nakji

"...Um...Guys?....I kinda fell down here.....Guys? Guys? It's getting a little hot....Guys?.......aw, nuts...."

I'm reading, too! I'm just too hot to type. What sort of thingy-majig were you doing your potatoes on the barbecue? Are those new? I can't remember ever seeing one of them before.

(Sorry to butt in here, but years of junior high school history classes are aching to be put to use, finally!) Nova Scotia is latin for New Scotland; owing to a number of Scottish settlers who began and continued to immigrate to various parts of Nova Scotia beginning in the 17th century, probably because they found they weather more temperate (ha ha, I kid, I kid). Fewer than 5% of the population in Nova Scotia is Francophone Acadian. We have our own tartan, and are the only province to have been created by a royal charter. (Take that, Ontario!) I'd say more people consider our background to be Scots/English than French. Nova Scotia has mixed roots. Although there has been a lot of discussion about Acadia in this thread, in fact Halifax was a British garrison town, founded in 1749. It was founded to counterbalance the French fort at Louisburg, in Cape Breton (The large island in the eastern part of Nova Scotia). The Treaty of Utrecht ceded much of Nova Scotia and what is today New Brunswick (Acadia) to England in 1713. The French got to keep Prince Edward Island (Ile St-Jean) and Cape Breton (Ile Royale), where they built Louisburg in 1719. The English asked the Acadians to swear allegiance in 1730, but later got nervous about the whole affair and shipped them off in the 1750s, most notably to Louisiana. Later, some of them came back, but were given the (relatively) crappier land along the Fundy Bay, the southern tip of Nova Scotia, and on the south and northern coasts of Cape Breton. They didn't get to go back to the middle bits, where all of the lovely arable lands lies, and where you can visit a statue of Evangeline, if you happen to find yourself in Wolfville for the Apple Blossom festival, or touring the local wineries there. Try the coffee at Just Us! Roasters down the road: it's really great. Halifax has an English colonial history, and not a particularly notable place to taste poutine; Poutine is of course a Quebecois invention, and the Quebecois are culturally separate from the Acadians. I can't comment on Acadian poutine rapee, although I have gone on record about my feelings for rappie pie, a true Acadian dish. How Acadian food evolved into Cajun food is another question entirely. Now that I've thought about it a bit, I can't think of a particular dish strongly associated with Halifax. Donairs, perhaps?

Yay! A blogger from my hometown! (Okay, I'm technically from Dartmouth, but don't hold it against me.) Will your visit to the valley coincide with the Apple Blossom Festival? Will you be visiting Pete's Frootique? Is Pete's Frootique still a going affair? Is Ca Hoa Pan-Asian grocery still open at the corner of Queen and Victoria (the best place in Halifax IMHO for Asian groceries)? And most importantly..... Does Pizza Corner pizza still taste like rubber?

I liked the brownies in this book, but then, I like my brownies fudgy, and I used the best chocolate I could find. It does yield a small batch - just perfect for my house, where it's up to me to finish the pan. I really like the cross referencing and lists in this book, which I think are the killer app. "20 dishes that are good at room temperature" - etc. I don't own Joy of Cooking, or similar, so this is a good "basic" book for me. I might take it down to the photocopy shops and have it rebound with a spiral binding, though.

Do my eyes deceive me, or is that eight kinds of feta for sale in the photo above? Sometimes I hate living in Asia. The white jelly-like thing you had for lunch was probably some sort of muk. The brown kind of muk is made from acorns, I believe. It's really nice with a bit of sesame oil and chili flakes sprinkled over. Will there be any Vietnamese food stops in this blog? I'd love to see what your bun bo hue looks like!

Brownies! Heelllllsss-yeah! I just made a pan last night with the Mark Bittman recipe, as a trade for a box of Crystal Lite Raspberry Ice (Ironic?). Ex-pat life is a series of barters sometimes. Anyway, I love how simple the recipe is, especially considering my kitchen - I make the whole thing in the saucepan I use to melt the chocolate. I'll make some this week - maybe I'll doctor them with a bit of Cafe Mai coffee essence. Stay tuned.

