nakji

My ESL career is really just a cover for international gustatoriage. Suzysushi, it's up to us to keep everyone having a white Christmas dreaming of warm sandy beaches, coconut drinks, and pineapple for breakfast!

Traffic here has gotten real bad, especially with more and more SUVs on the road. The streets just aren't built for them and motorcycles to get along. Pollution has been really bad lately as well - I'm considering investing in one of those face masks. A lot of the trucks on the road seem to belch diesel smoke, so it's really noticeable. The public buses are the worst offenders, though. I curse them every time we're forced by traffic to follow along in their wake. Dining stalls tend to be on the less travelled roads - the more residential ones, so it doesn't seem to have affected that aspect of Hanoi life too much - yet. Eating on the sidewalk is one of the great joys of living in Hanoi - if you can learn to lower yourself with dignity and grace onto the mini sidewalk stools. I'm still learning this. It calls for really strong thigh muscles. Everything is on offer on the sidewalk, and be showing a few of these things as we go.

Wow. Just, wow. I'm struck by how much the church you showed looks like some of the Maori churches I saw in New Zealand. Pineapple is one of my favourite fruits, and I always try to get some when I see it - the pineapples are the size of regular apples here, and are quite sweet. They usually cost about 30 cents for one. In the ESL book I use in class, they have pineapple grouped as a "luxury" food, which always puzzles my students. Needless to say, the book was not written in South East Asia.

Peter wanted to take the opportunity to go outside the city to the pottery village. This village is filled with small pottery makers – kilns, workshops where pottery is thrown, shops with white ware and of course, finished goods shops, for wholesalers. I figure since these are all dishes – this is food related, right? Places like these are dangerous for me, since I love dishes. I managed to restrain myself and only got the two bowls in the picture plus two more decorated with black lotus. And a butter dish. Er, and a salt cellar. Reasonably priced, - I think I got the whole lot for under $10 USD, but I imagine wholesale it’s a lot cheaper. It was certainly much cheaper than many of the shops in the Old Quarter, and had a much better selection. Here, they move things the old-fashioned way. For New Year’s Eve, we decided to meet friends from work at a Vietnamese restaurant in the Old Quarter. It’s not the most authentic (or cleanest) place, but it’s got nice ambience, as it’s in an old French house, with original brick walls, Buddhas lying about, etc. The food is good, quick, and runs about 2$ USD a plate, so you can feed a crowd nicely, for cheap. It’s called “Little Hanoi”, which one of my friends finds really funny – “Why is there a restaurant called “Little Hanoi”…in Hanoi?” Actually, there are three Little Hanois in town, owned by two different families. One of them has excellent lunch delivery service, and will be no doubt featured later this week when I’m working. The other one is where we were last night. We had an assortment of dishes: Catfish Fried with Dill Pork with Five Tastes (we also got this one in chicken) Fried Eggplant with Garlic (my favourite – I have no idea how they get it so creamy and sweet! I think honey is involved). Tofu and Tomato Beef with Citron and Chili in Caramel Sauce and Fried Morning Glory with Garlic – no meal in Vietnam is complete without this dish. I think you can see “Vang Dalat” somewhere in the background there…Purportedly produced in Dalat, this domestic wine is….well, it’s good if you don’t think of it as wine. It’s about $3 USD in a restaurant…so….I like to pretend I’m drinking bokbunjaju in Korea – blackberry liqueur. Right. Somebody mentioned they were craving cheesecake, so we wandered down the street to the Highland Café overlooking Hoan Kiem lake for dessert. Highland coffee is Vietnam’s answer to Starbucks, and is a popular place to get a juice and canoodle with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Unlike Starbucks, however, they serve beer! Saigon is not the most popular brand …Halida or Beer Hanoi are more popular in Hanoi. We had the Vietnamese coffee cheesecake, which has a layer flavoured like coffee, and a layer flavoured with condensed milk. Incredibly addictive. We then went on to a nightclub to ring in the New Year. I admit I didn’t take pictures of the 10 or so gin tonics that I then consumed. Apologies.

