Lao cuisine hasn’t really resonated with the world, probably because it seems to pale in comparison its Thai neighbour. However, i was pleasently surprised to find a wonderful confluence of tastes that are fiery, spicy, hot but also sweet and textured.
The basic ingredients of a Lao kitchen are plentiful: Lemongrass, tamarind, galangal, ginger, garlic, mint, parsley, spring onions and strangely…dill. Beyond western cooking, I hardly ever come across dill in Asian cuisines, so this was a pleasent surprise. Sauces include soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce (which is always applied on salads but never cooked, since heat dissipates its pungent smell and acrid taste) and bean paste.
Basic Lao ingredients
Vegetable galore: limes, gingers, lemongrass, beans, spring onions…the list is endless. Cooking Lao = big fresh garden!
peppers, curries, chilli powers, salt…and i think…MSG 
All of these lovely and strong spices are set to the taste of sticky rice, which comes in the defacto white, but also purple, green and yellow (yes it’s true!). Sticky rice, a staple of the Laotian peoples and all through its northern and southern regions is used in a multitude of ways. It can be melted down and used as a coagulent in Orlam, or made into sticky rice desserts with coconut fillings or sweet paste. In any case, sticky rice is a cornerstone of any Lao household. Sticky rice is cooked twice a day but eaten three times. Preparing it takes forever, beginning with a 7 hour overnight soak and while normal rice expands in boiling water, sticky rice is steamed in a bamboo basket that sits on top of a boiling pot. The sticky rice never cooks in water but rather, is steamed to perfection. Sticky rice cannot be recooked and when reheated or recooked may actually cause tummy troubles, so don’t try!
Purple sticky rice. Sticky rice is always served in a bamboo cup and communally eaten. You just need to reach in and take a chunk and mould it in your hand, while eating other dishes. Always cover the cup back since flies abound.
Lao food focuses on a lot of vegetables and greens, and salads here are a way of life. Salads that mix watercress, lettuces, parsley, basil, chillis and whole lot of other vegetables that I cannot name are eaten on a daily basis. Tomatos, eggplants of different shapes and sizes and boiled eggs are also a favorite. Sticky rice, meats or small bean sprouts can be wrapped up in salad leaves or eaten with the raw hand. It’s a closely enjoyed action, this eating and feasting is extremely shared and communal.
Yes, we made that many springrolls! Mine are the fattest ones…aligned with my greed.
Laos is a country that is enveloped by Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and China (Yunnan) and its cuisine is probably closest to its Thai/ Siam counterpart, safe for the fact that there are only yellow curries in Laos, no red nor green curries as in Thailand. There are some Chinese influenced dishes, as also seen in Hanoi in vietnam that include braised pork trotters stewed in black sauce, steamed buns with pork and chives (Paus), bbq pork and char siew rice - so it was not unfamiliar to me but it could also be an effect of globalization…
Chinese style economic rice
My favorite Lao dishes…well, we took a cooking class and ate them all! First is the fried river moss, dried and cooked with garlic and sesame seeds. This seaweed looking dish can be eaten with deep chillied paste or simply with fresh chopped lemongrass and peanuts.
Fried River Moss - yummy!
I eat!
The fiery and spicy green papaya salad challenges every tastebud that ever said, " I think Thai cooking is more spicy and Lao food is not." This salad made of chillis, lime, freshly scrapped green papaya is a Lao staple, often eaten with Lao’s pride and joy… Beer Lao - owned by Carlsberg and tastes pretty damn good if you ask me.
Spicy Salad! With clear and fresh watercress soup behind and the excellent Luang Prabang pork sausage. yum yum!
Orlam, a heavy stew of meat (could be beef, pork or chicken) is made by first melting sticky rice to form the coagulent necessary. Eggplants, dill (lots of it) is thrown in for good measure. The taste is strange to the tongue at first, its fresh, but also slightly deep and yet flavourful.
Beef Orlam…
Breakfast in Laos is often a simple and clear noodle soup, not quite like Vietnamese Pho, since the Lao version uses yellow noodles, white noodles, broad noodles, in a tasty chinese-tasting soup not unlike the soup you find in fishball noodles.
White rice noodles with pork slices. Other variations come with pork balls, char siew, fish and even tofu. All for 10,000 kip (US$1).
There is also the Lao sandwich, which is a leftover influence from the French - a large baugette with pork pate or pork slices, with our ever-fave…Laughing Cow cheese, tomatos, sweet chilli sauce, lettuce and onions. Very very nice…
The one thing that is sublimely amazing is the quality of street bbq. For a mere US$1.50, one can buy a large bbq fish, coated with some kind of secret colonel-receipe sauce, bbqed to perfection. I nearly died when I ate my first bbq fish. Armed with simple sticky rice in hand, there is nothing better…other than the bbq chicken which is just outta this world!
Auntie and her secret sauce
Lao BBQ hotplate is also a great way to celebrate good times. Somewhat like Korean bbq, with part soup and a grill top, this feast provides endless fun and opportunities to abuse beer lao.
Lao BBQ
Christmas Ho Ho from Douglas
Kids, no playing with knives at home - or lose a finger!
Hard at work making my lunch
Good results!
Other favorites include the Lao salad or Luang Prabang salad which combines limes, watercress, boiled eggs, tomatos and of course Sticky Rice Cakes…which can be eaten with jam or salt…or sugar. 
Rice cakes drying in the hot sun. These are later deep fried to golden goodness.
All in all, I was really impressed with the taste of Lao cuisine, a little underated in my opinion and definitely better than burmese food, which is peasent like and rough but not textured in taste. Laos, I love!
