Fish head soup, Azerbaijani style. I see an interesting culinary principle being applied here – don’t overcook the fish. They boil the fish first, remove it and use the stock to stew the vegetables before returning the fish to the stewed vegetables. I would normally stew the vegetables, then put in the fish last. Should try their method one of these days.

This is a new market in Laos called Huay Din Kob as the YouTuber, a Laotian woman found out from the vendor. As you can see, the ingredients can be quite unfamiliar to most of us, especially the rat. I’ve tasted rat meat cooked in tom yam in Mae Hong Son before, but it would be challenging to cook it myself. It takes great courage to put a rat into the pot. The rat seller claimed that the rats are wild.

What about the eels, catfish, tiny shrimp and crustaceans? The Lao people have their own ways to cook these things. What sort of seasoning would you use?