A co-worker of mine fed me some of this just yesterday for breakfast. I came in to teach an early class, and she asked me if I'd eaten yet. I told her I hadn't had the time, so she gave me some of her breakfast, straight from the banana leaf - a bit of the sausage, wrapped in soft pounded rice - like mochi. It tasted amazing - the best breakfast sausage I've ever had. I washed it down with some fresh roasted coffee and had a great class! There's a stand across the street from my house that sells these every morning. When I'm up early enough to catch them (it turns into a bun cha stand at lunchtime), I always walk by and wish I could find a seat - but it's always packed!

Pho.

I made kefta with tomato and eggs for dinner tonight. However, instead of lamb in the meatballs, I used pork, as it's cheaper and more readily available. I didn't have any ras al hanout, either, but I used the aromatics blend for making pho that a lot of shops sell here. It has cinnamon, star anise, and some other spices in it as well. Actually, once I mixed it with the tomatoes, it tasted like a really lovely ketchup. I was impressed. Served with some bread and some very cheap Italian red wine, it made a great meal for a damp day.

This was my absolute favourite kind, so much so that my students would bring me exclusively this for treats. I think there's sesame oil in there somewhere, isn't there? And my students thought it was really funny that I liked this one, because I guess these days it's only popular with grandmothers. I got the same reaction whenever I admitted to liking mul kimchi. Is it possible that your mum knows the recipe for this one? Could you post it? I'd love to have it again, and maybe bring it in for my coworkers here, since they're always sharing lovely treats with me. Aren't the mochi all called ddeok? I can't remember anymore... This one always comes out at birthdays, and I think when you move into a new home. I could never choke it down - the mixture of ddeok and dried red bean was like a recipe for choking. I also enjoyed the soft pillowy pink/yellow/green balls. I could buy them at the supa around the corner from my work, and share them with the Japanese teachers.

I came down with a really bad case of food poisoning before Christmas. I was on the sofa (a mere 2 m dash to the toilet) for almost a week. I began to feel better after about 4 days, but there was barely any food in the house - my husband had been ordering delivery the whole time. But the hunger hit me hard, and I was still too weak to venture out and source something on the street. I looked in my fridge - rice, eggs, and various other condiments. Hmm. What to make? I took a fortifying swig of Pocari Sweat. Eggs and rice - that sounds nice and bland. Hey! I could make omuraisu! But wait! No ketchup! What's that lurking in the back.....? This could work. Just fry the pickle in the rice...... Make the egg.... Oh No! Even the egg is horrified at what I've attempted! That's okay, a dollop of Kewpie mayonnaise will make everything better. Was it better than omuraisu? I'm not sure. But I did keep it down.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I won't feel bad about putting the red in the fridge this summer when it hits 38 degrees outside! Question #3 When a red wine has turned into more of a maroon/brown shade, is that a natural part of the aging process, or is it a sign that the wine is not worth drinking?

I searched to see if this thread already existed, and couldn't find it, although I did see one requested here. Apologies if I missed it in the search. Question 1: Situation: French Class. We're discussing "Asterix Chez Les Bretons". Asterix visits England to find that the English serve warm beer, but chill their wine. My French teacher laughs uproariously. "Chill their wine! Hehehe! Only in England!" We laugh along. He he he! Crazy English! Of course, running through my head is the fact that, at that very moment, a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay is nestled in my fridge door. Was I wrong to do this? Are the French laughing at me too? What would Asterix say? I wouldn't put a red in the fridge (unless, of course, it's July, when in Hanoi, things need to be refrigerated just to reach room temperature), but I've never thought twice about chilling a white. Question 2: Situation: Hanoi Towers Citimart I'm eying a bottle of questionable French Bordeaux. The label says 1996, and the label is stained. The wine looks more brown than red. In the back of my mind, a warring sentiment - One half of my brain says "Old wine = good". The other half says, "That may contain biotoxins." Somehow, I know that not all wine is created to be cellared, and that this is probably one such bottle. But how do we know which wines? For example, I'd never try to keep a bottle of Banrock Station Shiraz (1L! 30% Bonus!) for twenty years in my basement in the hopes that it would get "better", but how do I identify wines worth keeping? Is there a price range? Are there expensive wines meant to be drunk young? Cheap wines meant to age? Help.

Soft squishy bread is perfect for grilled cheese sandwiches made with American cheese. It's also nice wrapped around large squares of dark chocolate.