I don't have any objections on moral grounds to eating dog, but I must say that I find the roast dog carcasses outside the markets to be quite gruesome looking. The first time I saw one, I thought, "Hey....that's not a pig!" In Korea, where it was also popular, it's considered a "health" food which people, especially men, eat for "stamina". I never found anyone there to be particularly shy discussing it with me - in fact many Koreans urged me to try it. The restaurants in the cities did couch the term in euphemisms, and the dog restaurant next to our house there billed its fare as "yeongyang tang" or "nutritious soup", which I understand was in reaction to the pre-1988 Olympics outcry. The Vietnamese make no pretense at all, and everywhere I go, I see "thit cho" signs - dog meat. The markets have them pre-roasted. My students love to try and get a rise out of me by suggesting I eat dog, to which I always reply..."Hey, I'm Canadian and part Inuit. I've eaten seal. You can't shock me with something like eating dog." I remember a lot of Koreans reacting in horror when I told them I had eaten deer. Last night I was relating the same dog meat story to my dining companions. One of the other teachers at our school had tried it with his students. He said the meat wasn't bad, but the kind of fish/shrimp sauce that it was served with smelled so strong he had to ask them to remove it from the table. It's kind of a slurry of shrimp that's been aged for three months, and looks purple and thick, and has the sort of smell that you would imagine something like that made under those conditions would have. So I'm not really eager to try dog. We got into an argument at the table, where the resident vegetarian argued that eating dog is the same as eating pork or beef or chicken; but had several others declaring it was entirely different; as we had some sort of concord with dogs. My friend Evan said it best when he said there's no sense trying to logically argue it out, since people's reactions to eating dog are purely emotional, and you can't reason with emotion.

Banh Mi are very popular here! I'd love to get one right now, actually......hmmm.... There seem to be two styles of banh mi available in Hanoi. First is the old style - a traditional baguette, stuffed with "pate", or chinese sausages, mysterious meat paste, mayo, pickled veg, etc. These can be found on residential streets like mine, still being sold from glass cases. The second kind are new and are basically Turkish-style doner kebabs. Pork roasts on a central spit, and a carver hacks some off for you, add its it to a baguette or a wedge of flat bread, and tops it with pickled veg, lettuce, tomato, chili sauce and ranch dressing. I know. How this style became popular, I'll never know, but everyone refers to that as banh mi as well. The distribution of these places, if it's not already bizarre enough for you, is spearheaded by the Geothe Institute. There's a stall outside my work that sells them for around 10,000 VND (16,000 VND = 1 USD). I often have one for dinner, although it's not the best one I've had in Hanoi. Which of course I will be visiting this week. Perhaps today.

Happy New Year, and welcome to my blog! Since I’m blogging at South East Asia Standard Time, or GMT +07:00, I’ll be writing on a bit of a time-delay for those following me in North America and Europe. I’ll try to hang around at odd hours to answer any questions, but please bear with me. Although the Year of the Pig doesn’t technically start until Tet in February, the Pig decorations all over town have been quietly urging me to dedicate this New Year’s blog to pork. So though it’s still the Year of the Dog (and this being Hanoi, I could do a full week featuring food based on our canine friends), I will try to feature as many iterations of piggy goodness as possible. That being said, I couldn’t do a blog from Hanoi without featuring pho, so I shall allow incursions by other meats as well. First, a bit about myself. As you may have guessed by this intro, I’m an unapologetic meat-eater, a full-time ESL teacher, and a food porn voyeur. If you doubt this last bit, the next time you’re lurking in the “Dinner: What Did We Make?” check the bottom for “Users browsing this thread” for my tag. I rarely post, though, since these days I rarely cook. I moved to Vietnam in April of this year. Before that, I lived for almost four years in Incheon, South Korea. I’m originally from Halifax, Canada. I’m planning a slow circumnavigation of the Earth. After Sazji’s blog, Istanbul is on my radar. This week, I hope to show lots of kinds of food – lots of Vietnamese, some French, and I plan to cook Korean at least once. I mostly eat in restaurants or order in these days, as I’ve been working 12 hour days, six days a week since April. As well, you can eat tasty and well-prepared food on the street for often less than a dollar – so I limit my cooking at home to when I want traditional Western food, or one of my Korean favourites. My husband and I decided to move to Vietnam when we visited here on vacation in 2003. It’s hard to say why – I mean, what can I say that Anthony Bourdain or Graham Greene haven’t said better? We decided to come on vacation after a conversation with friends in Seoul that went like this: Nakji: So where did you guys go on vacation last year? Shannon: We went to Cambodia and Vietnam. Cambodia was wonderful. Vietnam was horrible. Everybody there is out to rip you off. You’ll get your bag stolen on the first day. Nakji: How was the food? Shannon: It was better in Vietnam. Decision made. Our first day in Hanoi, we got up at 7 am (being used to working at 6 am in Korea, this was considered a lie-in), went out on the street, and sat down and almost cried. All around us, ladies with baskets full of fresh fruit and freshly baked bread swirled around us, while pork buns wheeled by in glass cases. We resolved then and there to move as soon as we crawled out of student loan debt. Fast Forward three years, and we’re here, and all the sudden, everyone has cell phones. No matter, because the food hasn’t changed. I started off my day with a great cup of coffee made with a Christmas present from a friend: Bodum! Note the Year of the Pig decoration. I must admit, in the morning I haven’t got the patience to use a traditional Vietnamese drip, nor does it yield nearly the volume of coffee I need in the morning. I do use local coffee, however, my favourite being from a local roaster – Paris Mai blend from Café Mai, which I hope to visit later this week. It looks like dark chocolate, and tastes like it, too. After coffee and rallying my husband, we went to one of our favourite cafes for brunch. This place is (curiously, considering it’s Vietnamese-run) New Zealand themed, and serves excellent and cheap food. Like many places in Vietnam, modern restaurant practices like using ready-made mayonnaise or hollandaise are eschewed. Everything is made fresh in the kitchen. We had fresh juice, something as a reformed Canadian, I cannot get over the luxury of having. Fresh-squeezed OJ for me, and mixed fruit for Peter. To eat, Eggs Benedict for him, and a sort of club sandwich for me. Finished with carrot cake, which had a degree of moistness which is hard to find in café cake in Asia. We especially like the atmosphere in the place, and since they have wi-fi, it’s a great place to while away a few hours e-mailing and taking care of sundry internet chores. We ran into a co-worker and his wife there, who related a hilarious tale concerning dog-foot congee. His wife had recently given birth, so her mother sent over some rice porridge with dog feet in it, for strength. My British co-worker was appalled – “What will the dog think?” he told his wife. She didn’t think the family pet had much of a say in the matter, but he declared he sent it back with a stern note to his mother-in-law. When he got up to use the bathroom, I leaned over to her and asked, “So did you eat it later?” “Of course.” she laughed. Right, on that note, I must crawl off to bed. I've been up for almost 24 hours now...when I come back, I'll show you our New Year's Eve feast. Happy New Year to all!

