When ordering food in Thailand, it is common to write your order down on a small strip of paper and hand that to the server. We did this, and soon enough, the restaurant owner had arranged the dishes the table for us to dig in, family style.
I tried every type of food on the table, but the one that stood out to me was called larb mu. Larb (pronounced like the first syllable in the English word “lobby”) translates to salad, and mu translates to pork. So, larb mu translates to pork salad! It sat on a plastic plate, a small mound of minced and fried pork with a few veggies sprinkled in. Also on the plate lay four small slices of cucumber. With my spoon in my right hand and my fork in my left, I scooped a heaping helping of larb onto my plate and then took a bite with rice.
The larb mu was spicy and succulent. It tasted like a perfect combination of spiciness, saltiness and juicy minced pork! What I didn’t expect was the fresh and sweet taste, like leafy garden vegetables, though I didn’t see any vegetables in the dish.
As I ate more, I could really feel the spiciness on my tongue, lips and throat. It burned like hot fire, but it was so delicious that I couldn’t stop eating. Some people get sweaty when they eat hot and spicy foods. I am one of those people. The server noticed the sweat dripping down my face and he smiled and politely pointed to the cucumber slices. Who knew that cucumber could sooth my burning mouth so well? What foods do you eat to cool your mouth down when you’ve eaten something spicy?
Since that day, I’ve gotten much better at eating spicy food without sweating or struggling quite as much.
