Tuesday market

Every Saturday my neighborhood plays host to a gigantic talaat nat, or weekend market. I love this market and always look forward to it. Ironically, I always tend to forget that we also have a much smaller market every Tuesday afternoon. It's probably only 1/4 the size of the Saturday market, but there's still some interesting stuff, including fruit:

deep-fried fish:

and Thai sweets:

This girl was helping her dad sell crabs:

This stall sells northern Thai dishes:

Not the best, but good when you need a northern Thai fix. Much better were the southern Thai hor mok yaang, grilled curries:

They're sold topped with crab meat, shrimp, fish or horseshoe crab eggs. A crab and a shrimp and a plate of rice formed my dinner.

I'm off to Cambodia tomorrow for a week where I'll be working with Phil of Phenomenon on some articles. I won't be posting, but you can expect some follow up posts here after I get back.

A work in progress

I have plans to do an exhibition at Kathmandu, the photography gallery of famed Thai photographer, Manit Sriwanichpoom. I've been photographing Chinatown a lot lately and took some of my images to Manit before I went abroad. He saw some potential in the pics I brought by, and in particular liked the following shots:

I also like these shots, so it's good to know Manit and I are on the same page. My only problem is that I don't really have a "concept" yet. I've just been walking around shooting whatever looks interesting. Also, I've been traveling so much lately that I haven't had time to go back and take more shots. Fortunately I have time--Kathmandu is booked up until the end of the year. So I get back from Cambodia, where I'm going tomorrow, I'm going make a point of going back to Chinatown on a regular basis and will to sure to share my progress here.

Dinner at the market

Kota Kinabulu's evening market, besides having some great raw ingredients, also had some wonderful prepared food. In particular there was an entire section dedicated to grilled seafood. Choosing from shrimp, lobster, several kinds of fish and crabs, I had a grilled mackerel/tuna tail and a grilled squid:

These were accompanied by a spicy sambal, rice and various sides that were already laid out on the table:

The sides included hinava, a local raw fish dish, shredded green mangoes, and a couple seaweed 'salads,' which is what I chose:

The seaweed was naturally salty and crunchy in texture, and was great with a squeeze of lime. An excellent meal, and best of all, the whole thing cost me about $3.

Kota Kinabalu's evening market

Finally back to Asia...

I recently found myself in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. It's a small town with not a great deal to offer, but fortunately has what must be one of the most colorful and interesting fresh markets I've ever visited. The market is located right on the waterfront, and gets started just before sunset:

The emphasis here is seafood, and the market had the biggest variety of fresh fish I've ever seen anywhere:

In particular, there were several vendors selling a tuna-like fish that I've never come across in mainland SE Asia:

as well as every other kind of fish you could imagine:

and the people who prepare them:

There were also several kids walking around clutching plastic bags, begging for fish scraps. This girl, one of them, was very interested in my camera:

Other interesting sea-related eats were several varieties of edible seaweed:

and conch shells with their meat sold separately in plastic bags:

There's also plenty of land-based food:

and a great deal of prepared food, including curry shops selling stuff such as these deep-fried soft shell crabs:

and drinks sold by flirtatious vendors:

I'll detail the interesting meal I had here in my next post.

Portland Farmers' Market

One of the highlights of my visit to Oregon was the chance to finally visit the Portland Farmers' Market. It is considered one of the premier farmers' markets in the US, and features all the stuff I dream about while in Thailand: cheese, fresh herbs, wild mushrooms, wine, oysters and depending on the season, a huge variety of other produce.

I was there in May, very early summer, so understandably there wasn't a huge amount of stuff available. There were lots of cold-weather veggies, including carrots:

chard:

and some early strawberries:

And perhaps more unusually, fern shoots:

Mushrooms from the forests of Oregon looked particularly interesting:

There is also heaps of delicious-looking prepared food, including these pizzas:

baked in this mobile wood-burning oven:

Another stall tossed its pizza dough on site:

This stall selling Italian sausage sandwiches was particularly popular:

I was particularly interested in the breads and baked goods, including these amazing looking loaves from Ken's, currently considered one of Portland's best bakeries:

Italian-style loaves from a German bakery:

and baked sweets, such as tiny lemon tart:

There were also lots of happy customers:

Including me.

