Seat of Our Pants » food

Not What We Thought We’d Have to Fear

Martin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:48:04 +0000

I think food is half the journey. I love trying new things, experiencing new flavors and making mental notes on how I’ll enrich my cooking once I come home. There’s also that element of fear involved: will my stomach be able to handle this stuff? Are deep-fried bamboo worms really safe to eat?

Coming back, we supposed that the stomach adventure was over. Food safety standards and pasteurized products would keep us safe from Delhi belly and the Rangoon two-step. Imagine our surprise when we realized that we had a hard time digesting American restaurant food. All those processed items like fluffy white bread, sausages, cheese and god knows what they do to meat over here – almost ended up making us sick.

Thankfully, our friends have been treating us to home-cooked food, made with love and good produce. Meanwhile, I’m not sure if I want to eat a cream cheese bagel or have a Starbucks latte ever again. Funny how things work out sometimes.

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Kachapuri Acharuli: Wow

Martin — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:52:29 +0000

This is what qualifies as a light meal in Georgia: ten thousand calories of carbs, fat and pure deliciousness. The crust is actually a rich cheese pie that has been molded into a boat. Then, an egg is left to set gently inside the boat. A generous helping of real butter is then added to the dish, to give it that extra wholesomeness (that’s right, those whitish lumps are butter, not cheese). It is the unofficial national dish of this country, and oh boy is it ever rich.

I can’t say that I see a future for this dish for people who are on a diet, but it sure goes down well with a bottle of red wine and a Black Sea sunset.

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Travel Dining: A Tale of Wanting What I Can’t Have

Jaime — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:52:21 +0000

I love food. It’s as simple as that. Catch me a few hours after a good meal and I’ll most likely be thinking about my next meal. It’s a habit that becomes heightened when traveling. Sure, it’s great to see pretty things, explore soaring mountains or wile away on an island beach. If I were honest, though, I feel most in touch with local traditions when I’m eating the local cuisine.

A bit of Dosa in Kolkata strengthened my sense of India. A mouthful of Momos in Nepal broadened my understanding of mountain life. A spicy Vietnamese Pho helped me understand what street food was all about. The list goes on and on.

There is irony in this situation, though. It doesn’t happen right away, but I often find myself longing for food I can’t have. When I’m in Thailand, I want some Nepali food. When in Sweden I’m longing for Mexican food. Perhaps I’m just used to variety. I’m American after all. We don’t have a national cuisine, but we do have food from almost everywhere else. It’s that variety, those options that I start to miss after eating my 20^th plate of the same local cuisine.

Turkish cheese store

Take the delicious cheese that we’ve been eating in Turkey and Georgia as an example. Two months ago we couldn’t stop talking about cheese. We had long, detailed discussions about whether or not cheese is the best food ever made. We were in India at the time, where you can’t find the type of cheese that we were craving. We flew from there to Sweden, where we could finally get our fill of cheese. We left happily satisfied, flew to Turkey to find that it has some epic cheese options too. Yay for more cheese!

Two weeks have passed and the enthusiasm is gone. Because we’re traveling on the cheap here, we eat out only once a day. The other two meals are made up of things we can find locally – mostly bread, cheese and the odd piece of fruit. This makes for a lot of cheese eating.

We came across this gorgeous cheese shop in the northeastern town of Kars. Out of respect for big beautiful rounds of cheese we bought some. It was divine cheese for sure but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t get Indian food out of my mind.

Kolkata fast food - mmm mmm good!

Such is eating on the road. A long story of amazing food, followed by selfish bouts of wanting what I can’t have.

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Eating on the Road: An Adventure of Loss and Gain

Jaime — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:31:29 +0000

“I’m really fat right now!” Martin declared, out of the blue.

This honest expletive was made last night during our evening sauna. Grabbing a little (microscopic, really) bulge on his stomach, he looked up at me in a slight state of shock. Having been a life-long skinny guy, this new addition was a bit of a wonder to him. I had to laugh. He obviously isn’t fat – but fatter, yes. Just a little.

The most likely cause? Swedish food. Northern Swedish food, to be more exact. These people eat as if they’re still out tilling the farm. Top on their menu is butter, followed closely by beef, potatoes, and bread, all of which is smothered in more butter. I’m not knocking it – it’s heavenly – but it’s just so different from what we’ve been eating and therein lies the issue.