Please take copious, copious notes, as I'm going across to Laos in April. I'm hoping to cross up north, through Dien Bien Phu, if it's open as they've been promising for years. Also note Stickyrice has recently been.

From Wikipedia: Thank you, I have e-mailed them all the link. Although it doesn't really explain why it's not popular there anymore. I assume that most Londoners have fairly free access to milk these days.

Merry Christmas! It looks like you had a lovely time at home with your family. It's important to be with our friends and family at this time of year. I haven't seen a piece of beef that big in a loooong time, and boy, did it look good!

I made some for a holiday crowd this year. I used the recipe that you as the first result get if you google "eggnog recipe". I started making it from scratch when I first moved to Korea, where commercial eggnog is unavailable. I've never looked back. I made it with eggs I bought on the street (usually the freshest here), dosed it up heavily with equal parts rum and bourbon (to kill any latent bird flu - that's after I scrubbed the shells with anti-bacterial soap). Everyone loved it, but it was a shock to everyone at the party from the UK. They claimed never to have heard of it, and kept asking if it was Advocaat. I always thought it was a traditional English punch - it's obviously not a Native American dish. Can anyone shed any light on this?

I've heard this in Vietnam as well. Many of my friends here have warned me not to flip the fish! spelling!

I like living overseas for the holidays because you can control the amount of "holiday" you want. You don't have to listen to the music pouring out of stores in November, etc. They put a Christmas tree up at our work this week and complained it was too early! Although I'll never be able to listen to "Last Christmas" again after four years in Korea. I'm going to head down to our brand-spanking new KFC this week and see if there's anything on the go for Christmas.

When I was home in 2004, it had decreased in quality. I think the old owner had retired and the kids took over, and replaced the hand-cut fries with frozen ones. Travesty! Is this still the case? Anyone looking to give their cholesterol numbers a hit and try it out? How's this for debate: What's the best Chinese food around? When I was there, my parents and I practically lived at the place next to the bridge - Fran's, I think it was called. Is it still there? My Dad grew up in Hong Kong, and he had pretty high standards for Chinese food. I remember him lamenting when I was young that we didn't have any real Sichuan restaurants in Halifax.

