Hey everyone hope you're having an amazing day. It's mark wiens, i'm in the gorgeous mountains of mehongsan province in northern thailand, and today we have the special opportunity to be in a karen hill tribe, village, community hanging out with my friend mook, who is from this village, and so the plan for this afternoon is We are going to first head up the side of the mountain, just a little ways to harvest some ingredients, including some chilies and especially they're, going to harvest a banana trunk, an entire banana tree trunk stem. So this is the part we want to eat, which is then going to be used in a specific karen dish that we are gon na cook, and so it's gon na be again an incredible experience, incredibly delicious local and traditional karen food and i'm gon na share. It all with you right now.

What is the name of the village mung pam? Yes, okay! Yes, i'm already starting to see some chilies karen chiles, which are some of the best chilies that you will find in all of thailand or oh, it's uh cassava. I think cassava right, oh yeah, this one is huge wow, oh okay! This is a leg sized cassava awesome. I i have seen a lot of cassava. I don't think i've ever seen a cassava this large, okay, maybe we'll set this down for a little bit and we're just going to get some chilis real, fast, okay, the cup they're, some of my favorite chilies.

Not only are they some of the spiciest chilies in thailand, but also some of the most fragrant best, especially when they're grown in the mountain like this, they are the best chilies. That is a lot of chilis some type of an eggplant. I have i've seen this before i'm not totally sure of the english name, but it almost looks like a tomato, but it's an eggplant okay cup, lemon basil, okay, oh you and they're also saying that right now, because it is the winter it's really dry in the Winter, so that's why there's not as many vegetables and they're, not as blooming or as green as normal, but especially they said in the rainy season, when all the hills around here are very green and lush, but still there's a lot and that lemon basil smells so Good she said she's going to pound it up with chili and make a karen nam prick chili dip using the flowers of the lemon basil and chilis. But as soon as she digs up that uh galangal, you could smell the aroma of that rhizome galangal, the gingery freshness, oh man.

It smells amazing, they're, so good so fast and just know all the ingredients. Oh man, i love it. Everything is natural. Everything is literally from the backyard side of the mountain backyard.

I think it's a a wild jungle banana that is huge. The which is the trunk of the banana tree, is gon na go into this dish. This is huge, and so i think uh mook said that this type of banana tree, so juicy look at the juices coming out of it, and mook also said that there's no banana fruit on this tree, or maybe it has it but there's so so many seeds, Because of the wild bananas but they're just water's gushing from the cells of the tree, you can lift weights with it just to confirm all of these petals from the banana tree that we are gon na discard they're. Actually, not gon na go to waste.

The pigs which are over there are gon na be happy to eat all of them, but we just want the core. This is going to be one of the coolest ingredients, coolest meals, ever water. Just as i went to pick up the camera, the tree fell and leaving the stump and those layers that is amazing, uh and that's exactly. What we want is that center, the very core of the banana tree.

That's what we want to eat. Oh foreign. This is so. This is the part we want to eat honey, honey.

This is the section. Okay, nice good job. You guys are amazing. Oh my god man.

They, let me tell you they the experience, but the knowledge. That's just life knowledge in the forest on these mountains. We've got all the ingredients, we're gon na head back to the house to start cooking and i can't wait to try uh the special karen dish or dishes they're, making a couple dishes that they're gon na make for us with these ingredients. Bye-Bye loving this village, so beautiful yeah, oh man and people are so incredibly friendly, buddy cobb and there are about 130 families that live in this village about 600 or so people.

So it's a good size uh, but not too big, and just almost i mean you can walk of course everywhere in this village and and it's just so peaceful okay. I think this is where we're heading swedenkov. Oh ying, you got the bamboo right, that's for the cooking, the curry! This is the mountain rice growing here right, yes from your village, we're gon na first get started with the karen mountain rice, uh, we're gon na put that on to start cooking and then we're gon na begin with the other dishes. Uh now we're getting started on the kawkua, the roasted rice dish.

What is the name again in cook, so the first step is taking some of the mountain rice, the mountain rice and just toasting it over the fire, roasting it home and she's getting started on the curry uh, which is going to be made in the bamboo pole. Uh using a variety of dry spice, there's uh macon, which is similar to prickly ash or similar to related to uh, sichuan pepper, there's a like a. I can't remember the name of that spice, but it's very fragrant, um and then there's also coriander seed, and here goes in some dry current chilies and now some of the fresh spices go in including galangal and lemongrass, and for the rice you have to keep on Toasting it until it turns brown until it actually turns more yellow in color golden in color, but you want all that fragrance that smoky, yellow golden color - and this is mook's mom mother, who has come to inspect how it's coming along. Okay rice is ready.

Oh, it smells so good, it's so fragrant like popcorn, almost foreign, okay, so two things pounding away now for the curry paste for the curry. That is one complex curry. So, starting with the dry spice, then moving into the fresh spices uh. Then she added garlic and shallots and lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves and galangal pounding that and turmeric pounding that all together, that is just a medley, a harmony of just vibrant ultimate, vibrant ingredients.

