nakji

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?"

Yeah, I tried this. "Jeju shit pig" as it was translated to me. It was quite nice, but not noticeably different from regular pork I tried in Korea. As a rule, I find the pork I've eaten in Asia to be much better than any I ever ate in Canada. I don't think it's as lean as the North American product. I've heard here in Northern Vietnam, it's a hill tribe delicacy to eat the intestine of the pig with the dung still in it. I won't be trying that any time soon, but it's an interesting twist on sausage. I was told that in Korea, the food is best in the South and the far North. Pyongyang is famous for its noodles (nangmyeon), which regrettably, I never had the chance to try, as it's my favourite Korean dish. Jeonju is famous for bibimbap. Chuncheon is famous for ddalk galbi (spicy chicken ribs pan fried with thick rice cake, leeks, etc. - fabulous and hard to find outside of Korea). Suwon is famous for galbi - they cook it on your table with a pot of coals in the trendier joints, instead of on a sunken grill. Some of the newer places have even taken to offering western wines with it - they make a great match! Busan is famous for raw fish. Every little region has its specialty. I tried to eat most of them while I was there. My favourite specialty was the Jeju Hallabong, a sort of orange grown on the slopes of Mount Halla, on Jeju island. They usually ran about four dollars each, but were the most succulent and fragrant oranges I've ever eaten. But I'm from Canada, so that's not really saying much.

Banana Mil! How I miss it! I loved the packaging! And the commercials! The flavour was strictly chemical based, however. It reminded me of the amoxycilin they give children. Maybe just milk with sugar and some banana flavouring?

When I lived in Korea, I had an oven, which made me extremely popular around this time of year! I always hosted an American Thanksgiving dinner for all my friends - no matter their nationality. We even had four kinds of pie last year! Now that I've taunted you... Have you thought about investing in a small toaster oven? (Is that what you meant by a roaster? I'm sorry - I wasn't clear on that) You could do lots of food on a miniaturized scale in one. Obviously, you'd have to use a chicken breast instead of a whole turkey, but it could get you pretty close. Or, could you pan-fry a chicken breast? Then make little patties of stuffing and fry them - sort of like a hash brown patty? Serious compromises, I know, but you could make some great sauce from the pan, and call that your gravy. With some veg side dishes, you might be able to make believe.... As for dessert...do they have sweet potato cake in Japan? I mean, surely that must be in the same family as pumpkin pie, right? Although truthfully, I found after a couple of years in Asia, what I really missed was the act of a large communal meal with family and friends. So many teachers live alone, and only see their friends a couple of times a week, usually in bars or restaurants. Just inviting everyone over for a big dinner ( pot of spaghetti, curry, whatever) made me feel like home.

Me too! One of my coworkers has just finished working a year in Naples, and is always telling me how much Vietnam reminds her of Italy. I thought, "Surely not...", but the similarities keep coming! Eggs are also left out here. The dry goods shop across the street from me keeps two big bowls on the sidewalk all the time; one of duck eggs, one of chicken. They just throw a cloth over them at night. I figure the turnover keeps them fresh. If I need an egg, I just pop out my door, and she puts them in a little baggie for me. I've never gotten sick, and there's something comforting about the feel of a warm egg. The other day when we were driving past Lenin park, there were a lot of people selling chicks out of cages, and I briefly considered getting into the chicken business, too. Then I remembered how they smell. Eggs were refrigerated in Korea, either, so perhaps egg refrigeration is a North American thing? Cakes for breakfast sounds wonderful. Right now I'm having a giant cup of Trung Nguyen brewed American-style, and am trying to get up the courage to crawl across the street to the pho-cave. Do you bargain or ask for discounts in the markets in Italy? I find that really stressful about living here, especially since the prices they quote me are so ridiculously low to begin with.