After our bike trip through Northern Vietnam, my husband and I had a Bill Murray-esque discussion - "We've got to stop eating all this pasta"....so last week I tried my hand at lemongrass chicken, carrot pickle, and garlic-fried green beans. Verdict? Sides were good, but the lemongrass chicken is much better in a restaurant here, and much cheaper. I'll blame my lack of proper wok. Tonight I made broiled chicken with roast garlic smashed potatoes (I don't have a potato masher, so I just whacked them around the pot with my trusty wooden spoon). Green beans fried with some warm bacon vinaigrette. Brownie for dessert. (Recipe from Mark Bittman's, "How to Cook Everything") Very rich! I didn't have any vanilla extract, so I substituted some scotch. It added a nice undertone.

My husband retches when he's confronted with gim (nori). It made our life in Korea very difficult. He's tried to swallow it, but it just makes him heave. He also hates all seafood. It must be something in the iodine taste.

Thanks so much for this peek back into the country that has affected my life in so many ways. Maybe someday I'll get back for a visit, and I'll insist we meet up for a sauna and some mul nangmyeon. Until then, keep posting!

I think the salted fish can be so expensive because they can come from a certain region that's famous for making that kind of fish - so it's a "limited edition" kind of thing, and used as a prestige gift, a lot like they do in Japan with those $100 melons. Whether the quality is any better or not, I can't comment.

It's traditional for students to eat this before a big test, so answers will "stick" in their minds.

That's the rolled pho place I always eat at! Cool!

My friend lives in an apartment building called "Bobo County"(no kidding), not far from that photo taken of your hubby and son in Ilsan. The building is full of one room apartments filled by unmarried young professionals. If you get there around eight in the evening, everyone has left their dinner trays in the hall to be picked up. You can walk along and see what each apartment has had for dinner! The downside is that the entire place reeks of doncasse sauce. Nobody bothers to cook anymore, and it was the number one complaint of a lot of my young married students, that their wives didn't know how to cook! A note for MarketSt - In South Korea, even in small country towns, most development is of the large apartment complex kind. Of course, this makes sense in the city, where there is a lot of pressure on land-use. However, here is very little modern single-family housing in the countryside, where there is a lot of room for it. People say they prefer to live in the apartment complexes because they're more modern and convenient. Most houses in Korea date from the early eighties and haven't aged well. Ilsan, a developer-planned city, pictured above, has some duplexes and single family dwellings, complete with suburban sidewalks. When my friend and I got homesick, we would walk around it and pretend to be back in Canada (New Zealand for her). It was really weird to take a train to a small country town, with acres of mountains, farm fields, and forest around it, and see three or four giant apartment complexes clustered around one small main street. Interestingly, this trend of everyone living in small (by North American standards) apartments has led to the spawning of several kinds of businesses that we don't have in North America, because we have family rooms. For example, instead of having friends over to play internet games together, kids probably go to an internet room, where each of them can have a computer for a dollar an hour. Instead of young couples making out on their parents' house in the basement, they rent a DVD room, which has a big-screen TV, a DVD player, and a sofa. Karaoke? Go to a singing room. Want a hot tub and sauna? Go to the public bath house. I didn't mind living in a small apartment in Korea, because so many services were available to me in the public domain. Is that really King Sejong's tomb? Wow. He was one cool dude.

This is very special. I thank you. I can see them doing this now- "Ooooh! Eeeeeeeeee! (small guttural noise) mashisseoyo!" (pls excuse bad romanisation) My boss took my mum and I to a similar meal in Ichon. My mum was stunned by the breadth and volume of side dishes offered. Do you often prepare different meals for your husband and kids? When I worked in Korea, I worked really late at night, so it really messed up my meal schedule. edited for tags.

I used a bunch of cilantro from the street - maybe a quarter cup - chopped. The cilantro here grows with dill twined around it, so there was a bit of dill in there, too - about a teaspoon chopped. No mint, although I'm sure it wouldn't be bad if it were in there. Let me know how it turns out!

Yeah, I tried to make it last night to go with a red curry. Basically, I sliced up some cucumber and pineapple - I think, one small pineapple and two small cucumbers. For the dressing I mixed the juice of two limes, two tbsp of rice vinegar, two tbsp. of sugar, 1 tbsp of fish sauce and about a 1/4 cup water. If I did it again, I think I would ditch the vinegar and make it up with lime juice. Or you could just dress it with Nuoc Cham, I think, and it would be good. I think adding some thinly sliced red chili (gochu) would be nice as well. It's lovely and fresh.