Fish and chips in Astoria

My brother Garett lives outside Astoria, Oregon, a city located at the mouth of the Columbia River in the far northwest corner of the state. Astoria is an incredibly hilly town with lots of old buildings, and has served as the setting of such influential and groundbreaking films as The Goonies and Kindergarten Cop. Film history is not, however, one of my interests, and luckily Astoria also has some interesting restaurants.

In town for lunch one day we stopped by Clemente's, a seafood market and restaurant known for its fish and chips. Rather than plain old fish and chips, I went with the more exotic oyster and chips:

The coast of Washington, directly north of Astoria, is known for producing some of the finest oysters in the world, and I wanted to take advantage of this. Thankfully the restaurant treated them well, barely coating them in batter and deep-frying them so that the batter was crispy, but the oysters inside were more or less still raw, just like they should be.

Garett ordered albacore tuna with his chips, a fish that previously formed the basis of Astoria's fishing industry.

This being Oregon, the fish and chips were accompanied by a bottle of simply amazing beer, in this case the Dechutes Brewery's Black Butte Porter:

I chose this bottle because Deschutes makes what must be my favorite beer of all, the Mirror Pond Pale Ale. The porter, although not my favorite style of beer, was excellent, and went very well with oily deep-fried seafood.

And in case you've already forgotten, there's some pretty good f & c available in Bangkok here. My writeup can be found here.

Clemente's
1335 Marine Drive
Astoria, OR
(503) 325 1067

Joe's Donuts

Joe's Donuts is a donut shop in my hometown of Sandy, Oregon. Apparently the place has quite a reputation, and has a keen a following among locals, foodies in the Portland area, as well as skiers on their way up to Mt Hood:

Ironically, despite having more or less grown up in Sandy, I had never been to Joe's Donuts. So one morning, with nothing to do and a hunger for American food, I decided to make the 10 minute walk over to the place. I ordered a double espresso, a blueberry fritter (I think that's what it was called) and my favorite, an old fashioned:

The donuts were pretty good, but I've been out of the deep-fried dough loop so long I wouldn't know an exceptional one if it hit me on the head. I've never even been to Krispy Kreme. And setting me even further apart from most Americans, I wasn't even able to finish my donuts, and ended up taking half home in a bag.

Regarding the coffee, I find a perverse pleasure in ordering espresso in the US; because most Americans drink incredibly complicated coffee creations that involve multiple-digit ingredients, my order of a simple espresso almost always elicits a bewildered response. Several times while in Oregon I was only charged for what is known as an "extra shot" and got a decent espresso for 50 cents!

Joe's Donuts
39230 Pioneer Blvd
Sandy, OR
(503) 668-7215

A bit of Swedish sausage

I'm still on the road and won't be posting for a few days, but a piece I did on Swedish sausage culture can currently be seen here at the Lonely Planet website. Enjoy!

After I get back, I'd still like to blog on a couple things I saw in Oregon before getting back to Thai and other Asian food, which judging by the emails I've been receiving, has sorely been missed here!

The EEgos

The EEgos are the hottest new band of the moment in Portland, Oregon. Due to the fact that their guitarist, Dave:

is one of my oldest friends, I was granted unprecedented access to photograph an invite-only show a few weeks ago.

It was extremely dark where they were playing, so I was forced to shoot at ISO 1600 and I illuminated the shots with my SB-800 held in my left hand. If you're not already aware, the D200's built-in flash can control the SB-800 wirelessly and without the use of an extra slave. I simply changed a few settings on the flash and camera, set the strobe to slow-sync (dialing it down one stop, if I remember correctly) and fired away. I really like this effect, which freezes certain elements of the frame, but also suggests motion and action. And the fact that the light is coming from an angle makes the lighting that much more attractive.

The backstage party, as you can imagine, was totally insane, and I had to use my connections to bail Dave and five underage groupies out from a local jail.

