78 ~ Sticky fingers in Laos

I recently returned from a work trip to Laos – my first post-pandemic trip to a part world I’ve come to know in three decades of working and sometimes living there.  

Laos is somewhat under the radar as a country, but it has at least one distinction, an unfortunate one:  it is the most bombed country per capita in history. A nation about the size of Oregon, with a population of only 3 million at the time of the Vietnam War (which Vietnamese and Lao call the “American War”), the US dropped more tons of bombs on Laos than were dropped on all countries of Europe during World War II. Vestiges of the destruction remain today, but little of it in the hearts of the kind and welcoming Lao people.

Like many of us, one of my favorite ways to explore a country is to eat my way around it. What people eat and how they prepare it are windows onto a country’s history and identity. I had hoped to use Marco Polo as an example here - that because he had the balls (le palle) to travel to China, he brought back noodles and Italy became a pasta culture (“My dad went to Cathay and all I got was this fettuccine”). But it turns out that part’s a myth, apparently first floated by some spaghetti advertisers in the 1920s and 1930s. Noodles were already being eaten on the Italian peninsula when MP was born.

That said, a basic parameter we use to define and describe a country is often its fundamental carbohydrate: Italy and its pasta (wherever it came from); China or Japan, rice; Mexico, tortillas. France is the country of baguettes (and croissant), and the Irish had their potatoes (although not so far back; potatoes came to Ireland from the New World – food as a window onto a country’s history).

In Laos, the heart and soul of the country is embodied by a basket of sticky rice. In fact, Laos has an additional, gentler distinction, of consuming the most glutinous rice per capita in the world. It is the country’s staple carbohydrate (at least for a large portion of the population – the Hmong and some other hill tribes of Laos mostly cultivate and eat ‘regular’ rice). 

For Lao people, sticky rice is a cornerstone of their self-identification  – if you eat sticky rice, you’re Lao; if not, you must be something else. I once had this exchange with a local guide while on a wildlife survey in the forests of Laos, as we shared a basket of sticky rice in camp:

“William, do you have sticky rice in America?”

“No, not much.”

“What, then, do you eat in America?”

“Oh, bread, potatoes, regular rice, other things.”

“No sticky rice??”

“No”, I replied.

  A wistful pall of realization came over his face. “Ah, I can never go to America”, he said. “I would die within two weeks without sticky rice”.

  What’s eaten with sticky rice in Laos is diverse, and an avenue of exploration. Options include minced water buffalo meat salad, fried Mekong catfish, banana flower salad, mangoes with coconut milk, delicious green papaya salad and less-delicious (to my palate) fried bats. Fresh, crimson duck blood topped with diced peanuts is typically served to accompany grilled duck, and two of my daughter’s favorite treats used to be grilled pork intestine and roasted wasp larvae (pigs and wasps are now safer since she became vegan).

Perhaps it will help mediate any judgmental revulsion at some of these foods to know that villagers I once spent time with in a remote mountain area of Laos expressed their own mild disgust, upon learning that we westerners drink the milk of other animals (and that we defecate inside our houses). One man’s duck blood is another’s 2% from Organic Valley.

In addition to its varied and interesting foods, I like that Laos is a country where you eat with your hands. I enjoy getting tactile with food - permission to play with it as it were. Granted, in Lao towns and cities you’ll see chopsticks and spoons, but mainly to eat foods, such as noodle soup, of Vietnamese and Chinese origin (a window onto the past of Laos).  Out in the villages, and still at most meals generally in Laos, the central food is sticky rice, three times a day, eaten by forming a bite-sized ball with the fingers, and pressing it into a dish of stir-fried something. It’s pretty much impossible to eat sticky rice with a fork.

Eating with your hands is not only easier, I find it a comforting metaphor for getting closer to the source of our food, unmediated by the middleman of a fork. Perhaps the trajectory of distancing ourselves from the sources of our food started with the invention of the fork (our tined friend got its first real foothold in the West in the 11th century, when Italians started to adopt it as an aid to eating all those noodles).

It’s interesting to consider what our fundamental carb is in America. As noted in a recent post (#76), for many early Native Americans it was corn, and given how much corn we Americans still consume and assimilate into our cells, corn is still one answer. Yet so much of it is consumed in secondary, ‘hidden’ forms – such as feedlot beef and pork, and high fructose corn syrup – that it probably doesn’t count (for the same reason I’ll not consider another heavyweight contender for ‘America’s carb’: sugar).

The answer I like is that it depends on which America we’re talking about. In Chinatowns and Koreatowns, and the bayous of Louisiana, it’s rice. In many homes in the southwest (and some in Wisconsin), it’s corn or wheat tortillas. For native peoples in the northern Midwest and Canada, wild rice. And in suburban kid-hauler vans and SUVs across this great land, burger buns or the coating on chicken tenders might lay claim.

In general for these United States, bread probably comes closest. Afterall, we’re a country of sandwiches (and all that toast). I also love the fact that the answer is not obvious, that there is no one America (even as there is no single culture of Laos, with all its non-Lao ethnic groups). And that’s a good, rich thing. For as any ecologist like me knows, there is strength, resilience and beauty in diversity. And a lot of interesting food.

So maybe this evening I’ll head into my American kitchen and steam up a basket of sticky rice, while munching on homemade salsa and tortilla chips.

  And you?