Two Jade Bowls

I spent a month in Thailand during my holiday for the Chinese New Year.

I fell in love with Issan street food carts.  Issan is a northeast region of Thailand, bordering Cambodia.  The weather is super-hot, so the cuisine is based on salads and refreshing lime and chile flavor profiles.

This is one the most famous Issan dishes, the green papaya salad.  It has a lime-chili salad dressing, and is garnished with peanuts.

This Issan lunch cart on Koh Tao island made phenomenal food.  It’s where the locals in the neighborhood came to eat.

This green papaya salad on Koh Tao had a good dose of shredded carrots.

Molly’s green papaya salad was so delicious that she wanted to inhale it.

I read this e-book guide about eating vegetarian food in Thailand, and learned about gaang aom, a phenomenal Issan soup made from pumpkin, mushrooms, baby green eggplants, and leafy greens.  I absolutely fell in love with this refreshing, restorative soup, and ate it for several lunches in Thailand.

These are the baby green eggplants that are used for the gaang aom soup, as well as a myriad of other Thai dishes.

Another amazing bowl of gaang aom soup.

I was in love with gaang aom soup!  It’s served sticky rice, which you can dip into the soup.

This mushroom soup is similar to the gaang aom soup, but has fewer greens.

Fermented bamboo salad, garnished with mint leaves.  It has a chili-lime dressing, and a tiny bit of ground toasted rice for texture.

Shredded bamboo in the vegetable market.

Enjoyed Issan lunches with friends Molly and Andrew.

Friends Molly and Andrew are tucking into mushroom soup and green papaya salad.

Another Issan lunch cart.

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