What a lovely banh mi! In Hanoi, it's popular to have have pickled red cabbage as well. Ironically, the most reliable ones in the city are run by the Geothe Institute...and they substitute roasted pork off a spit (Which I consider, and they describe as 'doner kebab') for the cold cuts. Not being a big head cheese fan, I like the roast pork version better. The stall outside my work gets a ton of business, as they're located on a major road. If I run down between classes to get a bite, there's often a line up of motorcycles waiting along the curb. For around 50 cents, they make a great dinner. Will you be cooking any more Vietnamese food this blog? I look forward to seeing what you make next. edited for early-morning spelling.

Wow, all these amazing cookies have made me feel quite inadequate. The nice thing about living overseas, though, is that the barest efforts are rewarded with overwhelming gratitude. I served these at a party I had last night - it was meant to be just a quiet gathering to watch a Christmas movie and eat some cookies, but it morphed into a huge gathering, where I played host to a group of eight or so British ex-pats who were spending their first holidays away from home (in addition to the rest of us hardened overseas warriors). I had these and some peanut butter cookies with dark chocolate chunks - utterly unphotographable as the Drost Dark chocolate discs I had cunningly pressed into the top of each cookie overheated and burnt as I cooked them - rookie mistake! We went through 8 litres of mulled wine, a flat of 24 Halida beer, a bottle of Wild Turkey, a bottle of Bailey's, and a half-bottle of gin. The night truly got going when the homesick ones started downloading King's College Choir renditions of Anglican carol classics. One of them started directing us in harmony, and we kept the whole street awake with our stylings of "Oh little Town of Bethlehem" and "I saw Three Ships". It's a wonder they didn't call the police on us! The teacher's room was a sorry, sorry place to be today. These cookies are called "Whipped Shortbread", and as I recall, the recipe is from one of the "Best of Bridge" series of cookbooks. It calls for a cup of butter, one and a half cups of flour, and a half cup of icing sugar. I've kept the recipe in my memory all these years, as they are ideal to be made in a home-baking hostile environment. They were made employing my second largest cooking pot; the plastic paddle from my rice cooker; and my toaster oven (named "Jackie" by her manufacturer). They were slightly undercooked, and I finished the last of them for breakfast this morning with a cup of Ethiopian mocha.

Most people seem to drink tea with their meals. Breakfast on my street seems to be chao (congee), or pho. Sometimes sticky rice balls...not sure of the name of these, but this lady is always set up across from my door. I also have been unable to master using the small drip pot, so I usually run my coffee through a coffee maker. It tastes different, but also good. Vietnamese people seem to reserve the drinking of coffee for a morning or afternoon break. For young people, it's the drink of choice for dating. People don't eat anything with their cup, but often a cigarette is consumed - by men only. Right now, I don't have any TN in the house - I'm splitting my drinking between a pound of Ethiopian mocha that a friend of a friend brought from Ethiopia (It's unspeakably good!) and a half kilo of Cafe Mai, from a venerable small roaster in Hanoi. It's very sweet and chocolately - much more so than TN even. It's like drinking a cup of dark chocolate! Today I'm going to have a cup of that and some leftover shortbread cookies from my Christmas party last night. If I can find any amongst the Halida cans, that is. I'll pretend it's a modified Italian breakfast.

Just my guesses: Adding to above, there was generally a lot of meat available in North America to early settlers, so it didn't have to be stretched by being baked into a pie - whole joints, steaks, birds, etc. could be eaten; and a greater availability of sugar - from the Caribbean and the South, and in Canada - maple syrup. I don't know why, but I feel like Margaret Visser has something to say about this. Does anyone remember this from her books?

I wish we had one of those here - it's cold now! This is true of many places in Asia - space, after all, being at a premium. And, a lot more people have to share the kind of space we in the west would consider much too small for more than one or two people. I miss the floors in Korea, which were heated. My house now has a cool tile floor, which is great in July, but not so great now. Do you do a lot of cooking at home? Your kitchen looks a lot like mine, white utility tile and all! Although mine didn't even have any gas burners when I moved in, I had to sweet-talk the landlady into adding them. I have no oven at all...

