nakji

I call my grandmother "Nanny". She raised nine children on her own in Labrador, having buried two husbands, on the wage she made from cleaning the base hospital in Goose Bay. She made fresh baked bread every week for all the children, and to this day makes bread by hand by up-ending a 5 kilo sack of Robin Hood flour on the table and adding water and everything else until she says "it feels good". My mother has memories of always eating fresh food, even though it was extremely hard to come by that far north back then. They had no running water, and heat came from a wood-stove that burned all day. My mother chopped the wood for it. To this day, Nanny makes Newfoundland boiled dinners, baked beans from scratch, homemade donuts, caribou stew, pan-fried trout, and knows how to butcher and cook a seal. I don't think she knows how to cook for less than a dozen people at a time. When she was young, it was her job to make the booties for the sled dogs, so their paws wouldn't get covered in ice. Her father ran the Hudson's Bay trading post in Nain. She still makes beautiful deer-skin slippers, lined in rabbit fur, and hand embroidered in wool and beads, every Christmas for us, if we ask for them. I have my latest pair here with me in Hanoi, in case it gets cold and I need them. (We had hail today, so it just might.) My mother has my shillipuk that she made for me in storage at home in Nova Scotia. She still drives, and has a 1980 VW Rabbit, in mint condition, as it's too cold to salt the roads up there. My grandmother, in other words, is hardcore. Racheld, thanks for calling this all to mind. You have me sniffling at my computer. As for me, my Thanksgiving is far from home. Although I'm Canadian, and we celebrate in October, the last couple of years when I lived in Korea, I hosted a multi-country Thanksgiving Day at my house. I had roast turkeys (hard to find in Korea), and all the trimmings (and some kimchi on the table, as well). This year, I'm in a new country, stove-less, and all my friends are now from the UK. Fortunately, there's an old dead-head who runs a tavern in town, and he's doing a full US Thanksgiving. We may have to watch the Ashes instead of the football, though. I look forward to seeing what you dish up.

Not in Halifax, where most people consider East Side Mario's the height of Italian. I kid, I kid. I kid Halifax because I love Halifax. Especially since I left.

That bossam looks fabulous and utterly unlike any of the bossam I ate while I was living in Seoul. There the pork was boiled, maybe, or cooked in a pressure-cooker, and served with slightly pickled napa cabbage leaves. That pork looks roast- is it? Bossam was the wife of a good friend's specialty, and he used to bring it into work where we would have spontaneous bossam picnics out of lock-and-lock plastic containers. Yum. My boss would noodle through the kimchi and pick out all the oysters, because he knew I didn't like them. I miss the comfortable familiarity of dining with my Korean friends, where we all knew each other's favourite panchan, and which panchan we could eat all by our greedy selves because we knew others didn't like it.

Right now I'm eating some mandarins that are so sweet and orange-y that they taste like Tang and smell like Absolut Mandarin. I didn't think it was possible for mandarins to capture the pure taste of orange essence like this. My coworkers tell me they're from China. Considering that's only about 300 km away, though, it could be just that they're fresh. I can't ever remember getting a piece of fruit as delicious as these are in Canada - well, with the exception of a ripe MacIntosh apple picked off the tree in the Annapolis valley.

I think all of the ideas here are great. This is exactly the sort of service I'd love to have here in Hanoi. The UN school offers classes and tours like this, but only at night - exactly when I can't go, as I'm teaching. A note about the international school parents - in many cases these people probably already have domestic help that navigate the local markets...they may not want it for themselves, but for their nanny, live-in cook, au pair, etc., if they're not local. But the wives might be really interested in Dutch cooking classes.

Very, very interesting. Sudan, you say? Huh. Well, it is scrumptious. So scrumptious, in fact, that every time I open the fridge and see it sitting there, I think, "Oh, just one little twist..." In this manner, it has been reduced to a little lump of the top part of the braid. It goes really well with cheap beer, such as Halida.

I don't think the Vietnamese would know about challah to compare cheese to it. I'm going to ask somebody at work about it today. I expect it's a remnant of soviet influence, much like "Vodka Hanoi". I was hoping somebody on egullets would recognize it as a cheese from somewhere in Russia. It's made up of strings of pulled cheese that have been braided, then smoked. It's delicious. It must be imported, though, because it's quite expensive to buy, but at the same time, it's sold without any distinguishing wrapper. This cheese thread is just full of mysteries.

This morning: a gecko in the coffee pot. Unfortunately, some dregs of coffee were still in there as well. I didn't see him until I dumped the pot out. His foot was broken or something, and is now dying a slow death in my sink as I try not to think about it too much. Washed the coffee pot out and carried on, though. Nothing keeps me from my coffee!

