Night market

My host’s wife works at a bottled water plant. Last night, she had to work three hours of overtime, so my host and I picked her up and visited the night market. I'm not sure where it was -- possibly Tajem or Penebal. It was in a town, and my guest house is in a village.

There were about 20 stalls, most serving food. One had an assortment of plastic goods laid out on a tarp on the ground, and there was a toddler’s carousel adding a festive note. It played happy music while two children rode in the six-car circuit for a very long time. Some stalls were food carts, others were more complicated collections of food prep and sales areas. Only fires to cook things were on the ground, and usually contained in a small metal barrel about the size of a barbecue propane tank.

The customers all (except me) looked local, and most were middle aged. One of the families that used the toddler carousel was three generations. Four year old, mom and grandparents.

We stopped at three stalls. The first offered deep fried bananas. Warm and crispy on the outside. Soft, melty fruit on the inside. The second offered banana coconut tacos. One woman put a spoonful of batter on an iron pan, and spread it around to form a four inch disk. When it set, she added three diagonal slices of banana, covered the pan with an iron lid and moved on to the next of three pans atop wood fires.

When she deemed a pancake ready, she lifted it off with a spatula and placed it in a rectangular cake pan for her colleague. The second woman added shredded coconut from her bowl, and folded the pancake just like a taco. She stacked a dozen together on a paper, then placed them in a plastic bag. That's what we got.

When she ran out of coconut, she got out a large slab of wood with a roughened side. She took a large hunk of coconut and dragged it across to shred the meat into her bowl.

The tacos were made with whole wheat flour, which added to the textures and helped cut the sweetness. Absolutely delicious.

The third vendor we visited offered chicken sate. He soaked the skewered meat in peanut sauce before cooking it over an open fire. He gathered 20 skewers in a folded paper containing more peanut sauce, and stuck it in a bag. The sate proved a nice relief to the sweet banana treats.

Off we went, to get the tired wife home.