The latter part of my past year was spent visiting the “Motherland” (Thailand). teehee. I spent an entire month there getting reaquianted with my beloved Thai culture. Anyways, it was my first time back since ‘97 and I wanted to take full advantage of being there; experience the EXOTICness of it all…
In this case, I wanted to EAT it all. Small appetizer dishes ranged anywhere from 40-120 baht/serving. Our currency exchange rate at the time was about 37B/1 USD. Convenient for tourists.
So in order to get a little taste of everything, I had several small appetizers instead of any huge entrees. I’m not going to lie, I snacked off of everyone’s plate that night though.
READY?!
ALL MINE! ;p My appetizers consisted of: (clockwise) two plates of maggots (fried and stir-fried), fried grasshopper ^^ (goes well with Singha Royal Thai beer), and I want to say the last plate with all the spices and dressings was similar to flies. Whatever it was, it had wings and well-atteched little legs; stir-fried.
Here’s a close-up of the stir-fried maggots. I really liked the texture of these little guys. They were really light and puffy, seemingly hollow inside, and not as squishy as you might think. You can eat them with rice, add them to your entree, or just simply munch on them as you wait for the main dishes. I preferred the fried maggots because they weren’t bitter compared the stir-fried ones above.
Looks pretty juicy, huh? Look at all that meat! Unless you couldn’t tell, this was a grilled frog. I want to say it was a bullfrog because it was the size of my head, but I’m not really sure. In case you’ve never had a bite of frog, it’s very tough; similar to alligator meat in texture. “Tastes like chicken.” In actuality, the thing that tasted most like chicken that night was the grasshopper. Odd, huh?
Those high school dissection labs were always fun.
Little pails of sticky rice. We’re Thai.
Overall, it was an awesome experience. Everything was high in protein and definately light. However, I was stuffed off of snacking off each of my dishes as well as other entrees and sticky rice.
*Although the food here is common around Thailand, Thai food is actually more Chinese/Indian-influenced due to the location. The food in this blog, however, was more Thai-Lao (Laos, a bordering country to the east.)
