We can watch as noodles are made by hand, first by pounding soaked rice into a paste, then by pushing the paste through a sieve into boiling water. We can observe how a household fish pond works, and how river fish are fermented to make padek and prahok. It is also true that our home is in Toronto, a big North American city, and for us time spent in rural areas in southeast Asia is very different than our life in the city. The pace of life, the sounds and smells, the daily rhythms, the night sky, the sense of scale, everything is different. Whenever we settle into a small town or village coming directly from home, it takes us time to find our feet, to get acclimated, to adjust our expectations for what each individual day will bring.
Time genuinely slows down, and it affects everything.
It affects our feelings about the food we eat, and how the food tastes. As a consequence, our initial goal of eating our way through southeast Asia evolved into the somewhat specific goal of exploring the food of the Mekong region by eating our way along the river, from Yunnan to Vietnam. Like students in a life drawing course, instead of drawing the entire model, we found ourselves drawing only an arm, an elbow, a hand. A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia is as a result a cookbook, a photo essay, a journey down a river, and an introduction to one of the world's great culinary regions. Click here for print friendly version of the above text.