Slow Internet?! Bah! Here in Hanoi we laugh at your slow internet. Sure, you can upload a picture a minute, but it'll only work two days out of seven! Your pictures look like a dream. I can see why you'd want to live there, crazy traffic or no. I noticed you had cappuccino and cake for breakfast (/jealous/)...is this a typical type of breakfast in your region? What do people in your area usually have for breakfast?

Hmmm. There's some durian ice cream sitting in the freezer section at my local supermarket. It caught my eye between the "taro" and "lovely bean" flavours. I'm working up the nerve to buy some. On a related note, are durian and jackfruit related in any wzy? They look similar, with their spiky surface. And I love jackfruit- the only fruit that tastes like butter!

I think that if I lived in New York, the variety things available for my consumption would grind me to a halt. I wouldn't be able to eat anything due to indecision... Your lemon/lime story is a perfect example. When I lived in Korea, limes were practically unavailable anywhere. One or two expat specialty stores carried them, but they were wizened little lumps. Something to do with citrus import quotas. I bought one and brought it to class when we did a Mexican cooking day...everyone wanted to taste it, even though I explain they usually weren't used for eating - just seasoning. Now I'm in Vietnam, and lemons are practically impossible to find. In fact, the limes they have here (I think they're calamansi?) are called lemons when translated into English. My husband found a "real" lemon (read: what I grew up calling a lemon) the other day and brought it home triumphantly, to which I said: "What do you want me to do with one lemon?" So now it sits in my fridge, lonely, and waiting consumption. Do you have any good drink suggestions that call for the juice of one lemon?

Ha! Gloves are out now. Ladies prefer to wear these all-in-one dickie style shirts that cover everything up. They cover the hands with the shirt fabric and velcro and button up at the neck. They're generally plaid - so everyone looks Canadian! Hats and face masks are still de rigeur. I'll post a pic if I can find one. When were you here? I find so much has changed since I was here for the first time in 2003.

So glad to hear the babies are well cared for! I'm covered in a heat rash most of the time myself, so I can see how that would be a problem. Traffic in Hanoi - how to describe? Hanoi is a maze of one-way streets, but that doesn't discourage anyone - a quarter of all one way streets in Hanoi is reserved for people going in the opposite direction. I find that once you can accept the fact that anybody on the road can do anything at any given time, and behave accordingly, then driving goes a lot smoother. My husband, who was raised on video games, sees nothing scary about bombing down the Dyke road, dodging oncoming: women with yokes; children on bicyles; wandering toddlers; BMW SUVs driven by part elite; the odd chicken; people driving 20 year old Toyota wagons like they were motorcycles, old men in Viet Cong helmets driving fruit bicycles and three-wheeled motorized carts hauling scrap metal....everything goes in Hanoi traffic. The introduction of a lot more cars onto the roads in the last three years or so has been disastrous, because there are no formal training plans to show people the differences between driving cars and driving Honda 110 scooters. So everybody drives their car like it's a scooter. We got clipped by an ambulance once who decided it would change "lanes" by suddenly throwing the wheel to the right and crossing to the far right - didn't even look. Actually; nobody looks; they're all too busy text-messaging. This is why Vespas are so popular; they require almost no thought at all to drive. It's not unusual for a whole family to tool around on a scooter - kids crammed between the parents. Nobody wears helmets. Fortunately, Hanoi traffic rarely gets above 25k/hr, so most collisions are low speed. It's considered polite to honk as you drive to let the person in front of you know you are there, especially if you plan to pass them. God knows no one ever looks behind or uses their mirrors. If you don't honk, you run the risk that they will swerve suddenly (to dodge an errant granny; a slow scooter; a dump truck emerging from an alley; tossed waste water). My husband often forgets to honk, as he's still conditioned to use that as a tool of outrage and frustration. So I'm on the back of the scooter, shouting "Honk Honk Honk!" when I feel it's needed, both to get him to honk, and to warn other bikes of our progress. As well, scooters are used to transport everything in the city, from bags of goldfish, to caged pigs, to old refrigerators, giant buddhas....I thought I'd seen everything until last week I saw someone with giant concrete sections from a drainage ditch. Er...Food? Right. I've also lost tons of weight here. I could eat rice noodles and Hanoi herbs every day...not to mention all the fresh fruit. Fresh passionfruit juice is my latest kick. The only downside is that I almost never cook anymore. I just need to stumble out of the house, and I can find a decent feed for two dollars. Unfortunately, I've been working so much lately, I haven't had a chance to do any serious food exploring. There's a place around the corner from where I live that is enticingly called "chicken street". I want to go there next...maybe they'll have caramel chicken!

