IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT!

It's such a hot night that eveything is sticking: my forarms to the table as I type, my legs to the chair, and my brain to...I'm not sure what, but it's not an enhancer of clear thinking, for sure!

No complaints though. This house has a good cross-breeze, and anyway I like the feeling of sweating out all that's inside from time to time. It's like an ongoing sauna. The trick with the hot weather of course is the traditional wise technique of having a quick shower anytime you are feeling hot or sticky or fed-up or on edge because of the heat. Instantly you get a lovely little shiver as the wet clings to your skin when you step out of the shower. That momentary cooling from evaporation sends the heavy loggy feeling away and refreshes you. And somehow it makes everything manageable, creates an optimism, I find, so that the heat stops being oppressive and becomes just a bath of sensation to move through.

Bicycling helps too. The breeze from pedalling along is surprisingly cooling, so a bicycle rather than walking is the way to get around in the heat.

Had a question today from a friend who'd been told by a Vietnamese friend about a bitter leaf and flower that is around in the fall in Khmer parts of Vietnam, or maybe in Cambodia. I hadn't heard of it, but her question reminded me of the great spice (not herbs, not yet anyway) page by Gernot Katzer. He's exhaustive and quite meticulous. It's a great resource. Bookmark it so you can go to it any time you have a question. This link is to the SE Asia part, but you can move on from there:
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/spice_geo.html#asia_southeast

I went to Shape Note singing this evening (it's once a month in Toronto). What a treat. There's a southern Ontario sing in late August not far from Waterloo in an old Mennonite meeting house, a fab stone building. Before that there's a huge sing in Maine on July 30. These calendars of events that different people keep track of are like different maps laid over the months with their own linkages and contour lines and internal necessities. My map right now involves catching a plane to Kelowna tomorrow so I can visit my aunt Wendy, who is my mother's identical twin. It's always a struggle to decide to go see her, for though my mother has been dead for over thirty years, there's stil a wrench when I see my aunt, a pang and thoughts of how things might be different. And then I am pulled into her present and can let the pangs go, mostly.

The other event, now the fifth annual, but this will be my first time, is the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, in northern Maine. There are two days of conference, designed to help those who want to to learn new skills, and it's followed by the Bread Fair, on Saturday. Dawnthebaker and I are going to drive down, a lovely trip through the Eastern Townships, ten or eleven hours from Toronto in total, at least that's what Google Maps tells me. I would have guessed nine hours or so.

I posted a couple of notes on Facebook about managing the heat. One of them is to get up early, cook something in the early morning, then put it in the frig. That makes supper an easy pleasure, cooked veg dressed as a salad, over cold rice for example. That was supper today (I had new beets, fresh from my CSA delivery and spectacular. The other is the smoothie made of fruit and not much else. Tashi made a raspberry one, adding in some mango that was around. He added just ice and a little honey, no milk product at all. It was a beautiful red. But then I got home and found the red currants, needing to be eaten. SO I cleaned them of stems and blended them to a gorgeous thick puree. I mixed it fity-fifty with the end of Tashi's smoothie, then added some gin.

Now THERE'S a summer drink! wow. Summer pudding is slices of bread that line a bowl, which is then filled iwth raspberries and red currents, covered with bread slices and a weight pressed down on top overnight. It's fab. SO I figure my drink is Summer Pudding Gin. But surely there's a more elegant name waiting to be discovered?

Happy showering and slowing down, everyone!

AND A FOOTNOTE: ANn Bramson had some good ideas about ways to strenthen the Burma book. I have now done those edits and reshapings and I sent the anuscript off yesterday. I've altered the title a little. Now it's:
RIVERS OF FLAVOR: RECIPES AND TRAVEL STORIES FROM BURMA

LOOKING FORWARD...

Still here in lovely Chiang Mai, the eastern hills a lilac blue against the early evening sky, and Doi Sutep looming large and blue to the west. I have some follow-up notes to the last couple of posts:
- My friend Cassandra liked the sound of the Chiang Mai Cosmopolitan (see my end of January posting), but is pre-diabetic, so avoids tonic water. She wrote to tell me that she infuses gin with real (as opposed to fake-flavoured) Earl Grey tea. Sounds like a good idea especially for people who find tonic too sugary. (By the way, Cassandra’s website is www.foodarazzi.com, an ongoing exploration of new ways for diabetics to enjoy food and eating.)
- I have heard from a number of friends who cry that buffer days are what they need, but can’t seem to structure into their busy-ness. Hmmm
- I had a comment from a woman named Bee, who with her partner Jai has a fabulous blog/website called jugalbandi, strongly anchored in South Asian food, but also very wide-ranging, intelligent, and generous. I loved their long exploration of oils and fats, at: http://jugalbandi.info/2010/02/pantry-audit-oils-and-fats/#more-15885

This morning’s trip to my Thai coffee "appointment" at Chiang Mai Gate market took me past a woman selling “miang”, fermented tea leaves, the specialty that Burmese overseas pine for and that they call “laphet” (pronounced lapay’). For five baht she sold me a small bag of olive green moist miang, topped with julienned ginger. She tossed a little coarse salt into a separate bag, to eat with it. I’ve been nibbling on it through the day, and sharing it with Fern, who is northern Thai and loves it.

The miang has a taste almost of sorrel, lemony. This is “miang som” which is pickled (“som” meaning sour). In nothern Thailand there is also “miang wan” meaning sweet. The third one in the family, the word for which I forget, is miang that has fermented a long time, so that it’s stenchy, at least to non-lovers of it. (I think of it as the miang equivalent of lustfiske, the fermented-in-the-ground fish of Sweden, or Limburger cheese or durian fruit: heaven to afficionados and “difficult” for everyone else.)