Swedish sausage (aka the irresistible devil in plastic)

While in Sweden we’ve been catching up on our meat eating, feeling we deserved it. We flew here from India – the land of rice, lentils and chickpeas – where we had a mostly vegetarian diet. Sure, we ate meat from time to time, but only when Martin declared that he would most likely perish if he didn’t eat animal protein that instant (which resulted in some seriously yucky eating at times). Eating vegetarian is what you do in India, just as eating meat is what you do in northern Sweden. So, we went from vegetarianism to meat-eatering in the course of a flight. Did that make us sick? No. Did our bodies send us a little “woah, lets just store a little bit of that meat in your fat cells” bulge. Yes, yes they did.

Bangkok street food vendor

This isn’t the first time we’ve made a major dietary change on this trip, either. We jumped from five months of delicious SE Asian food (does it get any better than the street food in Bangkok?), to four months of veggie-filled Indian/Nepali food. Then it was onto a month of meat-eating in Myanmar and then back for a month of Indian vegetarianism. All this change, packed into a year.

I’m not sure how I feel about it, now that Martin’s comment got me thinking. Where do you draw the line while on the road? Traveling is about experience, right? Food is huge part of that experience for us – but to what extent do we let it go? A little bulge or a little loss from time to time is one thing, but what about the long-term effects of our radically changing diet? Have we thought about that? No, not really. Just as with most things about this trip of ours, we’ve been living in the moment. Is that a bad decision? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, it’s time to start planning how to get rid of the 10 lbs (or what I call the Swedish curse) that we always gain here.

What do you think? Is living the food experience worth more than the (possible) long term effects of a dietary roller coaster?

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Palt: Yummy, Simple and Very Filling

Martin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:43:55 +0000

Back in the olden days, when people worked the fields and forests, food in this cold part of the world was made to be rich, stodgy and VERY high in calories. Nowadays people probably don’t have to work that hard anymore, but it is still cold. Hence, it can be good to know how to make some seriously hearty stuff to keep the cold at bay and your body warm from the toes on up.

Here’s the recepie for Palt – a renowned northern specialty. It is especially claimed by the people in Pitea, where they fill their palt with raw pork and boil it for an hour. This is how we make it here in the Kalix area. Every town has its local variety, and of course ours is the best!

Palt a la Sangis, Serves 4.

Ingredients:

8 medium/large raw, peeled potatoes.

~6 deciliters of wheat flour

1.5 tsp salt

2.5 hectograms of salted pork, diced and fried separately in a skillet.

Crush or finely shred potatoes. Stir in salt and flour and mix into a batter. You should add enough flour that the spoon can stand up by itself without falling over. No more, or the Palt will become too compact. Less, and it will break apart when you cook it.

Bring a spacious pot of salted water to a boil, like you would for pasta.

Shape the batter into a half ball, about the size of a small-ish fist. Add a spoonful of fried pork and close the ball into a neat package. Gently add the balls to the boiling water. Lightly boil for 30 minutes.

Serve HOT with a dollop of real butter and Lingonsylt (substitute with cranberries if you can’t find Lingon).

The Usual End Result from Palt Overeating, the Dreaded Palt Coma

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Baking Bread Sangis Style

Jaime — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:19:13 +0000

I stand corrected! Can you believe it?

The baking house, in which we baked a boat-load of bread last summer (check out our video of it here), is not a Swedish tradition – it’s only a tradition in this area of Sweden. So, as I said, I stand corrected. I guess it’s just these silly northerners who bake wonderfully delicious bread in communal baking houses.

We hit up the baking house yet again, this time with my mom in tote. It was a full day affair, filled with laughter, sweat, cussing and bread eating feasts. Though it’s a fantastic thing to do with the family, the tradition is slowly dying. Baking houses in the region sit empty most of the year – used only sparingly when, for example, some hare-brained foreigner wants to painstakingly bake bread that can be cheaply bought at the store down the road.

Rest easy, lonely Sangis baking house – this hare-brain will be there – sweating, cussing and baking lovely bread every time I visit.

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Paskmust – THE Easter Drink

Jaime — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 09:22:48 +0000

Palates are refined in youth. If you grew up eating or drinking something, chances are you’ll tie it to your childhood and not see it for what it really is. I’ll use the Swedish Easter drink, Paskmust, as an example. I find it repulsive. It smells like alcohol but it’s a children’s drink. It contains weird ingredients like hops and barley, but it’s a soft drink.