Edsbacka Krog

One of the highlights of my trip to Sweden was a visit to the country's most acclaimed restaurant, the two-star Edsbacka Krog. Ironically, the restaurant is located a short walk away from where I lived as an exchange student in the town of Sollentuna, although I was blissfully unaware of it at the time (my culinary interests during the period focused mostly around kebab). My dining companion, Göran Lager, who I've mentioned here several times previously, is friends with the restaurant's well-known chef, Christer Lingström, and as I was also working on an article, we were treated very well.

We chose the avsmakningsmeny, the tasting menu, a eight-course extravaganza of taste that began with the following trio of Creamed parsnip with strawberry jelly, fish broth with basil foam, and asparagus soup with crispy pork:

Unusual combinations that worked together very well, as Göran's expression suggests:

The remaining seven courses included exotic ingredients such as pigeon and sea buckthorn, indigenous ingredients such as ramslök (kind of onion) and gooseberries, and challenging combinations such as marinated hälleflundra (type of fish) with a vanilla-lemon foam. I'm planning on printing some of the photos later, so I'd rather not run any here before they've had a chance to run. It was an amazing experience, and by far the best food-wine pairing I've ever had the pleasure to experience. Highly recommended--if you can afford it!

Edsbacka Krog
Sollentunavägen 220
Sollentuna
+46 (0)8-96 33 00

Pre-game nosh

While in Stockholm I accompanied my friends to a couple soccer matches. My friends are big fans of AIK, one of three Stockholm teams in the Swedish league, and hold season tickets. One of their pre-game rituals, other than two warm beer to cool their nerves, involves dinner at a kebab restaurant near the stadium in Solna. Having consumed kebab earlier on my trip, I followed my friend Ola's lead and ordered the "vegetable plate":

This took the form of various deep-fried veggies: eggplant, cauliflower, onions and falafel, served over a massive heap of saffron rice (or French fries), with sides of hummus and a yogurt sauce. The image above doesn't do a good job of illustrating the sheer vastness of the plate, and I was only able to eat about 75% of it. It was tasty, but incredibly salty, and at about $10, isn't exactly a "deal" for fast food, but that's Sweden.

Here's Ola devouring his:

He finished it.

During the game the only food option is korv, Swedish-style sausages:

a food I will soon document in detail at the Lonely Planet website.

To see more of the images I took at the game, go over to my newish photoblog, The Old Main Drag.

Derby: AIK vs. Hammarby

While in Stockholm I went to a couple soccer matches, including a derby between two Stockholm teams, AIK and Hammarby. My friends are hardcore AIK supporters, which gave me the idea to photograph the fan activity at an important match.

Lining up for the game outside Råsunda Stadium. The alcohol-related mess is indicative of the mood of much of the match

At the beginning of the match I stood in "knacken", the area reserved for the more hardcore AIK supporters.

Ultra-wide view from above

But the point of going was to photograph fans, so after a while I moved down to ground level.

Most interesting was the the fence directly behind the goal that, too my surprise, fans were more or less allowed to climb and stand on.

Rousing the fans

Security guards

AIK scored first.

and eventually won the match.

Afterwards, those standing in gnaget had to wait an extra 20 minutes before being released as to avoid any confrontations with Hammarby supporters.

Leaving the stadium

KB

A couple weeks ago Göran Lager and I took lunch at KB, Konstnärs Baren ("Artists' Bar"), a Stockholm institution. Located in a beautiful building from 1891 that also houses Stockholm's dramatic theatre, the restaurant is known excellent traditional Swedish fare and for its murals that cover the walls of the upstairs dining area:

But as you can guess, we were mostly interested in the former. The menu (shown in the first pic above) offers a short but very interesting array of traditional Swedish dishes based around indigenous ingredients such as shrimp, herring, salmon, dill and lingonberries. We began with gravade strömming:

marinated herring served on a slice of pumpernickel-like bread and boiled potatoes. Sounds like starch overload, but it really was wonderful, and thankfully, for me at least, the herring lacked the sweet taste found in most Swedish pickled fish. It was easily the best fish dish I had during my stay in Stockholm, and even the potatoes were delicious and perfectly cooked.

