Thai Cuisine: Sweet and Sour Chicken

It's been a long time since the last time I blogged about food.

I know that you, readers, miss that so I'm gonna blog about it more often and I already have a bunch of food pictures.


Today dish is the quite famous and classic Sweet and Sour Chicken (can be Pork too).

Thai cuisine has a lot of dishes which mix sweet and salted. It's a little bit bizarre when You first try it but eventually you quickly get used to that.


So here are two pictures of this dish.

Of course, you eat this one with Rice (as usual).

Pictures of Cameroonian Food

Oki, you know I'm into pictures of Food from everywhere.



So, of course, I have some pictures of the good food of cameroon.

I will put the name of the dish (I will use the Cameroonian name and a phonetic orthograph, cuz frankly I have no idea how some name are supposed to be written)





"Ndomba" poulet/Chicken "Ndomba". You have no idea how good this is until you try.





"Sangha". It might not look that attractive, but its one of my favorite dish in cameroon and it's delicious.

I was eatin that all the time. Mum can you bring some when you come in Thailand?





(My bro holdin)The "Top". The national beverage, exist in different "flavors" (read colors, since the main difference between them is the colorant they put inside).

Click on the picture to really size how the "top" bottle looks like

One kind of Thai Mangos

 

 

 

This is how one kind of the thai mangos looks like.

It's totally
different from what we see in Africa where the inside is yellow.



You are supposed to eat that with the red sausage you can see on the pictures.

The sausage is made of sugar, shrimps and fish sauce. It's kind of salted though.

It's actually good, but I prefer eat the mango alone.


This kind of mango tastes a little bit like guava.

Oh this reminds me that I should show you how guavas look like here.

But this is another story.

A normal Day in AIT

So as you may know now AIT stands for Asian Institute of Technology. It's the most internationalised university in Thailand and probably in the whole southeast region

People keep asking me what a day here looks like. So here is a little description of the daily routine.


So basically I wake up 20min before my first class of the day (that range from 8h30 AM to 4hPM). I'm still not used to the thai very early wake up which is something like 6AM.

I grab a bite in the school cafeteria before entering the class. Class lasts from 1h to 3hrs. Its most of the time interesting. But I do have some problems with one of the prof, I mean with his accent. Indian do have a very good english, but You may have hard times listening to what they are saying.

Teachers are WAY MORE CLOSER to students than in France. One of the teachers often offers the breakfast to all the students. Really cool!



I take my lunch at the cafeteria. There is one cafeteria in every school, plus the big cafeteria with several stands. A normal lunch is between 30 and 50 bahts (60cts to 1.10 euros) for a complete meal.

I Go to class in the afternoon if I have one, otherwise I take a nap, go to the library or play basket or badmington(but not before 6PM, did I not mention the weather here.


For the dinner, depending on the people I have dinner with I go to Khun Sue who hold a very decent restaurant, the Viet ( vietnamese food), or to Thamasssat.

Thamassat hold a market on Monday and Thursday. There are plenty of small stands with food as well as shop stands. You can buy perfume, clothes, shoes, watches etc. Otherwise we once every 2 weeks (on average) we go to a steak house. Steak house means a lot of steaks and french fries, basically its western food oriented , I mean of course the local version of western food. Its pretty good too.

It will be around 70 bahts for khun sue including drinks (water or juices), 50 bahts for the viet and around 150bahts (roughly 3.5 baths) for the steak house.



What you do in the night is really up to you. I do spend some time talking on msn with France, Canada, thailand. Blog as much as I can. Eventually I go to sleep.


That's a regular day for a MSc student in AIT, Thailand..

Any question?

Web Album for Food and Drinks

I have put all the food-and-drink related pictures on a web album.

I think it's more simple to gather them all in the same place.

So to discover Thai food, just click on the picture below.

By the way, this picture is a picture of a very special food. It's a stick made of something vaguely related to banana.

Food and Drinks

Some of french friends love it. But I couldn't eat more than just half of the stick.

The consistency is quite special too. Hard to describe. The easiest way for you to know what it tastes like is to come in Thailand.


Oh BTW, the paper in my hand, it's a 100 bahts note
More to come soon

Fried Rice with Pineapple Chicken

 

So this dish is quite common. It's fried rice with chicken cooked in a pineapple and cashewnuts.

