Multifunctional tool – Banana leaf

It is strange, that the Thais are producing so much rubbish, since they already found the solution for almost every problem. And they show an immense creativity in improvising with the simplest means.
The banana leaf is truly a multifunctional tool. Almost every halfway solid food can be packed up with it and being transported. And also for food preparing the big and stable leaves turned out to be extremely useful. So let´s try it:

In the tranquil coast town Prachuap Khirin Kahn, a view hundred kilometers south of Bangkok, me and my travel companions liked it so much, that we stayed more than a week. We were very lucky to have a kitchen and a grill in the guesthouse, which is very rare for Thailand’s guesthouses. Since the town is also famous for their good and reasonable seafood, we took our chance and planned a barbecue. We bought fish, seafood, potatoes, vegetables and salat on the market. When it came to the question of preparing the food the difficulties started. How to put the fish on the grill?
With great joy I noticed that everyone showed a lot of patience with my aversion against tin foil. Out of my hair-brained idea to wrap the fish in banana leaf, the challenge of the day evolved. Jon organized the banana leafs. He simply bought them from a street stall that wrapped their food in it as well. I figured out how to wrap the packages nice and tight and Daniel supplied me with tooth picks as the necessary joints.

For the squid we also fall back on the traditional technics of the Thais. Thai people are really great at barbecues. At every other street corner you can find a portable gill on which they offer all sorts of foods. They either use one stick to skewer the food on it or two sticks to clench it between them. Rainer  choose the single-stick version, prepared some twigs and staped the squid on it.
For the potatoes we ran out of ideas. So we simply cooked them to be save and put them just like on the grill, to collect some barbecue flavor.
Now we just have to save the food from a bunch of hungry cats that start risking their lifes in the attempts of climbing onto the hot grill.

All in all it was a very delicious meal and only the mushrooms didn´t quit end up the way we had planed.