Simon is an entrepreneur. After selling his company in 2001, he wanted to do something that was not bound to a specific location. He is now active online in the IT world. In 2009 he met his current partner in Thailand. After traveling together for a few years, he settled in Chiang Rai.
I confess, I am a real foodie. Recently I was really hungry for lasagna. The lasagna in restaurants is not equally tasty everywhere, usually there is too much cheese for my taste and the sauce is often quite tasteless.
Here in Chiang Rai there are not many Western restaurants, but we do have one good Italian, although the owner is Dutch. He never comes to the fore, so I don't know him personally. Yes, Chiang Rai is a place for individualists. For example, he does not know that I am a fellow citizen.
The food is of a high standard and apart from a few minor language errors in the menu you would never expect it to be run by someone who is not from Italy. However, this time I was tired of eating out and decided to make my own lasagna.
Once, when I was 16, I copied my version of the recipe from my Italian girlfriend. I don't know if it's really the taste or also the sweet memory of my early love, but in any case, in my opinion, there are few restaurants that can imitate her.
Abroad there were a few obstacles to overcome for the preparation. I'm talking about good cheese, because the factory cheese here tastes like putty. Furthermore, a suitable baking dish, a good oven and, oh yes, pasta sheets.
The cheese was the simplest; Hidden behind the Italian restaurant is a deli owned by the same owner, offering delicious Swiss and Italian cheeses. Check! my cousin would say. Then find a baking dish. Of course there will be a shop somewhere in Chiang Rai that sells something similar, but find out.
My girlfriend had no idea, we've both only lived here for a year, so we're not very well known yet. After some searching, I found a baking supply store and bought a cake tin. Check!
Now the pasta sheets. I could have made them myself, but my kitchen is quite small and I didn't feel like the mess. Alternatively, in the local Tesco-Lotus Express I found ready-made sheets for Gyoza, aka Japanese dumplings. Is also dough, is also square right? They didn't even have to be cooked first, so that saves time. Check!
I don't think there are any Thai oven dishes, so the range in ovens is scarce. I had heard that gas ovens are sold in Chiang Mai, but I was too hungry to look into it. I do have a microwave combi oven. I don't even know how many watts the filament uses, let alone what temperature it gets inside. I had already baked a sandwich in it, but I also understood: Sandwich is not lasagna.
Every self-respecting recipe I found on the internet called for preheating the oven to 180 degrees. C. Nonsense, I thought. Heat is heat. Within limits, a little more or less heat can be compensated by the time of exposure, I heard the physicist in me say.
An hour later delicious lasagna appeared on the table. CHECK!
In my pioneering enthusiasm I also managed to bake a quiche lorraine in the trusty little oven the next day. He had to work even harder for this, but after more than an hour and a half it was ready. In the meantime I have learned that as a rule of thumb I should take the prescribed time x 3.
computer lesson
Earlier this month, a Thai acquaintance introduced me to a 14-year-old boy named Non. Despite his age, he already knows quite a bit of English and is very interested in computers. In the future, Non wants to earn his money on the internet and he asked me if I could teach him how to program.
"Sure!"
"Cost?"
"No!"
He now comes to us every Sunday afternoon.
He has now (using HTML and PHP) made his own website with games. I suspect that he is quite self-taught, but he is also quite stubborn. For example, he wanted to give a folder for images that I wanted to call 'images' a Thai name. I later found out that this was the name of his school. This name is now also on his website. He is probably very proud of it and wants to show his classmates what he has created.
Ladyboy show, night BBQ and jadong
Chiang Rai's night bazaar has two so-called food courts in addition to stalls, where hill tribe people, among others, offer their wares. In addition to food and drinks, both food courts also have continuous performances by artists.
My friend Polly recently started performing here as a dancer in the ladyboy cabaret part. She partly designs and makes her own costumes. She doesn't earn any money with it (yet), but she really enjoys doing it.
The smallest food court is for tourists only. The largest has about 40 stalls that offer all kinds of food, ranging from fried insects to sushi. The place can hold about 800 people and if it's not raining, it's packed every night of the year with many local people, but also quite a lot of Thai tourists. Foreigners are in the minority here.
The night bazaar closes at 12 o'clock, but if there is enough interest, O, the owner of a hotpot stall, regularly organizes a night BBQ on the otherwise deserted square. Everyone who comes pays a free gift.
Sunday night it was that time again, sneaking through the kitchen through the back of a stall diagonally opposite our house and we were already there. The group consisted mainly of artists who perform there and elsewhere in the evening. Polly suggested they let them taste the rest of my lasagna and quiche.
Insofar as it wasn't out of courtesy, I was pleased with the rave reviews. Singer and guitarist Es apparently enjoyed the lasagna, because he scooped it up no less than twice. The standard drink was jadong. You drink this in small glasses together with large glasses of water.
Recently my back neighbor showed me how you make it. Clear rice wine or sato with 28% alcohol from a distillery is the basis. He mixes it with honey, lemon and a multi-herb drink, making it red in color.
It is preferably served ice cold. He sells one 70 cl bottle in his bar for 120 baht.
To drink it, I think you have one acquired button necessary. At first I found it smelly and thought it bootleg was, so I didn't want to know anything about it, but now that I know what's in it, I just participate.
With every glass they toast here with: Njohk!
Fun to improvise and still achieve a tasty result.