nakji

So why does foreign dining suck so much in Seoul? All of the pasta places serve sweet tomato sauce with pickles on the side or drench the (overcooked) pasta with cream and undercooked bacon, (more pickles) and call it a day. I always used to go to the wine bar down the alley in Insadong. They also insisted on serving crap snacks like corn chips and plastic cheese dip when we bought bottles of wine. Their classiest cheese available was Philadelphia cream cheese cut into cubes. And I remember the incandescent rage of my husband when he was once served Ritz crackers, covered in peanut butter, spam, American cheese, and ketchup in a bar. Here in Hanoi, I can get a ridiculous selection of cheeses, wines, charcuterie...even the Citimart, a bog standard supermarket, carries real parmesan and parma ham. Seoul has 20 million people - Hanoi has three million. What's up? I mean, obviously, the French have had an influence here...but they've been gone for 50 years. I'm so much happier here.

Nothing's too sweet for me! Pineapple has helped me break my addiction to having a piece of chocolate every day. I have two small ones sitting in my fridge right now. They're carved in the spiral pattern described upthread. I buy them for 5,000 dong (around 30 cents) from my pineapple lady on the corner next to my work. I get crushed when she's not there! The other ladies try to sell me watermelons or magoes, but I only ever want pineapple. I also eat the cores. Here, as in Thailand, they're often sold with a small bag of chili powder for dipping.

I remember having this discussion a lot when I lived in Korea. One of my friends had Celiac's disease (he couldn't eat wheat, barley or oats), one friend was allergic to nuts, and another friend had a severe shellfish allergy. It was always very hard for them to explain their situations in Korea, as food allergies are practically unheard of there. My friend with the shellfish allergy had to avoid almost all soups and stews, and of course all Kimchi. She even had a little note printed up in Korean to show kitchen staff, but most of the time even the note didn't help, as they only thought it meant eating shellfish, but didn't extend to anything with shellfish in it. I can't remember the times I grabbed her hand over a dish and screamed, "Don't eat that!". My friend (who had Celiac's) Korean girlfriend always used to remark with amazement that they were all alive. Her point: In the past, if you'd been allergic to any of the commonly eaten foods in Korea, you wouldn't have survived to adulthood. I sense she was overstating a bit (I think she thought they were all crazy), but could that be part of the case as well? In the past, (I'm thinking of a hundred years ago) people would say, "Oh, that child's always sickly". They might not have grown up to pass those genes on. Now with better healthcare, people are surviving things they wouldn't have in the past, and passing on that genetic trait?

All of the cold soups I ate in Korea are on my list. Mul Naengmyeon, Mul Kimchi, and the Mul Kimchi that had some sort of water spinach in it are my favs. And the cold white radish soup - what's that called? I'd love to get the recipe for that. I think the NY Times did a feature on Naengmyeon recently, which made my mouth water.

Those are the Great Lakes on that weather map, aren't they? So...somewhere in the continental U.S?

As a (former?) Nova Scotian, I'm intrigued that two of the restaurants insisted on billing their offerings as "Nova Scotia" lobster. Is it really better? Or does it just seem more exclusive than Maine Lobster? Of course I remember growing up that everyone in the province insisted we had the world's best lobster, but having grown and travelled, I just wrote it off as provincial pride and propaganda. Were they right all along?

I'm compiling a list of Frog restos as we speak. Please PM me if you need a copy.

Heh. The tone reminds me of a British coworker I have, who once declared (to my face) that Canadians who had gone to public school were terribly uneducated compared to Brits who had gone to 'public' schools. Did I mention she's a vegetarian? In Vietnam? And complains when restaurants serve her tofu in meat sauce? I wonder if I could have Anthony Bourdain fly in to kick her ass for me? What I've noticed is living in Asia is that the way we consume coffee (and tea) is very different from the way it's done in North America. For example, Starbucks was huge in Korea, and you could never find a seat in there on a Saturday. Why? Because a group of students would order one round (usually green tea frappaccinos - puke) and sit with them all afternoon. Aside from the cost, which was a factor, coffee (and coffee or tea related drinks) was seen as something to sit and enjoy, not something you pick up in a gallon container on the way to work, slam on your desk, and slurp through most of the morning. I will give them points for providing little hollow green stir sticks on their condiment booths, though, which finally made sipping my customary black coffee a tongue-burn free experience. It's the same here in Vietnam. Nobody gets take-out coffee. The cafe is a place to go to relax, have a cigarette, sip your coffee, chat with a friend, and when you're done, go back to the office. Nobody gets take out, because the point of having the drink is have a break, not to suck down 42 ounces or whatever of milk and coffee. When I went home in 2004, I couldn't believe the size of coffees people were drinking. The small Starbucks in Korea was 6 oz. The cups here in Vietnam are comparable. I went to the Highland coffee (a Starbucks wannabe) the other day to get a coffee before my class, as I needed a serious sugar and caffeine hit. I asked them on a whim if they did take out. The waiter's eyes lit up, like this was the chance they'd been waiting for for weeks. Minutes later, I was walking down Ba Trieu with a large plastic domed lid contraption, straight out of Seattle, slurping happily on my takeaway. (There was still only about 6 oz of coffee in there - the rest was ice!) I attracted a crowd. Men pointed at my cup. Women gasped. When I got to my building, the security guard (who looks on us foreigners as a special breed of crazy) asked me straight out, "Why are you walking with your coffee?"

