Kravan cuisine

April 01st, 2015

Even for people who don’t read or like cookbooks, visit this site Jeffrey Alford’s Chicken in the Mango Tree (D&M $26.95) is a fascinating, fish-out-of-water story about a food writer who left his Toronto marriage and now lives in the remote, rural village of Kravan in northeastern Thailand with his Thai partner named Pea, “better with a slingshot than anyone I have ever seen.” Subtitled ‘Food and Life in a Thai-Khmer Village,’ the book is described by Alford as an exercise in “culinary anthropology.” It highlights Pea’s cooking instructions for a myriad of creatures and free food that she finds by foraging near their Khmer village, 19 km. north of the Cambodian border—including grasshoppers, snakes, red ant eggs, crabs, shrimp, tree leaves and scorpions (eaten raw). She also raises crickets, frogs, fish, ducks, chickens and pigs. Alford claims Kravan food is neither Thai food or Cambodian food. 978-1-77162-060-4

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