This was followed by raggmunkar, Swedish-style potato pancakes:

which were served with knaperstekt fläsk, bacon-like strips of ham, and a side of rårörda lingon, stewed lingonberries:

It was rustic, salty, oily, and hearty, and when topped with the lingonberries, sweet and a bit sour; basically everything I like in a dish. It also had the added benefit, according to Göran, of being an excellent hangover cure (I had been at a wedding the previous night...).

Here's Göran's take on the meal (unfortunately only in Swedish), which, as a bonus, includes a recipe for gravade strömming. Despite the utter simplicity of the dishes, this was easily one of the most memorable meals of my trip. I'd encourage any of you who happen to be in Stockholm to stop by.

KonstnärsBaren
Smålandsgatan 7 (off Biblioteksgatan, near Stureplan)
08 - 679 60 32

Please be patient!

I apologize for the lack of blogging from RealThai as of late. I'm currently in Oregon and haven't even caught up with all the blogs I'd like to do from Stockholm, which shows you how far behind I am! In addition to this, I already have plans to visit Borneo and Cambodia more or less right after I get back to Bangkok. In the meantime, I'll try to get my mits on a Mac so I can share a few more of the things I ate in Stockhom and here.

Saluhallen

Saluhallen, opened in 1888, is the largest and most famous of Stockholm's indoor markets. Located in Östermalm, traditionally the wealthiest part of town, you're not going to find any deals here, but the setting is amazing, and the products excellent.

This market is considerably more "Swedish" than Hötorgshallen, and inside you'll find more traditional Swedish staples such as potatoes:

herring to eat over them:

or even smoked eel:

Or maybe you'd rather have your potatoes fried with ham, as in the traditional Swedish dish, pytt i panna:

If you crave Swedish food but can't be bothered to cook, there's also prepared food inside the hall:

as well as baked goods to take home:

If you don't mind doing a bit of cooking, pick up some sausages:

It's all there:

To reach Saluhallen, take the red line subway to Östermalmstorg station.

Kvarnen

Found myself again in Södermalm, southern Stockholm, where just around the corner from Jerusalem Kebab you'll find a 99 year-old restaurant and Stockholm staple, Kvarnen. Friend and blogger Göran Lager invited me out here recently, and we had a great time, eating some excellent svensk husmanskost (traditional Swedish food) and chatting with the restaurant's chef and owner.

Göran suggested the havswallenbergare, a seafood take on a traditional Swedish meat dish (pictured above). Normally made from a patty of beef, this version was comprised of salmon and pike, and was served with mashed potatoes and peas and a hollandaise sauce. Although it was very simple it was very, very good.

Göran and I were almost equally impressed with the restaurant's excellent bread basket:

''

a reliable indicator of a good restaurant. The basket contained a variety of delicious and slightly unusual Swedish hårdbröd, which thankfully, was served with butter (most Swedes prefer margarine).

After dinner we chatted with the Kvarnen's chef, Mauritz Lind and the restaurant's owner, Thomas Steinwendr:

These are two guys who love talking about food (Mauritz worked at Edsbacka Krog as well as at a restaurant in Phuket for nearly a decade), and after we complimented their bread, Thomas brought us a few more that they're planning on including in the basket:

Restaurang Aktiebolaget Kvarnen
Tjärhovsgatan 4 (Medborgareplatsen subway)
08 643 03 80

Thai in Stockholm

I recently spent a lovely evening at the home of writer and food historian (and blogger), Göran Lager:

Göran lives in Sollentuna, the same suburb of Stockholm that I lived in when I went to high school here more than 10 years ago. He and I orginally had plans to take dinner at Edsbacka Krog, possibly Sweden's best restaurant, also located in Sollentuna, but our appointment was moved to Thursday (more on that later). Instead, we went back to Göran's house where his wife Rodjana, a native of Thailand (and a former employee of Edsbacka Krog), made us a wonderful meal.

We started with a teriffic tom kha kai:

the famous coconut milk soup with chicken. I never order this dish in Thailand, but think that Rodjana's has inspired me to begin doing so! This was accompanied by a spicy som tam:

The image of which was actually taken by budding food photographer, and Lager's daugher, Plaifah:

And finally, an absolutely delicious muu thawt, deep-fried pork:

Which was made from pork shortribs from G. Nilsson Livs, Göran's favourite butcher in Hötorghallen. Rodjana marinated these in fish sauce and coriander seed, and liberally sprinkled with deep-fried crispy garlic.