Yuck.

Despite my very legitimate arguments against it, the Swedes love it. They’ve been drinking it every Easter (and Christmas) since they were kids and can’t see that it actually doesn’t taste that good.

Martin tells me that he feels the same way about peanut butter but he’s obviously lost his mind. What’s not to love about peanuts mixed with sugar? Come now Martin, where would the world be without peanut and butter sandwiches?

A very dark place, I think. Very dark, indeed.

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How to Make Delicious Swedish Meatballs

Martin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:23:08 +0000

For some reason, a lot of Americans associate us Swedes with . . . no, not IKEA, ABBA or boxy cars, but with meatballs. Rightly so – we make a simple but delicious variety of the meatball – a staple of many cuisines around the world but perfected here. Here’s how my Mom makes them:

(This batch will feed 6-8 people. If you make too much, they are excellent to freeze and enjoy on another day)

Ingredients:

800g minced beef

3tbsp oats

2dl whole milk

1 egg

2tbsp mustard (preferably a good, strong sort – like the Dijon mustard)

2tbsp potato starch (important, or the meatballs won’t stay balls when you fry them)

1 large onion, chopped and fried golden-brown

Salt and black pepper to taste

a pinch of Oregano

Butter (for frying)

Put the oats in a large bowl and pour in the milk. Let it sit for five minutes while you chop and gently fry the onions in butter. Mix the onions along with the other ingredients in the bowl and let it rest in the fridge for one hour.

Bring the bowl out and mix the content again: do not overdo this, or the fat in the meat will stick to the edges of the bowl, making the meatballs crumble when you fry them.

It’s time to roll the meatballs. Wet your hands in cool water: this will keep the meat from sticking to your hands (keep a vessel of water handy so that you can re-apply water in between rolls). Grab a pinch of the mix and roll a Swedish-meatball sized meatball: approx. 2 centimeters across. Keep rolling til you have used up all the mix.

Fry the meatballs in butter over medium heat. Don’t overcrowd the frying pan, and do not stir the balls too much – you want to keep the fragile little things as intact as possible. The meatballs are done once they turn into a dark, delicious-looking brown (but not burned!).

Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley and serve with potatoes, green pepper gravy and Swedish Lingonsylt (available at, erm, IKEA; or use cranberry jam). Enjoy!

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SeatOfOurPants Thailand Roundup

Jaime — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:19:13 +0000

Most people come to Thailand for the amazing beaches. While I’m sure they’re amazing, we’re not really beach people. Our interests lie more in eating and Thailand gave us ample opportunity to do just that. We’ve been all over southeast Asia and we’ll let you in on a little secret: Thailand is SE Asia’s premier dining country. No contest.

It’s also a very traveler friendly place, making it an obvious favorite for sun-seeking tourists from all over the world. Generally we like ourselves some off-the-beaten-track tourism, but when push comes to shove, being in Thailand is just plain nice.

Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions about traveling there. Between the two of us we’ve been through through Thailand fifteen times so we’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Otherwise, you can check out some of our favorite posts from our time in Thailand here:

Say What?

A Thai woman gives us an example of how tonal the Thai language is.

I Chef, You Chef, We All Chef

A rundown of our cooking class in Chiang Mai, complete with a delicious recipe

Tiger Temple

A Buddhist monastery where the main attraction are killers. But have no fear! They have somehow been subdued enough for you to pet them. Strange, amazing and true!

Bacon Does Bangkok

Our porcine friend gets a little too excited to be in the Land of a Million Smiles. (He misunderstood it to mean the Land of a Million Shots).

A Day in the Life of a Bangkok Eater

Our guide on how to eat your way through a day in Bangkok without ever stepping into a restaurant.

Ayutthaya Again

A post that sums up why we booked an extra day in Thailand en route to Myanmar – food, food, food.

Where…

View Seatofourpants.com Thailand tour in a larger map

When….

2009

Bangkok: April 29 – May 5

Kanchanaburi: May 5 – 7

Koh Phagnan: May 7 -13

Bangkok: May 13 – 15

Chang Mai: May 15 – 19

Ayuttaya: May 19 – 20

2010

Bangkok: January 21 – 27, 2010

Ayutthaya: January 27 – 28, 2010

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Michael Fast Food

Jaime — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:18:57 +0000

Wait, what?

As seen on the dusty streets of Guwahati, Assam in northeast India.

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