Bee Larvae, Roasted in Honey Comb

There’s a lady at my site who runs a little store right next to her house, which is right down the street from mine. I go there pretty often, and every once in a while she and her family are eating something out front. One day, I walked down to her store and saw her eating outside, so I asked her what she was having. “Baby bees,” she said. Then she asked if I wanted to try it. It turned out to be a big chunk of honey comb with the larvae still in it. She had sprinkled fish sauce over the top of it and roasted it over a grill. It was great. The saltiness from the fish sauce mixed really well with the sweetness from the roasted honey, which, along with the bees, gave it all a really gooey texture. I couldn’t feel any stingers in my mouth, so I’m guessing the larvae were still pretty young. Like everyone does with most foods in northern Thailand, she was eating it with sticky rice, which I thought fit the texture pretty well. Since I’ve never seen anyone eat bee larvae before, I’m guessing this is kind of a delicacy in Thailand, but she definitely knew how to cook it. This is one dish I’d really like to try out on my own – even if it doesn’t have bees in it.

Black Ivory Coffee

 

About 10 years ago, a man named Blake Dinkin set out from his home in Canada to find a country with the resources to let him realize his vision of making the best cup of coffee in the world. There are many things to take into account when you try to produce a good cup of coffee: the strain of beans, rainfall, temperature, etc., but there’s one thing that Dinkin thought of that never occurs to most coffee producers: what if the coffee beans are crapped out by elephants before you roast them?

After years of research, Dinkin decided to form a partnership with the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF) in Chiang Rai, Thailand. GTAEF rescues elephants from captivity – often from life as performers on the street – and rehabilitates them. According to Dinkin’s website, elephants eat coffee beans naturally, and it takes about 33 kilos of fresh beans to make 1 kilo of usable beans, post-elephant. In a video on the site, Dinkin explains that a long digestion time – 15 to 70 hours – allows an elephant’s body to break down the proteins in the beans, which leaves them less bitter-tasting than normal, and allows for fermentation, which helps bring out the sugar in the beans. “The taste is going to be chocolate, malt, cherry, a little bit of grass,” Dinkin says in a video promoting Black Ivory, “and you’re not going to have any of the bitter after-taste of coffee.” Due to the long production process, the high wages that Dinkin pays to his workers, and the fact that he donates 8% of the earnings to GTAEF, Black Ivory Coffee is some of the most expensive coffee in the world – in Thailand, it costs 1,500 baht (roughly $50) per pot.

I tried Black Ivory Coffee at a resort in Chaing Mai (it’s only sold at resorts, 5-star hotels and other fancy places), and because it costs so much I split a pot with a few of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. The coffee is brewed in an 1840s French-style syphon coffee brewer. It’s pretty much two small pots connected by a metal pipe at the top. Water is poured into one, and the ground beans are poured into the other. After a burner is turned on under the water until it boils, the steam flows through the pipe into the other pot, soaks up the taste of coffee and elephant from the ground beans, then gets sucked back into the first pot when the burner is turned off. It’s quite a show. To me, the coffee tasted pretty unique. When it was hot, it had a kind of nutty taste to it, though I thought it was still a little bit bitter. As it cooled down, it became more and more sugary-sweet. I, however, am not at all a coffee expert.

A friend of mine who went with me, Spook Edwards, has much more experience drinking different varieties of coffee than I do. She described Black Ivory coffee like this:

“Uniquely aromatic with a fruity bouquet, Black Ivory has a multi-layered taste that is simultaneously floral and robust. Its particular processing removes the tannic flavonoids, resulting in a light, non-citric brew without a trace of bitterness, well balanced between the sweet and earthy realms, with notes of chocolate and the forest; a rich and complex flavor that words cannot do justice.”

Before we all left the resort, she bought another pack of Black Ivory beans to brew at home.

Even though it’s pretty expensive, I would highly recommend Black Ivory Coffee, at least once, for anyone who likes coffee, elephants, or interesting things to drink. Taste the elephant.

