An Isan family runs a dinner/latenight cart across the street; at this point, I just point at something and sometimes ask for a preparation--*crab* with "tom yam" means tom yam soup with crab; *deep fried pork belly, roasted chicken, and fresh-made sausage* with "barbecue" means a plate of grilled meat.
Tonight, I just pointed at a blue crab with mouth parts still moving and legs still twitching under the raffia tiedown, a horseshoe crab, and then asked for one surprise.
A word on the physical nature of this place: they're on the far side of a four-lane road, at the extreme northern end of town. They are the northern most of three full-service stands that offer essentially the same fare; just south of the three is a soup place--pick fish, pork, or chicken balls, narrow, wide. or ribbon rice noodles, and they blanch the goodies up before ladling on soup stock from a heater in the cart; across the street is the stick stand: skewers of all manner of forcemeat, fake meat, and non-meat, all stuck on a bamboo skewer and deep fried in blackened cooking oil (this is where you stop when you're too hungry or drunk to actually eat but want food, and it is fantastic).
On the sidewalk, they have maybe fifteen tables, fewer when it's raining and you need to sit under one of the roller-stretched tarps (think: RV patio covering, except attached to the wall behind the sidewalk. Each table is knee-high and dented from nightly stacking, most are rusted through, and you have to be careful to consider where anything will side, roll, or drip before you put it down. You sit on plastic mats that shed like a cat lady's sofa, and they bring a bucket of ice that steams in the humidity and a litre of water that takes a lot of imagination to become filtered. You get a little oval plate with dented spoon and fork, and if you're lucky you'll get a couple of napkins and not put them in a puddle.
So tonight, they brought the crab first: they cracked the shell, cleaned it, and tossed the body meat in with some leafy greens that were frying on about 200000 btus; the rest of the crab went in screaming hot oil while they tossed some curry powder on the veg and scrambled in some eggs. The egg-crab-veg curry goes back in the cavity, shell goes back on top, done.
Next came the horseshoe crab: take an in-season crab (I think this means a female with full egg sacks), throw it on coals until the eggs are cooked, then pop the shell; run around the edge
and you get the egg sacks, then peel until the muscles--which just connect the legs with the top of the shell--give way. Scrape the eggs into a som tam salad--the lime-chili green papaya salad, with extra cashews and baby shrimp (fresh fried)--where it would be typical to add a half-dollar sized softshell crab, mix it around in a quart-capacity wooden mortar and pestle, then scrape the lot back into the inverted dinosaur shell.
For the "surprise me" bit, they brought a fruit salad. Halved grapes, pineapple, asian pear, which would be pretty yawn except that they grow fresh and wild and without genetic alteration or pest preservation or spray or refrigeration, which is to say, "Oh, that's what happened when man fell from Eden: cold-storage apples!"
But then there were cukes, shredded carrot, shredded green papaya, jackfruit, green beans, tomato, and raw shrimp curing in a chili-lime dressing. Did I mention that a carrot over here tastes about as succulent as a Fallon mellon over there? (PS: Be certain you buy a genuine Fallon melon--generally, the muskmelons are accepted as the best, but it's hard to go wrong with the extremely hot and dry desert soil.)
For one, thank goodness I have nothing against refrigeration, and the fruit and horseshoe crab salads will marinade well.
For two, match that with a litre of beer for about $13.25 (which is about as much as I've spent on a meal over here).
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