Laotian Christmas-Duck Blood Salad and Duck Larb

This year Ivan, Elena and I went to Laos for Christmas.  We had actually expected that no one would celebrate Christmas here but interestingly enough, there are a very large # of fully decorated Christmas trees and children running around in Santa suits.  Quite a few people wear Santa hats and we were wished Merry Christmas far more times here than we would have at home. So, Christmas in Laos is still Christmas.  We did, however, miss out on the bread stuffing and marshmallow covered sweet potatoes.  In case anyone feels badly for us, our hotel plays Christmas music 24-7.  Plus the entire staff wear either Santa hats or reindeer headbands.  The restaurant next door has a large frosty the snowman.  Plus, the hammer and sickle flags are all red… It is highly festive in Laos. 

Christmas Eve we went to Anna’s Grilled Duck.  This place is pretty famous in Vientiane and quite a ways out of town.  Their specialty, as expected, is duck. We had the roasted duck as well as the grilled duck checks. The duck cheeks are interesting as they come with their own skewer which is part of the duck bill.   Sticky rice and a fried green vegetable called water lily/water spinach added to the meal but the crowning glory and the thing they are most famous for is duck blood salad.  I do suppose I don’t really need to go into detail about the main ingredient which is, of course, very, very red duck blood and then has green herbage, roasted peanuts and fried onions on top.  I did try all of the above but my most favorite part was the exceptionally spicy water spinach followed closely by the roasted duck. 

Christmas morning, we went to the market to try a local specialty which is rice mixed with coconut milk and sometimes with taro which is then stuffed into bamboo tubes, cooked and then dipped in coconut.  You peal back the bamboo and eat the sticky rice inside. I know this doesn’t really sound great but think of a more solid version of rice pudding and you have the idea.  A bit later we came upon Thai griddle snacks. These are a rice/coconut batter poured into a small mold and when two are ready, stuck together.  Once again, think rice pudding in a more solid format.  Laotian coffee completed the meal.  They make amazing coffee here most likely because of the very large quantities of condensed milk added to the coffee.  Ivan had looked up both Anna’s Grilled Duck and an amazing coffee place near our hotel for us to try. 

For our Christmas Dinner, we first tried to find a larb restaurant Ivan had read about but had no luck so we tried one closer to our hotel in town.  We ordered several things that were never my favorites-Tom Yum Soup and fish cakes as examples and both were so good. The soup was spicy and the fish cakes were covered in lemongrass sauce.  I have found that most all of the food is very heavily spiced with lemongrass. Elena and I are going to figure out how to make the sauce when we get home and will post our findings.   We had both duck and pork larb-slightly different than the Thai version I am used to eating. We had a red curry which very much seemed like a Thai dish and green papaya salad.  No Jell-O, no turkey and as previously mentioned, no sweet potatoes.  It was, however, an amazing Christmas dinner celebrated with two of my favorite people in a beautiful country. 

Want to make your own larb?  You can find a number of recipes on line. The one that I used to make my own larb is one from www.lemonblossoms.com website.  I do one additional thing which is to take two large handfuls of fresh green beans, chop them into pea-sized slices and microwave them in a bowl with water added for 2 minutes. I drain the beans and add to the time I cook the ground chicken.  This, of course, is not how larb is served but the green beans do not change the flavor and I like having another vegetable (and color) with my larb.