street food

Sweets for my sweets hawkerfood (4)

October 21, 2012RongHua ChingFoodfruit, hawker, pancake, popular, roti, snack food, street food, street snacks, sweets

If there is one stall you will find everywhere it must be the Thai Banana Roti or pancake on almost every corner, bridge, village and city. It is the ultimate favourite snack with many filling variations resembling French-style crepes. Believe me once your home this could be one of those comforting foods, you are craving because they are not easy to get lest to make at home without the art of flipping the roti paper-thin.

And honestly there has not been a visit where we didn’t at least have a few of these munching away. Without a doubt this is a popular sweetie anyone buys and she flicks whipping you to come back for another portion of Banana Roti.

: Generously pour coconut or condensed milk

: Cut up in small squares

: flipping it over, fry the other side

: adding filling, fold in a square

: Roti on to the hot griddle

: pulling and stretching the roti

: Slapping and pulling of the dough

: Thai Banana Roti stall

Thepprasit Night Market hawkerfood (3)

October 21, 2012RongHua ChingFoodbugs, edible, hawker food, insects, Night Market, Pattaya, popular, snack food, street food, street snacks, Thepprasit

Thepprasit Night Market hawkerfood in Pattaya, is only open from Friday till Sunday starting from 17.00 till 23.00. Besides cheap products attracting a lot of shoppers local and tourists. it is also very popular for its wide variety of hawker food stalls at the night market. Serving food styles of the four regions all at one place. Here is just a small glimpse of regular hawkers food items.

: Thepprasit Night Market Hawker food

: Bbq chicken baked in earthenware vessel

: Barbecued Spareribs slabs

: Preparation Oyster Omelette

: Thepprasit Night Market variety of skewers

: Salt-crusted Tilapia, fish

: Tropical fruit Noi-na, Custard Apple

: barbecue fish varieties

: Golden grilled squid

: Thepprasit Night Market bug snacks nutritious bugs

: Typical local snack mealworm

: Thepprasit Night Market Popular local snack Grasshopper

Thailand night market and street stalls sells edible bugs as delicacy’s, how about deep fried grasshopper. I’ve been told they taste like shrimps or non mai’s a wood wurms these turn very crispy on the outside after being fried. There’s more to learn here in this link Popular Snack food in Thailand. These crunchy bug snacks are high in protein, calcium and cholesterol are actually very nutrious. For the daredevils among us who believe that entomophagy is the future, as in ‘How to cook edible insects’ a link with recipes to experiment.

Eating insects as an alternative protein source is growing in global demand. One of the reasons is research estimations that in the nearby future the world will have 10 billion people. They definitely will require more food, water and agricultural land for crops. But instead of increasing livestock edible insects taste absolutely delicious too. For sustainability purposes they are also significantly easier to farm as well as being very nutrituos with numerous health benefits. For the western menu it needs time to become a daily food item, but here in Thepparasit night market ediblle bugs ares a very popular snack, cheap, tasty and healthy.

More to discover in Pattaya:

Floating Market new attraction South of Pattaya.

Heritage at Pattaya Floating Market

Early bird hawker food (1)

September 29, 2012RongHua ChingFoodbudget food, food stalls, Gai Yang Gai, hawker food, quick, Som Tam, street food, tasty, thailand, Tropical fruit

On my list of favourite hawker food you will find the simple Thai Chicken Noodle Soup as mentioned in another blog post, followed closely by Som Tam, Thai Papaya Salad and Gai Yang Gai known as barbecue chicken. The last two items are often combined together for lunch as snack.

Thai hawker food – Gai Yang Gai

Early bird hawker food, every morning when we crossed the road to get a songtel ride for the beach, this food stall was grilling rows of Gai Yang Gai and before noon he would be sold out.

Gai Yang Gai – Thai barbecue chicken

Isn’t this just mouthwatering just by looking at it? Well smelling Thai rubbed spice chicken on the grill makes it even more tantalizing, such a shame we kept on missing out. We were either going for breakfast or coming back from the beach looking at an empty grill.

Som Tam Papaya salad

The slightly tart flavour of the young and green papaya combined with the heat of red chilli, saltiness of fish sauce and tamarind juice, with a little bit sweetness of palm sugar mixed all together is just gob-smacking good! Passing by one of these stalls I saw a pot filled with salted small black crabs, apparently that’s a popular local version, while I never tried the fried bugs I sure tried the black crab Papaya salad and if you like saltiness this is the one.

Tropical fresh fruit with full flavour

Fresh cut tropical fruits, explosion of taste and fruitiness and so many varieties to choose from it is just hard work :-). Here you can and should eat loads of Rambutan, Mangosteen or Jackfruit to name a few. These are hard to get in Europe and taste not even half as good when you have the chance to have them almost freshly plucked into your mouth.