Then taking the flowers stripping from the stems: the flowers of lemon basil. That goes in ultra incredibly fragrant, and some of the kids have just arrived. So micah is very happy mike. Are you making them laughs foreign foreign, that's gon na roast in the flame for about 30 to 40 minutes? They said until the the bamboo, the green.

You have to by the way you have to use green bamboo fresh bamboo every time you do this, because then it chars the bamboo it roasts the bamboo uh, as you cook, into the roasted rice, powdered dish, which i'm still not sure how it's all gon na Come together and it's something like i've never seen before is gon na go in a chicken and also the the banana stump that we we harvested. So those are the main ingredients for, for that dish. Funny are going to go into a paste or the ingredient. Seasoning ingredients: that's going to go into the toasted rice powder with the chicken and the banana stump.

Oh and then the banana stump gets chopped up into little bite-sized pieces. You see like the the airiness of it almost like the like little segments of it, and really what you want is the heart of the banana trunk. What is that and another ingredient that she's going to add to the rice powder dish is these? Are i'm not sure if they're hyacinth beans or some type of almost like similar to snow peas a little bit but a type of bean pea? That's gon na go in as well fresh off the bush like everything, fresh off the bush, and i think it's going to be chopped up now. Okay time to start on the toasted rice dish, chicken goes into the pot, then that pounded paste of lemongrass, galangal and chili's goes in.

Oh then, that eggplant, that type of - and they said it's going to make it a little bit bitter uh. So that's gon na, but that's also a key ingredient in the dish and i'm already loving the chili dip that they're making everything gets the fire treatment on the fire. The chilies are roasted: lemongrass even gets tossed on the fire smoked out, burned out, tomatoes go on and tua nao, which is the fermented. Soybean discs, dried, okay, okay, so so the toasted rice powder goes in last and that immediately starts to thicken it a little bit and makes it starchy uh and makes you can immediately see it getting like thicker and heartier and i'm not sure it's gon na.

I think it's gon na boil just for a little bit longer and i think it's ready and i think almost everything is ready and i am extremely ready to start eating. This has been just a fascinating meal, cooking learning experience for me and just absolutely impressive. How all the ingredients are from right here? Okay, the last step, coriander and green onions. We are all sitting down to eat again.

I don't think i've ever had a meal quite like this, and actually the toasted rice, which has thickened into a like porridge consistency. It's a main dish that you eat along with rice: it's not just a porridge that you eat it's a main dish. Then the curry came out. You get that poof of all those herbs and that meat, and then we have the chili dip and what a meal and just they're incredibly hard work and everything.

What stands out to me is everything is just natural and i love the communal eating of this meal, because it's all one central bowl and you just take bite by bite. You don't take a whole plate of food, so you enjoy the family and community. Okay. Let's try oh wow immediately the smokiness of that rice and the toasted ingredients.

Oh that's so good and i think i got a piece of the um, the banana trunk, which has kind of a fibrous stringy texture to it, but the smokiness of that. Oh man, that's like the i mean it is a porridge consistency, it's thick, but it's wonderfully smoking. I love it. Okay, the other dish.

I cannot wait to eat the the curry cooked in the bamboo with all those herbs and you see the turmeric, making it yellow the lemongrass in there wow. That's incredible! Oh, oh and just herbaceous. How do you say uh? Oh, that's tasty both dishes together, okay and we still have the chili dip to eat with everything as well. Okay, with the roasted sticky rice that chili dip, there's tomatoes in there there's fermented soy beans, everything roasted, oh wow, that numb prick is just insane the smokiness.

The umami, the tomatoes, the chilies, the fermented soybean, is just what elevates it. It's just so warming, it's really hearty filling. You can tell that it's just. It is absolutely the perfect dish for mountains for colder weather weather, colder temperatures, and i love also how you have the the texture of the porridge um and then at the same time you every now and then you get a piece of the vegetable, the eggplant, the Bitter eggplant or the um, the banana stump, which has a fibrous kind of a crisp texture to it.

For this bite, i got one of the pieces of the eggplant. Oh wow, yes, like the bitterness of it but kind of sweet at the same time and the seeds just erupt out of it what's happening, alloy my cup, everything blended together in the bamboo wow, that is a flavor wow. That was an incredible meal that was superb by time. We finish with dinner at 7, 30 p.m.

The village is just completely quiet. You just hear the natural sounds of the insects, the stars, i don't think i can capture them on the camera, but just the full sky of stars not polluted by light. It is spectacular uh, but that's gon na wrap up this just amazing experience. Learning about karen food harvesting, our own ingredients - and they are truly just so incredibly knowledgeable about the land and about cooking talk about master chefs man, and i want to say a huge thank you to mook for hosting us here in her village.

She actually does tours and i will show you you could come to her village. She will take you around and will take care of you so i'll have her link in the description box below uh contact her when you are in mae hong san for a learning experience and an incredible time in this beautiful village in the mountains and that's going To be it for this video, i want to say a huge thank you for watching. Please remember to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, leave a comment below i'd love to hear from you and if you're not already subscribed, uh click subscribe and also click the little bell icon and that way you'll immediately get notified of the next video That i publish thanks again for watching and i will see you on the next video.