It is most definitely smoked. It's also very salty. I'm contemplating trying it in a poutine. It's lovely to snip a few shreds off of and nibble on while I'm trying to decide what to order for dinner. eta: grammar, punctuation, etc.

This cheese is popular in Hanoi. It often shows up as a snack in bia hois. The first time I was served it, it was in shreds, and I thought it was squid. When I tried it, I thought, "Hey! This tastes like cheese!" This doesn't happen too often in Asia, I assure you. Anyway, I found some in a shop, where it's billed as "Russian Cheese". Has anyone ever tried this before? What is it, exactly?

After living in Asia for so long, that menu doesn't even look like it's in a foreign language! Ah to learn a language with cognates again! Is the mineral water really only 0.30 euros? I think that's cheaper than here. What kind of people attend your cooking school? Do you get a mix of skill levels? eta: What's "punch"? Is it...punch?

I'm struggling with the same issues as you, although lizards haven't pooed in any of our drinks yet (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type). There is no getting rid of ants, it's true, although they adore limes but eschew garlic and chilis, I find that cleaning up immediately after food prep is the key. I keep a soapy cloth with me and wipe it over everything as I finish. I have a friend who translated a book on ants, and he told me they follow scent trails, but that soap erases scent trails. I also find that talking encouragingly to the geckos every time I see them helps to keep their numbers up and hunting. If they're pooing in your drinks, though.....I also keep all of our food in the fridge. Everything. The bugs get to everything else. I'm getting used to cold muesli. As for food, I cook almost exclusively vegetarian at home, not because we like it, but because I don't trust the meat that's been on the street for hours in the heat by the time I get to it. I also use a lot of smoked pork tenderloin and bacon, because my local supermarket keeps those refrigerated. You have a Muslim housemate, though, so that's not an option for you. My egg recipes have expanded dramatically, though, because I know they're ok outside for a few hours, and I can buy them fresh every day. Pasta with fresh egg and Parmesan is lovely! I rely quite a bit on the local "foreign food" store, because they sell frozen chicken breasts and the like - which I can't buy on the street - but because we have a motorcycle and can drive all around we have that luxury. If I were you, I'd learn how to drive one as soon as possible. You'll have the freedom to go wherever you like, whenever, and get out of the house...it's been really liberating for us! Just get a helmet (and wear it - no matter how much they laugh) and accept that you will get hit and fall off at some point. The driving here is similar to Bali! I'm just beginning to fully experience living in Vietnam, and learning to ride a motorcycle has opened so many doors for me. What I've come to realize, too, it's that I won't be able to fully access the culture, and take advantage of all the great things that Vietnam has to offer until I can speak the language; I can't learn how to cook the local food properly, or shop properly...so that's the next step. Until that, I guess I just have to be patient. I order in a lot, but Hanoi has the advantage of being well set up for expats, since it's the capital, and so many foreigners live here. Embassy prices, suck, though.

Having grown up in Nova Scotia in the eighties and nineties, the cod collapse left a psychic scar on me. "In Cod We Trusted". I rarely eat seafood, assuming the whole practice of fishing is unsustainable. Not necessarily a logical jump, but I can't help but default to that. Especially after reading "Collapse".

Seoribeongtang! In the orange and brown package. Wait - does that technically count as a ramen? Well anyway, it's my favourite.

French fries with mayo and curry ketchup? (er...what's curry ketchup?)

Do you go to several different grocery stores? Yes, although they're mostly dry-goods shops and foreign food specialty shops. For produce or meat, I go to the market or pop out onto my street to see what's going by in baskets. My main shop is "Star-Mart", in the bottom of the building where I work. I can usually get my yogurt, coffee beans, breakfast pastries, and assorted chocolate fixes there. I also pick up rice, bacon, kimchi and other staples when I run out. They keep my entire office running on their plentiful supplies of ice-cold, canned Oranginas. When I want something specific from home, such as curry pastes or sour cream, I go to L's Place, or Western Canned Foods. They specialized in...well, western canned goods. Other luxuries, like muffins and individual bananas, I get at the Citimart in Hanoi Towers, which is a long-term residence for foreigners working at the NGOs and Embassies. Curiously enough, it's built over the site of the infamous Hoa Lo prison, better known as "The Hanoi Hilton". Every time I buy wholemeal bread there, I wonder about the juxtaposition of that. Even more curiously, the modern-day Hilton has a great bakery that makes the only blueberry muffins in town. Do you clip coupons? It's possible they don't have those here. If they do, I've never seen them. What do you usually buy at the grocery store? It depends where I am. I don't buy produce at grocery stores, because they don't sell it. They don't sell meat there, either, only preserved pork and frozen shrimp. So I can get bacon or ham, but not chicken or fresh pork or beef. Sometimes I buy these from the street, but mostly for food safety reasons, I just don't buy them. If I eat meat, I eat it at a restaurant. Of course, I realize they're getting their meat from the street as well; but I also figure they're up at 6:30 and buying it, long before I ever crawl out of bed, when all the meat is manky and looks fly-ridden. So I get yogurt, cheese, sauces, muesli, coffee, canned tomatoes, pasta, bacon, and cream if they have it. Do you tend to buy more meat or more produce? As I said, neither. Just dry goods and dairy are available at most shops in Hanoi. Are you too ashamed to make purchases from the "reject bin?" They don't exist, but I'm not afraid to bargain with the basket-ladies if I feel they're offering me wares beyond their prime. Exceptions being if they're offering me fruit ripe and meant to be eaten that day; such as custard apples or similar. Do you make a list? Yes, so I don't forget things. How many refrigerators and pantries do you have for food storage? Just one small fridge and a shelf. I usually buy things the day I plan to prepare them. Produce doesn't last very long here, so it's no use trying to hold anything. Do you enjoy grocery shopping as much as I do? It is a major past-time of mine. I'm beginning to have an index of the availability of all major ingredients available in shops throughout Hanoi. If a new teacher arrives and wants to know where the best bread is; where to find Bisto; or where to get Heinz Ketchup or Kewpie mayonnaise, they get sent to me. Now if I could only master Vietnamese cooking, and cook using only the ingredients available on my street, like everyone around me does....

