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Around 4 am three times a week, a massive drum that hangs off ropes in the grounds of Luang Prabang's main Wat, or temple, beats out in an irregular pattern over this sleeping Laotian town. It's a sign for the women to wake and cook the religious offerings they will give, down on their knees on mats on the sidewalk, to the Buddhist monks who emerge from the town's several wats.
The monks appear in the distance, the senior abbot leading a long line of lesser monks and novices in tangerine orange robes, stepping silently in bare feet through the early morning mist.
Down on their hips, hung on a strap, each carries a large bamboo or metal bowl to collect the foods the kneeling women will put into them as they pass by.
The monks, who may eat what they will but cannot kill animals or cook for themselves, must depend on these gifts for their meals. Even so, when they pass a small group of beggars, they, in turn, remove some of their foods and hand them on.
One curbside group of young men sat waiting with sacks of chips, boxes of coconut milk, packages of candies and strips of spicy buffalo jerky.
"We were novice monks before," grinned one in tight white jeans and a ginger-tipped Mohawk. "We know how it is to have nice things to eat." Most young men enter monasteries for an education, with only 20 percent remaining once it is complete.
The kneeling women, however, were dealing out sticky rice, rolled into tight balls from a mound in woven wicker containers or pressed into banana leaf packages.
Khao Niaw - sticky rice, more commonly eaten than boiled rice, is central to every Laotian meal because it can easily be dipped into the different single dishes and vegetable purees offered for communal consumption without plates.
The nation's modest economy was badly hurt by the Asian economic collapse of 1997. Between June 1997 and early 1999, the kip, the local currency, fell more than 80 percent against the dollar.
Inflation ran at more than 100 percent per annum. Although it's now down to 35 percent a year, prices rise while salaries are static. So rice, a cheap staple widely grown locally, has become even more essential to a family's well-being.
Sticky rice is made by soaking rice grains overnight, then steaming them for 30 minutes over simmering water in the kind of woven conical baskets that frequently decorate the lightbulbs of hip Asian-fusion restaurants in the West.
Pressed by the thumb of the right hand against the first two fingers, the tight wad is dipped into different small dishes and a large bowl of soup. It must be compressed enough that no grains are left behind in the food, and the lid must be replaced upon the rice container at the end of the meal or bad luck will fall upon the household.
When Boun Suvat, a recently turned tour guide only just released from his monastery after 17 years, was invited from Luang Prabang to spend two weeks in Cincinnati, Ohio, the young Laotian was always hungry. "I eat six slices of toast for breakfast every day. But toast not heavy in the stomach like rice."
In an economically comfortable household, the choice of dishes to go with a bowl of sticky rice will include a fish or meat dish, most commonly water buffalo made into spicy jerky.
But as often as not, the bowl will be surrounded by small platters of vegetables, vegetable purees and salsas. With the fertile silt banks of the Mekong River surrounding the town providing excellent garden plots, a cooler climate than further south in Laos, and the influence of the Royal family who once lived in Luang Prabang, a wide variety of vegetables are available.
In season, they appear in the markets. Some are turned into pickles and salsas or dried for when the rainy season comes and the Mekong rises so high it covers the allotments.
At this time of year before the rains, the river is reduced almost to a broad stream. It's a warning of what would happen to the livelihoods and diet of the Laotians if the Chinese go ahead and dam the Mekong in China, as proposed.
Even if the protein element is less in the village diet, it is high in vegetables and low in fat. Salads are served with most meals, alongside the cooked vegetable dishes. This Laotian vinaigrette makes a vibrant change from our standard French version and goes well when, in Laotian style, you make your salad with lettuce leaves and watercress, and tear into it plenty of cilantro and mint leaves.
Lao Vinaigrette
Ingredients
   1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons fish sauce (Nam pa)
3 tablespoons ground roasted peanuts
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
pinch cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
1-2 fresh red chilis, or to taste, thinly sliced
2-3 tablespoons onion, peeled and finely chopped
Directions
Over gentle heat, melt the sugar in the water until it becomes syrupy.
Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients.
Cool, then pour over your salad leaves.
Source: IHT
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