World Culture Tour: Laos part 1 - Laap

Still in Southeast Asia, we move into Laos for the next stop of our World Culture Tour. Having just learned quite a bit about the Vietnam War, we now found out about "America's Secret War" in Laos which saw tons of bombs dropped on the country for a 9 year stretch, starting in the 60s and going into the 70s. A third of the bombs dropped didn't explode and still lay all over the country. 20,000 people have died since the bombing stopped because they came across unexploded bombs. Many of those are kids.

After watching a documentary on all that's described above, we decided to delve into something a bit more fun, food. For our Laos recipe, we made laap. However, the recipe calls for fish sauce, and none of us like the taste of fish. So, we decided to skip that!

Laap

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp Long Grain White Rice

• 1 lb Ground Turkey

• 1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

• 1/4 cup Chicken Broth

• Asian Fish Sauce...

• 1 Tbsp Lime Juice

• 1/2 Cup Chopped Mint

• 1/2 Cup Chopped Cilantro

• 1/4 tsp Crushed Red Pepper

• 2 Scallions thinly sliced

• 2 Stalks of Lemongrass, grated or minced.

• 1 Bag of Long Grain White Rice (to server the laap over)

• Lime wedges for decoration (and to squeeze some extra lime juice if wanted). You could also use endive leaves.

Directions

1. Begin cooking the bag of rice.

2. Separately, cook the Tbsp of rice till it's golden brown and hard.

3. Crush (or use a grinder) the rice into a powder.

4. Back on the stove top, heat the oil in a skillet and cook the turkey till it's brown.

5. Once the turkey is ready, add in the chicken broth and cook till the broth bubbles.

6. Remove from heat, and stir in the scallions, cilantro, mint, red pepper, rice powder, lemongrass, and lime juice.

7. Add salt and pepper to taste.

8. Keep it warm while your bag of rice finishes cooking.

9. Once the rice is done, put it on a plate and cover the rice with the laap mixture.

10. Add the decorative lime wedges or endive leaves and serve!

For the rest our Laos stop:

Movies:

• Air America 

• Rescue Dawn 

• Uncommon valor

• American’s Secret War in Laos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2hLjsVmDVY

• Laos History - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MRwJU59RZw

Food:

Laap - https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/pork-laap-salad-laap-muu

Stories:

The Mango Tree  - http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Laos/sub5_3c/entry-2968.html

Music:

Traditional music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V2K8zBPxgA

Click to see more of the World Culture Tour!