Raw Pork, Water Buffalo, and Beef

One day about 2 months ago I sat down to lunch with everyone at the office, and a couple of minutes later the Chief of Staff sat down next to me. He gave me a shocked look and asked, “You eat that?” pointing to a small bowl of Laap (ลาบ) I had just dipped my sticky rice into. Laap is one of my favorite Thai dishes. There are a few kinds of Laap, which almost all have ground meat (usually either pork, water buffalo, or beef), chilies, mint and fish sauce, and then any number of other ingredients, depending on who’s making it and where you are in the country: lemon grass, lime juice, onion, garlic, green onion, shallots, cilantro, blood, ground roasted rice, soy sauce, and so on. The bowl we were all eating that day, like a lot of the Laap you see in northern Thailand, was raw. “I never eat it like this,” the Chief of Staff said, pointing to the red meat highlighted here and there with green mint and cilantro. It looked like raw Laap always does – Christmas, but bloodier. “There are diseases you can get from raw meat that make you go blind,” he said.

 

He was right. According to the websites of the CDC and the Mayo Clinic, raw meat can give you food poisoning, E coli (which can kill you), toxoplasmosis (which can cause blindness or brain damage in children who get it in the womb), trichinosis (which can kill you), salmonella, and lots of other great things. Thais have been eating Laap – cooked and raw – for most likely hundreds of years. But why do they still eat it, now that we know what kind of damage raw meat can do to you?

 

Because it tastes freaking amazing, that’s why, and because it tastes a bit different raw than it does cooked. When it’s cooked the taste of the meat comes through a bit stronger, but when it’s raw the herbs and spices take center stage. The mix of… say… mint, cilantro, lime juice, fish sauce and lemon grass is something to behold. I can’t say I’d necessarily recommend it, because, you know, death and stuff… but I definitely eat it myself.

Around The Office

When I first got to my village, I ate almost all of my lunches at the local Subdistrict Administrative Office. I’m also currently living in one of the rooms of the office guesthouse. Here’s a list of the more interesting things I’ve eaten at the office or woken up to on the office grounds.

Frog sauce

The first lunch I remember having at the office was like all lunches at the office – everyone brings their own rice to eat and a sauce or soup to share with everyone else; except that in this case one of the sauces had frog meat and skin in it. I didn’t want to just jump in and hog it all, but I was pretty excited about eating frog. I ended up only eating a couple bites of it, since the bowl of sauce was pretty small and there were four or five of us eating together. As with a lot of foods in a sauce or soup in Thailand, all of the taste came from the spices and herbs in it. I remember it having a kind of peppery taste. The meat was pretty tender, and the skin (green with black spots) was almost papery – thin and slightly stiff.

Red ants and ant eggs

I haven’t seen people eat red ants or ant eggs too often in Thailand, which seems weird to me, because they’re all over the place. I’m not sure if it’s the kind of thing everyone would rather buy than catch themselves, since the ants bite, but I’ve never seen anyone trying to find them on their own. One of my coworkers in the office, however, brought in a sauce with the ants and eggs in it one day. Red ants where I live are around a centimeter long, and the eggs were about the same size. A few months later I got to see some raw eggs, and they were a bit smaller, so I think the eggs in that sauce had soaked up a lot of water. Neither the ants nor the eggs had much taste to them, and it was kind of hard to tell that I was even eating ants. They were smaller than the pieces of onion and other vegetables in the sauce, and surprisingly enough, didn’t have much texture to them. The eggs were easy to feel, though. They were soft and kind of slimy feeling in the sauce, like wet, very water-logged beans.

Mystery meat

Out of all the things my coworkers have let me try (fried stingerless wasps, frog meat, ants with ant eggs, etc.) this was the only thing they gave me and refused to tell me the name of until after I had tasted it. We were all at a coworker’s house having lunch. A friend of mine got a call, got really excited, went outside, and came back with a small bag of… something I couldn’t catch a glimpse of. He walked straight into the kitchen and came out about 10 minutes later with a small bowl full of small slices of something tube-like that was big enough that I guessed it might be something like cow or water buffalo intestine. Everyone urged me to grab a piece, without telling me what I was about to eat. So I did. It was pretty good – a little bit rubbery, but not as rubbery as internal organs usually are, and it had a nice, beefy taste. My only complaint about it is that it was a little over-salted. After I had chewed it up and swallowed it and told everyone I liked it, they finally told me what it was – cow udder.

Fried frogs

The next time I had frog, I was having lunch with everyone from the office at a different coworker’s house. Mats were laid out on the floor and we all gathered around and ate fried fish and sticky rice, dipping it in the various sauces people had made. After about half an hour, someone walked out of the kitchen with a wooden bowl full of little frogs that looked like they had been frozen stiff half-way through a dance, like ballerinas; crunchy little ballerinas. They were all about an inch and a half long with their legs straightened out, and had been gutted and fried, whole: meat, bones, skin – everything but whatever innards could be scooped out by hand. I’m assuming the legs hardened in whatever position they were in when the frogs were thrown into a wok full of hot oil, and I’m hoping they were dead before it happened. I didn’t ask.

