I think.)

But Thailand changed all that. When the food is this amazingly good, why pussy-foot around just because it’s before noon? Bring on the noodles! (It helps that you can get crazy-sweet iced coffee and tea first thing in the a.m., though.)

Which brings us to the next tasty item…

4) Goose. In a culture where there’s not much roasting going on, I was a little leery of going to a Chinese restaurant that served nothing but goose. I could only think of fat and flabby skin. But how can you argue with the man at the Atlanta Hotel who describes it in swooning tones? And who makes the front-desk girl call the restaurant, ask if they still have goose (at 11am–apparently they usually run out before noon), and write down the directions for a cab driver?

Goose Directions

So we go. The cabbie gets frustrated by traffic and lets us out early. We show our piece of paper to various people on the sidewalk. They squint, then their eyes light up with delight. Yes! That goose place! They point enthusiastically down the street. One man even shadows us for a couple of blocks, pointing straight ahead every time we pause and look doubtful.

There are still two geese hanging from hooks when we get there. (Yes, we even have to show the piece of paper to the woman at the restaurant–Are you this? we gesture.) One is chopped up for us, served with its poaching liquid, all star anise-y, and a killer garlic relish. Rice on the side. Cold tea to wash it down. We are content. It is the best breakfast ever.

Goose--Before

As a bonus, on the way back down the street, we pass everyone we’d asked for directions. Did you find it? they gesture. Yes! we gesture back. Two thumbs up! Thank you kindly! They smile.

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***

Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 3

What else did I eat in Thailand? Well…there was a larger category of:

3) Things that looked like other things. Early in our Bangkok visit, we found a little food court setup–a bunch of carts around a huge collection of plastic tables, all set in what looked like a converted parking lot. We foolishly thought, What luck! We’ve wound up near some exceptional street food!

Food Court

That was before we understood that there was a food court like this, oh, every other block?

But one thing they had at this market that I didn’t see anywhere else in quite the same form was…

Faux Taco

…tacos?

No–they were sweet. I had such cognitive dissonance while eating it that I couldn’t figure out what was in it. (This is what I imagine the entire meal at El Bulli is like?) But generous food expert and fellow Lonely Planet writer Austin Bush, who happens to live right around the corner from this particular food court and maintains the excellent Bangkok food map, was able to tell me they’re khanom beuang, “made from a bean-based batter and filled with sweetened egg yolks and dried fruit.” Ah-ha. (Also, he says there is a savory version, with shrimp in. They probably look like waffles or something… Which reminds me, the waffles in Thailand are delicious too!)

Another confusing thing we ate, though not nearly so mind-bending, were these poffertjes.

Coconut Poffertjes

Oh, no–wait. Poffertjes are Dutch mini-pancakes. These were made in the exact same cast-iron trays, but distinctly non-European–the batter was made with coconut milk, and there were scallions sprinkled on top. (And of course no butter on top–I actually heard someone laugh at the idea of cooking with butter while I was in Thailand.)
Certainly the first time I’ve encountered scallions in a sweet context. These were in Chiang Mai, in a totally fabulous market we just happened to walk by–as we were getting very used to doing by that time, and it was only Day 3.

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***

Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 2

Continuing my swooning praise of Thai food culture…

2) “Orange” juice. How can I convey the insane pleasure that comes from slurping up a straw-ful of what you think will be just plain old orange juice…only to discover it is the sweetest, tangiest, most intense tangerine nectar you’ve ever drunk? It was tangerine season–the streets were filled with the things. I’m crying a little just thinking about it. I wish I had drunk more.

And I know it’s bad form to dwell on just how cheap things are when you travel, but…it was only 30 cents. Again, I’m crying.

And I’m sorry I don’t have a photo. It looked just like orange juice. Here’s me with some giant fake fish balls instead. They’re orange too.

Fish Balls

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***