I'm always struck by how much time other cultures spend on the floor compared to in the west! In your picture above of the women preparing food, they're hunkered right down, bowls and all. The other night, I was at a friend's house, and we were preparing for her party. She was lamenting the fact that her kitchen counter had no space for prep. It's entirely taken up by the sink and the gas range. She announced that it must have been designed by a man - and I said, "No - it's Vietnamese style - all of the prep is meant to be done over large plastic bowls on the floor.", and we had a bit of a laugh, as her apartment was built for westerners in a very posh modern style - unlike the average Vietnamese kitchen, which is often just a room with a water tap, a hearth if they're lucky, or if not, a coal burner surrounded by bits of tin. After we laughed, we looked around, and realized it would be much more practical down there anyway, hauled the cucumbers and cutting boards down to the cushions she'd laid out for the party, and continued on. When I lived in Korea, all of our family meals were taken on the floor with our bosses' large extended family - Auntie would announce the jigae was ready and the mini tables would pop out of nowhere, and the next thing we knew the tables were covered with innumerable panchan and we had bowls of rice in our hand. They always let us sit at the end, as we were unable to keep our legs crossed for long periods of time.

/weeps quietly inside/ That's beautiful. Ironically, I ended up going to a co-worker's Christmas brunch today, and they served banana pancakes. Disappointed again. Fortunately several glasses of Vang Dalat helped assuage my disappointment.

I understand your pancake quest. Pancakes are a very important part of my life. I don't let myself have them very often, because I don't enjoy them unless they're dripping with butter and syrup. I spend a lot of time backpacking, and for years was on the quest for the perfect banana pancake. Sadly, I found it in Pushkar, India. It was the alpha and omega of banana pancakes - crisply fried on the outside - and inside was sweet molten banana encased in fluffy soft batter. It was covered with ample lashings of honey collected from the bees that pollenate the flower fields outside of town - used for the temple offerings. I ate one every day I was there, overlooking the flower fields from the deck of my hotel. Perfect. But now wherever I go, I know nothing will be as perfect as that banana pancake. So I don't even bother trying. I have a similar attachment to the nutella pancakes I enjoyed on pre-Tsunami Phi-Phi Island that I find difficult to talk about this day. For breakfast today? Trung Nguyen coffee and a creme caramel. Mooshmouse's breakfast looks like bliss to me.

Right, for those who have requested.... Not pictured: his cape /blushing/ I cut the San logo out myself /blushing/

I've never tried ShiWon. My husband informs me that the brand we enjoyed in Jeollanam-do was called "Ip" or "Leaf" brand, which makes sense, given the red Maple leaf on the label. It never occurred to me to wonder why there were regional labels. Did you get a chance while you were in Korea to sample some genuine Andong soju? We got some as a gift one year, and it was strong enough to light the Christmas pudding. I could never persuade anyone to drink it straight, though. One of my favourite Korean liquors (hey - do we have thread on these?) is bokbunjaju - especially when drunk with crispy lovely kamjajeon. My mouth is watering. And O-shipseju - a 50/50 mix of Baekseju and soju poured out of a brass kettle...ah, good times. I've also never been to Songnisan, as it turns out, but once again, hubby comes in handy and informs me that it's very close to Danyang, one of the most beautiful places I visited in Korea.

What a fascinating blog! I'm inspired to try all sorts of things now. First of all, I'm going to boil up a can of Ong Tho SCM to bring into my co-workers - I wonder if they've ever had anything like Dulce de Leche? Cakes made with straight up SCM seem popular here, so I'm willing to bet it'll be a hit. Second, are you willing to share your nog recipe? What are your thoughts of rum nog versus bourbon nog? Ever since I moved to Asia and realized that nog was no longer available in the refrigerator section, I've been making it from scratch. I'll never go back, and I'm not sure how I stomached the pre-made stuff all those years. There's no comparison. Being from Nova Scotia, though, I've always made it with rum. One year, some intrepid Newfoundlanders even contributed some Screech as a side experiment. I'm not sure how it tasted, as I have no memory of that night. But this year, I'm tempted to try it with bourbon, which my husband loves. I've only got a bottle of Wild Turkey on hand, as this isn't really a bourbon drinking town, if you know what I mean. There's lots of Cuban rum available, on the other hand.... As to soju, it was always a diversion for my friends and I when we got out of Seoul to try the regional soju brands. San was always our go-to soju brand, but there was one available in Jeolla that was pretty tasty. Whenever I have friends visit now, they always bring bottles, but it's not the same drinking without the samgyeobssal. Such was our devotion to soju (it was, after all, less than a dollar a bottle in the shops) that my husband dressed up as "Soju-man" one Halloween (with a hat-tip to Duffman, from Simpsons fame). I have pics if any are interested. One (non-food related) question - Is that Buddha in your avatar somewhere in Korea? It looks terribly familiar...