Hmmm. The boats look like the Maritimes, but the mountains don't....unless it's Newfoundland somewhere. But my money's on the West Coast.

I've been following this thread with a lot of interest. I miss muffins. I can't bake muffins, since I don't have an oven. And food experiments are always fun. Is there any reason you have resisted adding orange food colouring to achieve the colour you want? I would think one of the Wilton pastes would give you the colour you want, although it wouldn't add anything to the flavour. Does the Kool-Aid add much to the flavour?

I used to make a really nice lemon pound cake with lemon glaze. When I made it, I poked several holes in the top with a toothpick, and poured the gaze over, while still warm. The holes allowed greater penetration of the glaze. Is it possible that you could pour your glaze, instead of dipping?

I clicked on this thread, thinking that someone wanted a room in their house made of chocolate, like the Indian prince in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. It just goes to show I'll believe anything of my fellow e-gulleters.

Well, according to the CIA factbook, the average per capita income here is about $2,800. I make around $1500 US a month, which is hardly a high wage, but we can make it stretch here. Obviously, Vietnamese usually adjust their prices upwards for me, so I'm not sure that the price I paid for the avocados is the same price a canny housewife would pay for them. In the areas away from the tourist districts, though, I usually can get really good prices..for example, a bag of vegetables for 9,000 dong, which is around 50 cents US. But seasonal fruits like avocados seem to be a lot more expensive. Whenever I go into work with bags of things I've bought on the street (which is pretty much how I do my day-to-day shopping - makes menu planning hard!), the Vietnamese staff pounce on me and ask me what I paid. Then they hum and haw and cluck and tell me what the real price should be! But since the difference is usually less than a dollar, I don't mind. Some expats get really frustrated by the whole double-pricing thing, but if I wasn't happy with the price they quote me, I wouldn't buy it. If I'm happy with the price, then it's a good price for me. I'm not sure about the raw foods...It seems to me that the heat would discourage this. And I haven't seen anything served raw. Most things seem to be boiled, stewed, or fried. Carlovski, you sound like my husband!

Wow! That kind of looks like Naan...mmmmm...naan for breakfast...... Inspired by all of the omelets on this thread, I was hoping to make a masala-style omelet like I had when I was in India, with some spice, chopped tomato, onion, and cilantro. Again, I couldn't find cilantro, so I settled for some nice dragonfruit instead, with some Trung Nguyen coffee.

I forgot to add in my original post that I also have a frying pan (non stick; large) and two pots: small pot and big pot. I can't imagine what was up with not putting hot water into the kitchen. On the other side of the wall is my bathroom tap, which has both, so it's not like they forgot. I guess they just figured no one would need it. When I desperately need hot water (like if I've cooked something greasy) and just walk around the corner into the bathroom and fill up my basin. I don't find I need to do that much anyway, as I hardly ever cook meat any more. By the time I get up, around 10 am (due to my late teaching schedule) most of the meat in Hanoi has been sitting on the street for more than 4 hours in 30 degree plus heat. My rice cooker sees a lot of action. Also, there's a guy in the street with a wok on a propane burner that'll sort me out with fried rice any time. That's one of the main reasons I can get away with such minimalism. At any rate, I am now experimenting with recipe minimalism as well. I found somebody selling avocados for slightly over a dollar a kilo. (to a Canadian, that's like offering gold for 40 cents an ounce). I made guac with only garlic, limes, avocados and lots of salt - all of the other ingredients being unavailable (all of the herb vendors were simultaneously out of cilantro - how does that happen?). It tasted fine. I served it in one of my new bowls.

