Lemongrass and ant eggs

Joan Chatfield-Taylor reports.

Top of the tower

Farewell to a giant

Tuiles on wheels

Luang Prabang, Laos—One might expect that the food of this tiny country, squeezed between culinary heavyweights Vietnam and Thailand, would share the tastes of its neighbors. But Lao food is earthier, based on robustly salty, spicy, sweet, sour, and bitter flavors. Is this the next big thing? To decide, I took the all-day cooking class given by Tamarind restaurant in the dreamily tranquil town of Luang Prabang. The owners, chef Joy Ngeuamboupha, who's Lao, and Australian Caroline Gaylard, serve up undiluted authentic food in both their restaurant and their classes.

First stop was Phousi Market, where Ngeuamboupha stopped at a stand selling snack foods. Practically anyone who's ever ordered a Beerlao knows about crispy kai pen, sheets of river algae from the nearby Mekong flattened with slices of garlic, onions, and tomatoes and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Less apt to appear in tourist restaurants are deep-fried beef intestines and dried water buffalo skin.

In the produce section, the women were selling scaly dragonfruit, prickly durian, reddish-purple banana flowers, wrinkled kaffir limes, galangal, lemongrass, and mint. Although there were piles of bitter greens and cabbage, Ngeuam boupha said, "Laotians eat meat, not vegetables. They think vegetables are bad for you." So the group was off to the protein department, where fish and eel are kept alive in basins, and there's plenty of pig on display. Ngeuamboupha pointed out sections of python spread out on the counter; it's an expensive delicacy, reputed to have medicinal qualities, costing $8 for a five-inch chunk.

"In Laos we eat everything," he said. Plastic bags of bile and blood were everywhere, chunks of river fish lay rotting in buckets of murky liquid, a typically Lao variation of the more refined fish sauce seen elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Although the covered market was clean and relatively odor-free, it was a relief to get outside and find a sweet-faced woman frying up delicious rice flour pastries in a heavy iron pan with semicircular indentations.

The cooking class took place in a bamboo pavilion overlooking the river, where each participant prepared seven dishes after watching Ngeuamboupha demonstrate. Armed with heavy mortars and pestles, we created our own version of the spicy pastes that are key to Lao food, smashing up tiny eggplants, tomatoes, lemongrass, green onions, ginger (and ginger leaves), galangal, garlic, and red bird chiles to taste. The stove, often used to blacken vegetables, was a row of heavy earthenware vessels filled with firewood. The menu included sticky rice, fish steamed in banana leaves, and or larm, a thick stew of vegetables flavored with herbs and sakhan, a jungle wood that numbs your tongue if you chew on it. Everyone's favorite dish, however, was the ingeniously stuffed lemongrass, in which a few inches toward the bottom of the tender shoots are sliced and lightly pounded to form an edible basket for a ground chicken stuffing. Dipped into beaten egg and deep fried, this is one of the tastiest finger foods on the planet.

Ngeuamboupha, pointing out the ant nests high in the trees around us, decided to add one last dish. A man carrying a 15-foot bamboo pole with a basket attached to the end knocked the nests loose, sending down a shower of pearly larvae and ants frantically scrambling to escape. Poured into a bowl and covered with plastic wrap, the key ingredients stayed put while we sliced up lemongrass, galangal, and spring onions, moistened with lime juice. Muttering something about ants being immobile for five minutes after water is poured on them, Ngeuamboupha suggested that we eat our ant egg salad fast once everything was combined. I'm not sure if I ate live ants, but, frankly, anything with that much lemongrass and lime tastes OK. I may never make ant egg salad again, but I've already stuffed some lemongrass at home.