Wow, reading this report has been like being on a mini vacances. My favourite french cafe here in Hanoi is run by an Alsatian, and his flammenkuche is spectacular. I can't imagine how fabulous it must be in Alsace! I have a feeling I would love it there - my favourite wines have always been reislings and guwertztraminers (sp?), and who isn't a fan of copious amounts of creme fraiche, chevre and pork? Thanks for the great pics...if I'm ever in Europe, it'll be on my must visit list. As for cigarette smoke, I think the less it's around, the more bothersome it is. In Asia, smoke is everywhere...I don't even notice it anymore. But I remember when I visited Canada, I really noticed it the few times I smelled it.

My husband learned to use chopsticks with Korean metal ones, which he likens to learning to drive a car for the first time with a standard transmission. Learn the hard way first. I remember it took me a long time to learn how to artfully wrap a piece of gim around a lump of rice - and how good I felt when I finally mastered it. When I was in Korea these past four years, metal bowls were still really common in lunch restaurants, although obviously not as much in people's homes. I don't know how many times I burnt my fingers. Picking through the panchan is still a definite no-no, and eating rice with chopsticks is considered weird and funny - I never saw anyone in Korea use chopsticks for their rice -(except for the waegooks) always a spoon - as long as the jigae was on the table. And most people seemed happy to dip their rice-filled spoons into the jigae. I guess bad table manners are rampant! I remember being at the welcoming dinner for my school, and looking around and realizing that myself and the Japanese teachers were the only ones who had picked up our bowls to eat the rice. We all looked at each other sheepishly, and slowly put our bowls down. Oops.

I can't speak for other Canadian provinces, but considering that Nova Scotia has only recently consented to Sunday shopping, and only after several major corporations took the province to the Supreme court, I could say that these liquor laws are based on a certain...traditionality...of the locals. In Nova Scotia, you must also buy alcohol in government regulated stores only, and for a long time, you couldn't get it at all on Sundays, due to the shopping by-laws. In recent years the government has located liquor outlets in major grocery stores, but purchases must be paid for separately within the liquor outlet, and can't be brought to the main register with your regular groceries. Unless it's changed since I've been back, but it's been a long time since I've returned (in part, owing to many of these lifestyle annoyances). When I moved to Korea, I was startled to find that they had no (enforced) laws prohibiting the consumption of alcohol openly in public. Japan has beer in vending machines, which I consider the latest word in civilization. Here in Viet Nam the police have bigger fish to fry than to fine you for drinking a beer on the street. Although Draft Beer corner during the APEC crackdown promises to be a fascinating sight. On an entirely unrelated note, I also take oatmeal and yogurt in the morning; which; accompanied with a bracing double shot of Trung Nguyen coffee keeps me charmingly regular. Not that that's generally a problem in South-East Asia.