In Burma, laphet is the essential ingredient in a delicious salad called laphet thoke. The other ingredients vary but usually include fried garlic and peanuts and sesame seeds and soybean halves, as well as chopped fresh tomato and ginger. The ingredients are mixed and blended together, in one presentation, or they may be served in separate piles, so each person can pick up the blend s/he likes. It’s often eaten at the end of a meal, as a refreshing finish.

All of this is to say that I’m hoping to figure out an equivalent. It won’t/can’t be the same, but I would love to get that same mouth-watering acid-lemon taste, together with the lovely crunch of the fried ingredients and freshness of the tomato. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m increasingly thinking about how much recipe work and photo work lies ahead once I get to Toronto. I have at least backed up my photos onto a small hard drive (and I of course still have a film photographer’s reflexes, so I also keep my “originals” in the form of the miniature cards that go into the camera.) Once I’m back in Toronto I’ll do another back-up onto another hard-drive, and then hope that I’ve placated the e-gods sufficiently.

After that of course the images need to be sorted and labelled, the rejects tossed firmly into the trash bin, and the others tidied up. None of this is my favorite thing to do, not at all!

Compared to the computer and techie work on the photos, the recipe work and research feels extremely inviting, a great pile of yummy exploration for spring and summer. Hurrah!

ENGAGING WITH THE NOW AS THE DAY EVOLVES

I woke this morning just at dawn to see the whole Chiang Mai valley aglow. There are mountains in all directions, but they are often invisible in haze of various kinds. Not this morning though, when their finely etched blue outlines carved shapes against the pink radiance of morning. Thrilling. And as I was marvelling, suddenly the orange ball of the sun emerged from behind the eastern ridges, brilliantly aglow.

The lovely impermanence of dawn, its reliability (in my lifetime so far, despite Hume’s leaving us room for doubt) and yet its evanescence, are daily reminders, when I’m up in time, of the imperative to tune in and engage in the present. If I get distracted by a thought or an errand, only for thirty seconds, I risk missing the fine glow of light or the arrival of the sun or whatever else is briefly on offer to my wondering eye. This morning felt like a special treat, laid on as part of the general full moon beauty of the last few days.

Today is a recovery day, a time to breathe and clean up and take stock. The immersethrough tour ended with a delicious leisurely cooking and eating and drinking session last night. Everyone experimented with new ingredients or combinations, and we also made some Issaan (northeast Thai) classics: laap gai Issaan, in two versions (one with pla ra - fermented fish paste, known as padaek in Issaan - and one without); som tam (green papaya salad) in three versions, one northern, one Issaan, and one more to foreigners’ taste, with no crab and no pla ra; and moo nam toke, Issaan-style (grilled pork cut up and dressed with lime juice, fish sauce roasted rice powder, etc.

We also experimented with gin-based cocktails. I know, I know, you purists, we should have been working with lao khao (local rice liquor), but instead we infused a little gin with lime leaves and lemongrass and another small glass of it with chiles, then added spoonfuls of each to plain gin to see how things worked together. There were some delish combos...

Jacob it was who came up with the definitive one, which we agree should be named Chiang Mai Cosmo. This town is inclusive, very cosmopolitan, fun, and classy too, and the cocktail reflects that.

The drink is far from the cranberry, Cointreau, vodka, and lime juice in a martini glass classic Cosmopolitan. It uses about a tablespoon of gin infused with dried red chile (one broken up dried cayenne in a quarter cup of gin, infused for ten minutes or more) and two scant tablespoons of gin infused with wild lime leaf and lemongrass (two stalks of smashed lemongrass and several lime leaves cut in chiffonade, then muddled with about a half-cup of gin). Make a gin and tonic in a chilled glass with plain gin plus the infused flavours, pouring it over ice, stir, then add a splash of blended whiskey. (To keep the flavours clean and clear, remove the ice after a minute or less.) That’s it, a mild whiskey entry followed by aromatics and then the intensities of tonic, gin, and chile heat.

Now I am already missing the group, the energy of all of us together as well as the personality of each person. I guess people who do regular tours learn to hold back and not engage as intensely. But I do this only once a year (though I’d like to try to do two sessions next Jan-Feb) with a small group of like-minded people who come to Chiang Mai and north to Fang because they want to be immersed. And so it’s hard not to get intensely involved in squeezing the most fun and information and experience out of each day.

No wonder I’m feeling a little tired and languid today!

Tomorrow I have a flight directly to Yangon/Rangoon, a new service twice a week operated by Air Bagan. “My bags are packed, I’m ready to go” says the song, but in fact I still have a little sorting to do. I want to have only one small pack as well as my backpack-style camera bag. The temperatures this coming week in Mandalay drop to 11 Centigrade with highs of 30, so I’ll be working with layers! The lows are even lower in Hspipaw and other more hilly places further north.

I hope to be in Burma for three weeks, mostly in the Northern Shan States is my plan right now, returning February 21.

I’m pleased to be able to go back. We made some delicious clean-tasting Shan dishes up north at Fern’s farm in the Fang area this week. And we also figured out, with lots of help, how to make tua nao the disks of fermented soybeans that provide the flavour base for much Shan cooking, as well as some northern Thai dishes. Of course we had to experiment with different flavourings, pounding them into the soybean mash. The flattened sun-dried disks that we made were delicious, and interesting too because tua nao are a vegetarian source of deep umame flavour. I’m hoping to learn more about Shan cooking, in all its lovely variety, on this trip. And as with earlier trips, I’m asking you to wish me luck!


POSTSCRIPT: It was impossible to post here last fall when I was in Burma, and I assume there will be the same problems with internet access this trip, so I will probably not be posting again until Febrary 22 or so...