As you may have noticed Thai food often mix sugar and salt. It is quite good most of the time.

Especially for people like me who like cashewnuts.

Fried Noodles with Chicken

 

Here is another thai dish. Fried noodles with chicken and leaves. Noodles are sometimes fried with an egg or two.


I'm not sure everyone will like this dish. Even for me it depends of the mood of the day. The first two times I liked it, the third I ended up finding it a little bit sickening. And you don't want to eat the stems of the leaves, trust me.


Of course, more food pictures to come soon...

Thai Food : Chicken with cashewnuts

 

You can't visit a country without testing the local food. And since I'm here for 18 months, It was mandatory to get used to the food.


Food turned out to be pretty good. I had no problem to get used to it even during the first days.

But for those of you you haven't yet the chance to visit Thailand I'm gonna post some pictures of Thai food.

The first one is this one. A classic dish: Chicken with cashewnuts and leaves. 35bahts +7 bahts for the rice (42 bahts for all).
For less than 1 euro, this is what you get in a decent restaurant.


So want to visit thailand now?

Thai dinner

Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday I had my first dinner with Thai people exclusively. It's a major step. But to understand why it's such a big deal I have to explain a little bit more how things are going down here.


There is a truly multi cultural international environment here, with mainly people from South and Southeast asia. Thai people represent probably less than half of the students. Many people arrive here without marks. So, as a natural human trend, a newcomer will hang out with his fellow citizens when he arrives. The problem is that it becomes a habit. This results in that most students spend 95% of their free time with their fellow citizens.

During the classes you have an pretty impressive cultural mixing, but outside, putting aside group works, very little mix.


Have been there for 3 weeks and until now (actually Yesterday) spent all my free time with French speaking people. I started getting acquainted with some Thai people though.

So yesterday after a 2 hours long chatting, I ended up being invited to dinner by my 3 new friends. We went outside AIT campus, to Thamassat (5 min away by car).

We went to a restaurant where I would never go with French people. You know these little nice restaurants that you have to know to go to. The menus were written only in Thai anyway so you have to come with some Thai people.


The food was very good, we ate a little bit of everything, a grilled fish, steamed seafood, grilled vegetables, a seafood soup, an omelete with something-i-dont-remember and of course rice. I had the chance to see how thai people eat, and it's quite different from the occidental way. They eat a little bit of everything in the same time. The only thing that is left apart is the dessert.


We discussed of our different cultures. It was quite an interesting conversation. I'm gathering enough material to make a first post on the Thai culture. I want it to be consistent and avoid all the cliché. I'm gonna blog about it soon.


The minor detail you might want to know is that the only place you find a knife is a kitchen. And this is an assumption since I have not seen a single knife until now. And while everything is made taking into account that fact, sometimes you find yourself briefly looking for a knife.


Next time I'll take pictures of the food so that you, dear reader, get an idea of what does Thai food look like?

The red Fanta

 

I told you it was coming. Here it is, the red Fanta.

For those of you who wonder what does it taste like I would say that it's not so far from the "diabolo grenadine". A more accurate comparison would be "TOP Grenadine" but you have to know what's "TOP grenadine" which is quite a popular beverage in Cameroon.



I will try to look for a Yellow Fanta. If I do, I guess I'll take a picture with the Green, Red and Yellow Fanta and will put the Cameroonian Flag right in front of it. (If you have no clue of what I'm talking about, click here).


More on Food and Drink to come soon.

Some Widgets on my blog

I've just added some widget to my blog just below the list of labels.

I've added a counter so that everyone can know how many visits have had (starting now).

I have also add a LinkedIn link so that you can access my LinkedIn profile in just one click.

I'm gonna make a little post on LinkedIn soon.

I'm also tryin a new service named plugoo that is supposed to let you guys talk with me on messenger just by typing your text in the little window below.

Lets see if it works.

Funny Fanta

 

It,s somehow hard to believe but what you are looking at is a fanta, a green fanta.

These guys are funny. Tomorrow I'll introduce the red fanta.


I know I'm supposed to write a post on food&drink. I'll try to find the time.

as always, more to come soon