Living in Viet Nam has made this an especially poignant read. I've often wondered what stories the people I meet in my everyday life could tell me if I shared their language. Everyday when I leave my house, I peek around the corner to my landlady's flat and watch her preparing her family's meal on a charcoal burner in the alley. I've often wished I could summon the courage to walk over, sit down, and ask her to tell me what she's cooking, and how to use the myriad ingredients on offer from the basket-ladies in our ngo. I'm frequently frustrated by the amount of fresh ingredients available around me, but they're another language I don't know how to speak. Armed with my Lonely Planet "Food of Vietnam" glossary, I bought some apple-sized eggplants the other day by marching bravely up to the lady with the best baskets and inquiring, "ca tim?". After sorting out some other vegetables and asking the price, the lady seemed shocked. "Don't you want the eggplant herbs?" she asked, "Sorry?" I said, and she pressed several small bundles of herbs bound together with a bit of straw at the bottom. "You can't cook eggplants without these, obviously." I bought them without argument, assuming she knew what she was talking about. Of course, I'm imagining her whole half of the conversation, but I took the eggplants and herbs home and fried them all up together, and they were lovely. I'd love to have a resource that made sense of the ingredients around me and showed me how to use them. I'll look for this book on Trang Tien street - although it's hard to find foreign books in Hanoi, they often have a wide range of materials related to Viet Nam. I might have a hard time finding the Northern-Vietnamese terms for all the products, though! Water-buffalo is more delicious than beef. I too will miss it when I leave.

I can't get over the sheer amount of....meat. Was all that...for just your table? Or did they walk those skewers from table to table, carving as needed? That's amazing. And only $25 per person? That seems like a real bargain. What's the point of limiting liquor licenses to restaurants if people can still bring and drink alcohol in that restaurant? I mean, it's not like they're limiting the amount of liquor available in the area that way. Are they just trusting people wouldn't consume as much if they had to bring it themselves? Because, you know, for me it works the other way, since I'm free to pay only $6/bottle, I consume a lot more. But I'm from Nova Scotia, where the liquor laws are even more archaic. I remember encountering the idea of "off license" for the first time in Australia. I hopped into a cab and asked the cabbie to take me to a liquor store. "None near here, love. Why don't I take you to the pub, you can get a few cans there." he said. "Wait - " I said, "The pubs do take-out? ...@#$%, this really is the promised land." After relating this tale to the general hilarity of my parents, they assured me this was quite a normal practice is most civilized places, but not, tragically, in the backward province they chose to raise me. Don't get me started on what happened when I realized Asia has no open-liquor laws.

Hmm. This very situation happened to me last night when I got to the potato-carrot-chicken cooking stage of the curry, which I always do separately, before adding the pre-cooked roux based sauce - is this the correct way? I have no idea, since I first encountered Japanese curry mixes in Korea - where the directions were in Korean and Japanese, but not English. Er, long story short, I went to get the box of roux to make up when I found that I'd purchased the Korean Ottogi brand instant curry mix by mistake. Yikes. So I dumped it oven the sauteeing mix anyway, and cheated the whole thing with a half a can of coconut milk and some curry powder I had kicking around in the cupboard. I dropped in a couple of spoons of honey, to get that "Vermont" brand taste. It was okay, but nowhere near what I wanted. I'll have to hit my local curry shop sometime this week to get a fix.

Another great travelogue! I've just come from reading Peter Greene's Bangkok thread, and now this taste of Prague. Those hot chocolates had me dreaming of cooler climes. How were things priced there - for example, how much was the average hot chocolate? Did you find it expensive to visit, overall? As to the popularity of KFC, I'm at a complete loss to explain that. One opened here recently, and it's considered terribly cool and rebellious to go there. I guess freedom really does come with french fries.

Lovely. I feel like I'm there, especially since it's stinking hot and steamy here in Hanoi. Iced coffees (or Halidas) are the only defense. I remember the e-mails I used to get from the Canadian embassy when I was in Korea in 2003. Charming. Dear suckers, Buy your own plane tickets home. If we get nuked, go to Yongsan, and ask the Americans nicely for a ride home. Cheers/A bientot, Your Taxdollarsatwork I never got to flee to Bangkok. Is the banana flower salad there similar to the Vietnamese one? It's one of my favourite dishes here, although here they use pig ears instead of pork neck.

This is a brilliant idea. Especially the suggestion above about how to put together a regular meal - what soup, side dishes, etc. should be served. I especially like the idea of having recipes for salads and side dishes. Also, how about a recipe for tonkatsu sauce? I'd love to be able to make that from scratch. Maybe some photos in the books of typical ingredients, with captions? I'd love to make Japanese food here in Vietnam, but all of the ingredients available are labeled only in Japanese, so I have no idea what kind of tofu is which, what mirin looks like, what a yuzu looks like...(is it a citron?), and so on. This would be useful for foreigners moving to Japan, too, I think. I remember being so frustrated when I moved to Korea, because there I was surrounded by Korean ingredients for Korean everyday foods, but I couldn't put any together, because I didn't know how to do it, how to organize panchan, etc., and had to waste a lot of money buying expensive imported foods because it was all I knew how to cook with. And then I'd ask a Korean friend, "You know, how do I make dweonjang-jigae?" and they'd look at me much like I imagine an American would look at someone who asked them, "How do I make a peanut butter sandwich?"