Greetings from Hanoi! I'm another transplanted Canadian living in Hanoi. Today is the first day I've been able to read this thread - internet connections being what they are here. The medical service here is as dicey as always. My husband was hit by a truck the other week, (he's fine now) but rather than taking our chances at the French hospital or taking out a personal loan to go to the SOS clinic, I just sat at home cleaning the gravel out of his abrasions with a boiled pin and alcohol pads. Beats the toothbrush they used on me when I was in South Korea! Liberal applications of Fiducin and much shouting later, he's fine. But a real emergency? :shudders: Are there any foods you miss from Vietnam? Any Hanoi recommendations for me? Your blueberry muffins made me snuffle a little bit for home. I miss blueberries a lot, coming from Nova Scotia. Blueberry muffins used to be one of my life's great pleasures. Your daughter is beautiful. I was actually at the SOS clinic last week (on my employer's dime for a visa medical check) and the only clients there were me and six other baby girls who were being adopted. We all were in line for TB checks! Some of the little babies looked like they hadn't had easy lives of it until then - some of them had traces of what looked like bed sores all over their bodies. And there they were dressed in the most beautiful outfits that had obviously been lovingly packed by hopeful parents in the UK, or Italy, or Germany...

Sorry - are your wrappers rectangular or round? In my experience here in Hanoi, the rectangular ones are served with what people upthread are calling salad rolls. That is, they are left uncooked, not dipped in water, and are used to wrap around lettuce, herbs, beef and various salad-y things like fresh bean sprouts and pineapple cores. According to my handy Lonely Planet: World Food Vietnam, banh da means rice pancake and nem means - well, what I call a spring roll, but here are just called "nem ran" - these are fried. The ingredients From the Lonely Planet: "bot gao: rice flour made from long-grain rice - different from glutinous rice flour , which is made from sweet rice." Nuoc is water muoi an nacl is salt. Don't know if that sheds any light on the matter, I'm afraid. If it helps, I can hit the supermarket tomorrow for some comparison shopping.

My Husband spreads pb on whole marshmallows and treats them as a sort of dessert canape. I sneered until he made me try one. Damn him. It was good.

I like mine with mayo, although that seems like too much fat in one sitting. Here in Hanoi, they're served in restaurants with a small dish of soy sauce, and a small dish of sri racha. I usually alternate between the two. Eating French fries with chopsticks makes more sense than you might think.

Chives is incredible. The restaurant is located right across from my old work place. The chef/owner came in and introduced himself before starting up. I remember we all thought the location was a bit dodgy, because we'd seen a couple of places fail in the same place. I'm so glad he's made a go of it! He's such a nice guy. My coworkers gave my husband and I a gift certificate to go there as one of our last meals in Halifax before moving to Asia. It was a real treat. It's a shame you'll miss the market, but if you're in Chester at all (you're going down the South Shore, right?), there's a Julien's bakery there, too, I recall. The ones with the apricots are yummy. The Lord Nelson has a great location - right across from the Public Gardens. And then went through an extensive reno a few years ago, I think. If you have a car, I also suggest hitting Pete's Frootique (I think that's the tropical fruit guy to whom you refer). It's in Bedford, in the Sunnyside Mall and it's (gasp!) open on Sundays. Lots of great produce and imported cheeses and other things. Great sausages and proper bacon, and a lot of things like dips, salsas, olives that you could pack up for a picnic.

