A whole adventure for the senses - the day market is a place where all the local products like veggies, meat and fish is sold. This market starts very early in the morning from 7am and all stalls are closed by 11. They aren't really stalls - just people setting up baskets and blankets on the alley next to the grand palace complex. It was a very interesting experience and as the pics will show, everything that was once alive is possible food.
Here is some sort of cat fish - its all river fish, probably have lots of bones. i like the way they use banana leaves to lay out the fish instead of plastic bags.
These are steamed bamboo shoots. Bamboo has a strange smell and once accustomed to it, the taste is really good. My mum used to make bamboo shoot pickles. These steamed ones probably won't be nice and crunchy.
Herbs - lemon grass roots being chopped up for sale. Look at the beautiful bamboo imitation plastic baskets behind.
This lady had fish and a collection of little brown somethings on the right side. On closer look - they turned out to be frogs!
A collection of little froggies for the curry pot. Wonder how they killed the frogs.... I mean - these guys look like they're just asleep.
And then we found these tortoises - probably destined for the soup pot.
There was this hawker pushing his cart looking quite cool in his bamboo mat cap.
And this buxom lady selling veggies. This woman could pass of as Indian from the north eastern states.
The egg lady was actually cleaning each of the eggs individually - so no streaky eggs. Note the nice drainage system in the center of the road.
Here are the chicken along with whats considered a delicacy in Laos - Chicken feet. I did try them out two days later. Barbequed chicken feet aren't something that i'd make at home but had to try it out - i've put a pic of it on a different post. I've heard that chicken feet make a fantastic stock - so perhaps i might consider using them but not eating them.
Mushroom stall - the bunched up ones with long stalks are Enoki mushrooms, the black ones are shitake and the ones behind are oyester mushrooms. Of these, Enoki are the ones that i hope to eat more of - have tried them only once and loved them. These Enoki's are cultivated ones (the wild ones are more brown). Cultivation is done under dark conditions which explains the long stems as they reach out for the sun. They grow in bunches from a single base, so one buys clusters rather than single mushrooms.
Dried Bael fruit slices. The use that i know of it is for tea - its supposed to aid the intestines in digestion. i had made this tea for Ulli when his intestines were acting up in Bangkok. For once, he actually drank tea without making faces.
In the market on sale were also offerings. Bannana leaf pagodas are given as offering in spirit houses. The Lao people build little spirit houses - a shrine to the protective spirit of a place. The house is intended to provide a shelter for spirits which could cause problems for the people if not appeased. Votive offerings such as these leaf and flower pagoda's are left at the house to propitiate the spirits.
There were also fish kept alive in oxygenated water, which the people could buy and get cut fresh. However much i love fish and meat, I can't bring myself to actually choose and then slaughter a live thing for consumption. Once it's dead and ready - i don't so much mind cooking it.
One area of the market greeted us with a very strong smell - even i couldn't place it till i came across this. The smell was of old meat (i'd rather not call it rotting). There were a whole bunch of hoofs for the pot. I was wondering whether they remove the hair or cook it all together. There's a dish in Indian Moghlai cuisine called trotters - they cook up the hoffs of goat. So why not cow hoofs.....
The woody stems are some kind of spicy wood that they use in the food. Banana flowers next to them - are delicious and very high in iron content (i love eating banana flowers).
I didn't know it then when i went through the market - but there were also buffalo skin for sale. They don't make shoe's out of it - they eat them. So i had to try that too and got my chance two days later.