Asia's Appetizing Adventures

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh travels across Asia in search of great home cooking and person-to-person encounters. Join him as he experiences a diversity of tastes and lifestyles throughout the region. In this episode, Kentetsu tries a Thai dish that uses pig's blood, a specialty of Mae Sai, Thailand's northernmost town on the border with Myanmar. He visits the catering shop of a woman he met at the market and watches her cook the stir-fried dish, which includes both the blood and minced pork.

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh travels across Asia in search of great home cooking and person-to-person encounters. In the Thai town of Mae Ai, near the border with Myanmar, Kentetsu meets a woman of the Lahu ethnic minority and learns about their traditional dishes. He helps make one of them: meatballs flavored with, of all things, tree shavings. Farmers prepare it as an offering during harvest. Then he learns how to make a rice gruel the Lahu people always cook when they welcome guests. He finds out it takes a good bit of time and effort.

When culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh explores Taipei, he comes across a fragrant cup of tea. This encounter leads him to a tea farm in an area called Beipu. At the home of a Hakka family, he's treated to a tea called Oriental Beauty. It is grown in a way that allows bugs to sweeten it up by chewing on the leaves. Kentetsu also tries some authentic Hakka dishes made from preserved ingredients such as mustard greens that have been fermented more than three months and dried white radish that's been aged five years.

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh goes to Taiwan's Orchid Island, known for its coral reefs. There, he tries the native Tao people's tradition of fishing for flying fish. For the Tao people, the flying fish is sacred. So, they follow strict rules on how to prepare and eat it. Nothing goes to waste. Dried flying fish is first used to make soup. Then, what's left is cooked with fried rice. Kentetsu tastes the dishes with respect and gratitude.

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh journeys to Vietnam's northern city of Hai Phong and discovers one of the area's star culinary attractions: rice paddy crab. Farmers consider the crab to be a pest, but it makes a magnificent soup. Freshwater snails can be caught in the same place. They're simmered with pork and green bananas. There's much more than rice in those paddies.

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh meets some of Vietnam's Muong people, who live in a mountainous area outside the northern city of Hoa Binh. There he learns about traditional dishes such as chicken soup with home-pickled wild bamboo shoots. Also, freshwater fish steamed with herbs. The food is accompanied by a home brew that packs a punch.

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh goes to an area called Shigu, in the mountainous region near the upper stream of the Yangtze River in China's Yunnan province. The area is known for its abundant supply of medicinal cooking ingredients. A woman lets him help make a hot stew of Yunnan ham and a local herb. He also enjoys a spicy salad of fish mint herb roots. Both dishes are served with steamed rice and cornmeal, the traditional staple of the area.

Culinary specialist Kentetsu Koh participates in a festival of the Dai people in Xishuangbanna, in China's Yunnan province. He learns how to prepare a fermented fish dish and an exquisitely smooth water buffalo meat paste. The meat paste makes use of bile to provide a profound bitter flavor.