They were pretty hard. I worried a little bit about how my body would handle all those little bones, but that was months ago and so far, so good. They tasted pretty fishy, so I’m guessing they were fried in the oil left over from the fish. I’m not a huge fan of fish, so I only ate 2 of the frogs, but I’d like to try them again without the fishy taste.

Black Scorpion

I didn’t have my camera with me when I ate a black scorpion, so here’s a picture of one i found on my back porch one day. It looks almost the same as the one I ate.

There are streets in Bangkok lined with tattoo shops and bars and other random places catering to foreigners, where there are folks who walk around selling bracelets with hilariously dirty things written on them in English, hilltribe clothing and instruments, and huge black scorpions that have been skewered and roasted over a fire.

Huge scorpions are pretty much big bugs. The ones I saw in Bangkok had their stingers taken off (although I asked a couple of guys who work at the mayor’s office at my site who told me they’ve eaten scorpions with the stingers still on before). The exoskeletons are pretty hard – just slightly softer than a lobster shell, I would say. Just like the bugs I’ve eaten before, this scorpion was covered in a tangy sauce. The legs, claws and tail were really hard and tasted pretty good. The body was not as hard and not as good; kind of like a small, leathery bag full of sawdust. This was definitely worth trying once, but I’m not sure I’d want to eat one again.

Pig Brain Soup

As it turns out, Thais don’t really eat animal brains – or at least, not as far as I can tell. I’ve never seen brains in Thai restaurants, but you can find them in foreign restaurants – mostly in Bangkok. There is one hole-in-the-wall restaurant that I found, however, that sells pig brain soup. I read about it online before I tried to find it, and what I read said that the lady who runs the place is from China. For anyone in Thailand who might like to find it, it’s on Phraeng Phuton Road, which is a small side street off of Tanon Atsadang, near the old Bangkok City Hall. The awesome thing about this restaurant is that they don’t sell anything but plain rice, tea, and pig brain soup. You can order the soup without pig brains, but it’s made in pig brain broth, so that would be kind of pointless.

The restaurant, which doesn’t have a sign out front and whose name I couldn’t find, is a breakfast place, open from 7 in the morning until about 2 in the afternoon. I got there around 11:30, and if I go again I’d like to go earlier so that I can see what pig brain really feels like. What I had felt pretty soft, but I’ve heard that brains are pretty tough and rubbery. I think mine must have been simmering for hours.

It tasted pretty good. The brains were cut up into small chunks, and for some reason they were slightly saltier than the rest of the soup. The broth tasted like Thai noodle soup with some added spices. I told the lady who owns the restaurant to put everything in it, so it came with squid tentacles, tofu, and something pink that tasted like fish (along with the usual cilantro, crushed up chili, and fish sauce that you would see in Thai noodle soup). And, of course, part of a pig’s brain. I could feel an ever-so-slight rubberiness to it, but it kind of fell apart in my mouth, so I really can’t say that much about it, in terms of mouthfeel. Even without getting the feel of it, though, you can tell it’s pretty good, because the restaurant stays afloat by selling pretty much nothing else. It’s well worth a try.

Chicken Blood

Out of all the Thai foods that you’d never see in the U.S., I think congealed chicken blood is my favorite. Some people say it’s just blood, and some people say it’s a mix of blood and milk. Either way, it’s dark gray and feels a little bit like Jello with really small bubbles in it, but it holds its shape and doesn’t fall apart like Jello does. It has a slightly slimy feel in the mouth most of the time, because the surface is usually wet – it’s almost always in some kind of soup. From the way it looks in a dish, I’d guess that folks buy a small block of it and cut it up into smaller chunks.

The reason I like chicken blood so much is that it soaks up the taste of whatever you put it in. It’s kind of like mushrooms that way – it’s like a strong burst of flavor in the middle of a sauce or soup or something like that. So if you’re making noodles or a soup and want to give it a little kick, go with congealed chicken blood.

I did have chicken blood that wasn’t so great once, though. That time it tasted a little too much like iron, and I was pretty aware that I had a mouthful of blood. Every other time, though, it’s been really good. If you ever run across it, I’d highly recommend it.