I went to the market yesterday to buy plates. My husband was unimpressed. "More plates?" he asked. "What's wrong with the two we have now?" "I'd like to have more than two plates. We're having guests next month, it'd be nice to have something for them to eat off," I sniffed. "Well, you'll only end up having to wash more. Bowls too? Are you nuts? Four NEW bowls?" "I broke our bowl yesterday." I replied, defensively. "So now we need more, is what you're saying. You can't buy just ONE more? To replace it, I mean. Like what are the other three for? I never use a bowl." He argued. "I thought it might be nice to have a set. They're just small." He seemed unconvinced. When I got them home, I was running the water from my kitchen tap when I noticed it was hot. "Hot water?" I thought. "I don't have hot running water in the kitchen." Then I realized the forty degree temperatures outside must have heated up our water tank. For once, the soap bubbled attractively in my dishpan (there's no sink, either). It came to me suddenly as I reflected on all of this that I have lowered my kitchen standards considerably since I moved to Vietnam. My kitchen has a two ring gas burner; a rice cooker; a coffee maker, and a fridge. For equipment, I have a can opener, a spatula, some chopsticks, a cleaver, a cutting board, a coffee mug, six (!) plates, four bowls, and three glasses. And a corkscrew (I'm not crazy). Now, this doesn't make my kitchen much different than most other kitchens throughout Asia, really. Ovens and dishwashers are by no means standard. And the lack of equipment and dishes reflects my propensity for moving every couple of years. Also, it's really easy to live off of street food here, so I don't cook nearly as much. But I have pared down; when I lived in Korea, I couldn't live without a toaster. Now I have fruit for breakfast, I find I don't need one. I also had a microwave, which I don't really miss. I don't even notice the lack of hot running water anymore. So what is the bare minimum you think YOU could adjust to? What are the minimum standards you'd need to cook happily in your kitchen?

Well, I had a good look around town today, and all I saw was preground as well. (That didn't stop me from picking up some legendee and passiona while I was at it - it seems fairly fresh, as even the grounds seem a little oily, and there's an incredibly rich chocolate smell when I open the bag) I'll ask around at work - my boss used to own an independent cafe, if anyone knows if Trung Nguyen is available unground, he will. I did see Highlands coffee in bean form, but I don't find their coffee has the same chocolately notes.

Shall I Fedex you some? Actually, now that you mention in, I'm not sure I've seen whole bean here. This is my new project!

Has anyone tried cooking with zucchini stems? Here in Vietnam, a really common dish is to take "pumpkin" stems, fairly young ones, I'd say, by looking at them, and stir fry them with garlic and a touch of oyster sauce. They're really great, and the stems are lovely and crunchy.

Just dropping in to say: An icy cold coffee from Highlands is just the thing to combat our 35 degree + temperatures. Edited to add: This one, from Aro, in all its unmixed glory. 7,000 dong, or less than 50 cents US.

I ate them once in a potato salad - whole and peeled, of course. It was delicious, but I imagine tedious to do. I enjoy them as a side dish as well, but dipped in salt and pepper.

It may not look like much, but it's the best in Hanoi, in my humble opinion.

I never saw anyone in Korea eat rice with chopsticks, only with a spoon. They used to laugh at me when I used chopsticks. And everyone dips their spoon filled with rice into the jigae, I never knew that was considered rude!

That sounds cool! I almost wish I were still in Seoul. Yeah, not really. Okay, I have a few suggestions for you: Do you know Sinchon at all? There is a really good pork place up amongst the Love Hotels. It's called Donmania. Really good moksal, doegi galbi and sogum gui. The kimchi there was spot -on - the adjumma there used to bag it up for me for take away. You get there by finding the Krispy Kreme (on the street that forms part of the big intersection with the music store Synnara Records opposite). If you walk out of the KK, turn right then take the next right down an alley. Go to the end of the alley (there are some galbi places there, too) and turn left. It's a short walk up that street on the right. The sign isn't in English, but it's green and has a happy pig on it. There are some octopus places across from it. Second; spend a day hiking on Bukhansan. Come down the river valley in the west/central part of the park- or you can get to it by road from the western entrance to the park. You want to find the river. Follow along the river. The place I'm talking about is one of the first places you'll see next to the river(if you're coming down the mountain). They cook using a western style grill, and they make a brilliant ogyeobsal (five layer pork - hope you like the skin!), and dubu kimchi - they'll even run you out of the park if you stay too late drinking makkeolli and can't walk out. Third - (more of a drinking place, but does amazing fish). In Insadong, go up from the Jongro intersection. Take three steps up insadong street, literally, like before the music shop and the bbeondaeggi stalls, turn left down an alley, like it's two people wide, really, and take the next right, down a slightly wider alley. The "hut" is on the right - there's almost nothing else in this alley. Look for the meanest looking place you can find, you'll barely be able to duck in if you're tall. The place is covered with black pen graffitti on the inside, and there are two hard core adjummas grilling fish all the time. I guess this place is around 50 years old, and is a really popular student hang out. You will not order, they will immediately bring you a metal bowl of makkeolli and a grilled fish with a small pile of salt. Drink, eat, repeat as needed. You will feel like a major Seoul bad-ass if you find this place and they let you in. It's usually packed, but you should go here early in the night.

It's my birthday, so I'll insist on having pancakes for breakfast. But I'm working, so the rest of the day, not so sure....I can't barbeque, as I don't have one, and I'm not even sure I could buy hamburger or any other barbecueable cuts of meat. I might head down to the Aussie restaurant here for some ribs, or if I decide on a blowout, I might hit Restaurant Bobby Chinn! But there will definitely be cake.