(My friend's a real genteel sort of guy.) I doubt I'll find those beers in my neck of the woods, but the next time I'm in Japan, I'll be sure to seek them out. I was never a beer drinker before I came to Asia - maybe that's why the mild taste of those beers is appealing to me. I used to sit up on my roof in Incheon, grill up some burgers and hot dogs, and drink cold Japanese beer from a kimchi-making tub full of ice, while watching the planes land and take off from Gimpo. Those are some good memories.

All this talk have curry has brought to mind something else the Japanese improved upon: Beer. (Okay - perhaps just lager) To my mind, the Japanese have perfected this. Is there anything better than knocking back a cold, crisp Asahi or Kirin? Like one of my friends once said, "Japanese beer is like angels pissing on your tongue".

Ha! That's great. That way nothing goes to waste. I mean, I could try and make myself love the gristly bits, but since I'm doing the shop a favour anyway, I figure - go with what I love! I try to appreciate local tastes, but if no one's hurt or offended, I try to go with what I like. Which is not to say I won't try new things. The whole point of me picking up and moving to Asia was to learn new things. But I've got to figure that a portion of the population in any country is set in their ways and doesn't want to adapt to new foods, contexts, structures.... whether they're meat and potatoes or shark fin and rice. But if you are a person who does - then the whole world is a buffet! And if you're lucky enough to meet someone who wants to learn about your food and culture, that's a real treat, too.

I can't agree with this more. I've lived in Asia for five years now, and I've always found it fascinating when cultures collide over food. For example, in Korea, I was happy to eat kimchi chigae or dweonjang jigae for lunch or dinner, but when I was served it for breakfast, I just couldn't take it. Why? I'm not sure. I remember my husband and a friend travelling outside of Seoul on a hiking trip once, and scouring the whole town for something that would suit them for breakfast - they settled on kamja-jeon - potato pancake. Which appalled their Korean friends, as this is only eaten when drinking in Korea. But it was the thing that closest resembled a Western style breakfast item. This same friend got roped into going on a Korean tour group for a trip to Thailand with his girlfriend. Excited by the opportunity to eat Thai, one of his favourite cuisines, he was shocked and saddened to find they ate in Korean restaurants the whole trip. Bad Korean restaurants. And they were issued tubes of gochu-jang on the plane - in case they found the food in Thailand "too bland". Once, one of my well meaning co-workers offered me a sandwich at work. Her mom had made it, off of a recipe on TV. It was a sandwich with mashed potato, strawberries, and boiled eggs. I couldn't bear to eat it. Taste, texture, and context were all wrong for me. As for how children react - mothers in Korea are known to feed their young children "washed" kimchi - kimchi that has been rinsed of the the chilis and seasonings in the soup, to get them used to the flavour. So I think there is some recognition that some foods are inherently challenging to children. I remember one of my good friends there confiding that she couldn't served dried fish in the morning as her son was sensitive to the smell. Here in Vietnam, locals seem to prize parts of the animal that Westerners would avoid completely. Bits with completely unchewable bits of gristle, fat, and skin. I confess, I still have my pho ga with white meat, which suits the pho shop just fine, I guess. They get to get rid of what the locals won't touch, and I get get lovely white meat. And we all have a laugh about it. Whenever I have a discussion with my Vietnamese friends, and they try to tell me they would eat anything, as they are more adventurous than Westerners, I pull out two trump cards: Blue Cheese Rice pudding Some people will claim that they would try blue cheese, but no one will try rice pudding! I made it for one of my classes in Korea once, and one student actually cried.

I don't know...if you're a food writer....I don't think it's too much to ask that they know what an emulsion is. Or a foam. Shouldn't someone who writes about food for a living be curious enough to have read about trends and innovations in that area? Or am I asking too much from a regional paper writer? And he said she asked, "How is a butter poached lobster tail made?". Poaching, butter...these terms seem fairly straightforward.