Intestines

I know what you’re thinking: don’t pig intestines taste like pig crap? Don’t chicken intestines taste like chicken crap? Don’t cow intestines taste like cow crap? They could, but luckily Thais are pretty careful about what they do and don’t put in their mouths, so intestines here are cleaned out pretty well before they’re cooked. So far I’ve had chicken intestines twice and pig intestines three times. One thing that I can tell you matters a lot is cooking method.

The first time I had pig intestines, they were large intestines and they were boiled. No sauce, no spices, no salt – just pig guts. Needless to say, they were pretty bland. The second time I had pig intestines, they were boiled large intestines again, but this time they were sliced up and thrown in a salad with lime juice, cilantro, onion, and a few other things that I can’t remember now. They were pretty good – mostly because of everything else in the salad. Both times they felt a little rubbery, the way all internal organs do. The third time I had pig intestines they were small intestines covered in a kind of barbeque sauce and grilled. They were really good. The sauce made all the difference. Grilling them made them a little bit tougher and drier than they would have been if they had been boiled, but they were still good. I should say, though, that was the only time I’ve had pig intestines that still had that connective tissue still stuck to them. That stuff feels squishy and weird to me. It’s like the fat in a thick slice of bacon that’s been boiled. I’m not a fan.

The first time I had chicken intestines, I think they were large intestines cut up into inch-long chunks and boiled in a curry sauce. They were pretty soft and tasted exactly like the rest of the curry, which was really good. The second time I had chicken intestines, they were small intestines that were skewered and grilled with some spices that I couldn’t put my finger on exactly. They were great. I ate them with some plain sticky rice. They had the same connective tissue stuck to them that the grilled pig intestines I ate had, but I couldn’t feel it as much on the chicken intestines – most likely because they were so small. Overall, I’d give intestines a thumbs up, and I’d say go for grilled over boiled.

Fried Bugs

One thing I think every Peace Corps Thailand volunteer ends up eating sooner or later is fried bugs. You don’t see them every day, but going 2 years here without eating any almost can’t be done. So far, I’ve had some kind of tree beetle, tree beetle larvae, some kind of Lepidoptera-thing that looks like a big, stingerless red wasp, and locusts. All fried. They were all a mix of crunchy and chewy from the frying. Usually, the legs are crunchier and the exoskeletons are chewier. I think I’m a bigger fan of the crunchiness than the chewiness. But it would be bad manners to tear the legs off and not eat the bodies.

The first fried bugs I had were tree beetles and tree beetle larvae at a fair. They were all fried in the same sauce, which was really good. I’m not sure what was in it, but it was savory and kind of tangy. Good stuff. The big differences between the beetles and the larvae were the textures – beetles are crunchier, larvae are chewier – and the innards. You can’t really feel any internal organs in these things. They’re too small, and they’re fried, so everything pretty much turns into soup in there anyway. But, for some reason, their exoskeletons kept the sauce from seeping inside them, which wasn’t what seemed to happen with the wasps or the locusts I had a couple of months later. The tree beetle larvae were kind of like sawdust pills covered in a tasty sauce. They were really good for about 5 seconds, then sawdust for about 5 seconds. The tree beetles tasted a little better, though. I think they soak up more of the sauce for some reason.

The wasps were fried up by a guy I work with. A lot of us were eating outside, and there just so happened to be a lot of them flying around, so he caught 20 or 30 of them and cooked them. They were pretty good. It was kind of the same deal that you get with fried tree beetles and tree beetle larvae – fried in a tangy sauce. The big difference here is that you’re supposed to pluck the wings off first, which can get a little messy, because they fall apart all over your fingers pretty easily. But once that was done, the wasps themselves were pretty good. They tasted like the sauce got through their exoskeletons a lot easier than the other sauce that was used on the tree beetles and larvae did. And, of course, they were pretty crunchy.

The last kind of fried bug I’ve eaten so far is locusts. My site has a weekly market of mostly snacks and clothes, which is where I found them. They were a lot like the wasps: fried in a tasty sauce that gets into the innards really well. And you need to pluck off the wings first. I think locusts are my favorite kind of fried bug so far, because of the crunchiness of the legs, how the innards soak up the sauce they’re fried in, and in this case, because the sauce was so good. The taste made me think of some kind of cracker I’ve had before, but I couldn’t remember which brand.

Hopefully I’ll be adding a lot more to this post over the next 2 years. Thais fry up a lot of different kinds of bugs, and I want to try as many as I can. So far, the ones I’ve had have been pretty good.