Thai restaurants in Stockholm are very expensive, and by all accounts, mediocre. If you're here and want Thai food, my advice is to become friends with a Thai--preferably one who cooked at a two-star restaurant!

Shadows, etc.

Interesting shadows, Östermalm, Stockholm

More wandering around central Stockholm has resulted in the pics posted here. Again, nothing terribly interesting (where are all the people??), but it was a slightly more productive wander than previous days. I'm still waiting for the nice weather to go out so I can take some boring postcard-type shots that I can sell as stock later. For now, I'm free to pursue the kind of photography I love, but am finding it hard to be inspired in this environment...

Emerging, Kungsgatan, Stockholm

Lunchtime, Sergelstorg, Stockholm

T-Centralen, Stockholm's main subway terminal

In looking back at these, I find that many of these and many of my other photos are far too symetrical, and a bit too 'distant'. I've also really been thinking about something David Alan Harvey recently said on his blog, "...to really make photographs that have the "authorship" of which i so often speak, the photographer must look inside....for it is impossible to be an author if one does not have anything to say...." I'll admit that in most cases I'm often simply observing, and don't necessarily have anything to say about Stockholm or the other places/things I shoot, which is probably my biggest obstacle...

Chess in the park

Taking photos here in Stockholm is literally and figuratively a world apart from taking photos in Southeast Asia. There's very little life on the streets, and the paranoia people emit when they see my camera is almost palpable. This is not to mention the cold weather and the fact that when I'm already familiar with a place I tend to have a difficult time seeing something new. Luckily there have been fleeting moments of sun and warm weather, and after the long, dark winter, people occasionally drop their guard and forget about the guy with the camera.

Such was the case yesterday in Kungsträdgården, a park in central Stockholm. The weather wasn't exactly warm (I overheard some Thai tourists complaining about how cold it was), but there were people out enjoying the sun, in particular a couple men playing street chess. I started out with this image:

The pic shows what was happening, but lacks dynamism. To make it a little more interesting, I moved to a different angle, closed in a bit, and tried to capture some of the movement of the game:

Not being entirely happy with this, I used the old trick of tilting the horizon:

and then cranked down the aperture to depict the movement:

which resulted in the best pic of the lot. I'll be the first to admit that this isn't much more than a mediocre image, but it is much more dynamic than the first, and I'm happy that I'm beginning to become more pragmatic about my photography. I also like the fact that I am slowly getting better at being able to pick out what I want to show, or what I don't want to show. Now if there was only more life here...

Hötorgshallen

As in most other big European cities, the residents of Stockholm buy their groceries at modern supermarkets. However the city still supports a couple examples of old-school market halls, which I'd like to feature on these pages. The first of these is Hötorgshallen, located in a basement below a large movie theatre smack in the middle of downtown Stockholm.

This being Scandinavia, you'll find quite a bit of seafood, including fresh:

preserved:

and ready to eat:

Other interesting looking local food is found at Saluplats 30, a stall selling the prepared dishes and ingredients of Sweden's neighbour to the east, Finland:

The food here looked delicious, and quite similar to traditional Swedish food, and I definitely plan on buying a few things for a picnic in the future. In general however, Scandinavian food is not the emphasis at Hötorgshallen, but rather other cuisines, including Greek:

Middle-Eastern, including these amazing salads and mezze:

and most predominantly, Turkish. Other than a couple Turkish delis and the obligatory kebab stall, there were also two places selling 'Turkish burgers':

These took the form of buns filled with various Turkish condiments. I found this too interesting to resist, and ordered a vegetarian version:

It was stuffed with deep-fried eggplant, grilled cheese, a dolma, some salad, and then topped with two sauces of your choice. It was actually quite good, but got me wondering if such a thing is actually found in Turkey, or is a result of the Swedish desire to serve everything in burger form...?

For more info on Hötorgshallen (only in Swedish), go here.