I do not really want to call it ‘Thai food’, because I am not sure whether it was really Thai or just Thai style. But nevertheless, the following pictures and lines will give you information about my food adventure in Asia.
First of all: there is a lot to eat. Food stalls are an important part in markets and you have a big choice of sweet and savoury stuff. We tried a lot of things and I will tell you about them all in a second. Please excuse I did not take pictures of the food buffet we got in the camp, I can give you a short description about that. We always had boiled rice as a main component, some dishes contained noodles. There were always several dishes with stir-fried vegetables, such as cabbage, carrots and corn. There were different kinds of tofu or fried protein stuff used (the people did not know enough English to explain to us, what exactly it was) and also fried eggs. As a dessert, we always had fresh fruit, which was great, because thai pineapple and melon was reaaaaallllyyyyyyyy gooood. I miss that here. For real. Breakfast mostly contained fried stuff like bread or bananas, sometimes we had pancakes. Not bad for a sweet lover like me :).
And now some pictures, okay? Here we go.
I had exotic fruit in Thailand, such as mangosteen, papaya, pitahaya or lychee. Their taste is quite different, if you buy them in Europe. They are much sweeter and softer. My favourite was definitely mangosteen, this very soft and juicy fruit is just awesome.
This is a coconut pancake. It was yummy, the texture was quite similar to the one of American pacakes, only a little more sticky and with a coconut taste. Yum.
And here we have a fried banana. It was crispy like chips and interesting, too. But I liked the fried bananas wrapped in dough better. 
It was very hot on our trip to Ayutthaya. So I had some coconut juice to hydrate and cool down. Very refreshing.
Thai sweets. Cool, eh? These are a kind of yeast muffins, very light and fluffy. They are served with a cream, which tastes like vanilla pudding, whatever it is made of.
Now this is one dish we got during our work in the orphanage. We had a menu of 9 dishes, which were prepared by women living near the orphanage. They cooked everything right before your eyes and I guess you can’t get a dish more Thai than the one made by a Thai granny? Thise one was a little spicy, with small tangly noodles and lots of you sauce.
Another dish you could choose was this one: stir fried rice with vegetables. I really liked the way the rice and the vegetables were balanced. It was pretty much my favourite one.
This one you could order extra. One day, when I was sick of rice, I just ordered vegetables and got a plate full of fresh, lightly fried ones in a really yummy sauce (tasted like soy cauce with tomatos, maybe).
And finally, I have a step-by-step instruction for you. We made stir fried noodles in our ecohouse, and although I do not have exact measurements, I can still show you how it works.
This is what you need: Oil for the pan, garlic, salt, sugar, tofu, cabbage, baby corn, carrots, eggs and boiled rice noodles.
First sauté 1 tsp garlic.
Add 1 egg and stir-fry it. Add tofu.
Throw in some carrots and corn.
Add cabbage leaves and rice noodles. Pour over some soy sauce, 1 tbsp sugar and a little salt.
Et voilà!
I really hope you enjoyed some of my Thailand reports here and on my other blog. This is the very last one, I promise. But if you are interested, I can give you more information, just ask.
Vegan cake pops, heck I did it. you know, I have been creating this recipe in my head for more than half a year now, always looking for substitutions for cake pop ingredients and a good vegan cake. Finally got it.
The recipe is based on a carrot cake recipe I got from a vegan friend, but I used hokkaido pumpkin instead. After baking the cake, I shredded it and mixed it with… guess what? At this point, the cake pop recipe requires cream cheese and butter, but I found a good alternative for this: melted vegan marshmallows with a little margarine.
All in all, this recipe is pretty easy and I am sure a non-vegan version of in (use butter instead of margarine, eggs and normal marshmallows) will be just as fine. And it is perfect for the beginning of autumn, so give it a try, if you want to give your senses a kick.
Vegan Pumpkin Cake Pops
(makes about 40 darling pops)
cake:
5oo g shredded pumpkin
1 peeled and shredded apple
150 g sugar
3 tsp egg replacer + 6 tbsp water
250 g flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
75 g grated coconut
125 g margarine
frosting:
160 g vegan marshmallows
4 tbsp margarine
glaze:
200 g vegan white chocolate
Combine the apple and pumpkin with the sugar and let sit for about 15 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).
Then add the remaining ingredients and mix well.
Bake the mass in a pan for about 50 minutes, then let it cool.
Crumble the cake in a bowl or shred it. Then melt the marshmallows and margarine in a small saucepan until the mass is homogenous (it looks like light yellow cream). Then immediately add it to the cake crumbs and stir in (use a spoon at the beginning, the stuff is pretty hot!). Form little balls and place them in the freezer for about 15 minutes.
Now melt your chocolate, place a lollipop stick into each ball and cover them.
Baklava is a dessert from south-eastern Europe. It reminds me of a very moist strudel, as it contains nuts and phyllo dough.
I hadn’t eaten baklava for years. One day, my vegan friend asked me whether I knew how to make this dessert and I haven’t stopped thinking about baklava ever since (I really think a ot about food, you know). Thinking it would be best to go back to the roots, I called my grandma in Bulgaria, asking her for advice. She promised to tell me something more during my stay in Varna and I got additional advice from my aunt, who is a very talented cook and baker.
Making a vegan version of baklava was not difficult, since the only non-vegan thing in the original recipe is butter. I always use Sanella as a substitution for butter and have had very good experience so far. We planned to bake in the beginning of September and therefore make a more autumn-style version of the recipe. So we put in fresh figs between the phyllo layers. We also used walnuts AND hazelnuts as a filling.
For me personally, it was just the right thing to eat along with a cup of tea during the first days of my already exhausting school year. (Nuts make your brain run faster :P) For more vegan ideas and vegan food guides, please visit Nhi’s blogs here and here. I promise you won’t be disappointed :) Oh and you won’t be disappointed it you try this recipe.
Vegan Baklava:
1/2 packet phyllo dough (depending on your pan, I had Bulgarian dough especially made for baklava)
150 g vegan butter
150 g ground walnuts
150 g ground hazelnuts
3 figs, the large kind, cut into slices
250 g sugar
250 ml water
Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and disslove the sugar over medium heat. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until it has thickende (this will take some time). When the syrup is done, let it cool on the counter. One of the secrets of baklava is to have add cool syrup to the hot cake or hot syrup to cold cake. So you will want your syrup to be cooled until the cake is done baking.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (390°F).
Slightly grease a pan (20 x 30 cm/ 8´´x 12´´) and place 2 layers of phyllo dough inside. Melt the butter and spread 1 tbsp on the dough, then evenly spread nuts and figs on top. Place another two layers onto the filling, then repeat the procedure until you have used all the filling. End with phyllo.
Cut the baklava into small squares of about 3 x 3 cm (1´´ x 1´´). Place in the oven and bake untill the top turns amber brown.
Take the baklava out and pour the syrup on top. If you hear a fizz, the difference between the temperatures is right. Let the treat sit – it tastes best after one day, when the dough is soaked with syrup.
Keep in the refridgerator or at some other cool place.