eG Foodblog: nakji - Our Girl in Hanoi

[nakji]

Most foreigners don't seem to drink tap water here. I buy bottled water to drink, although I do brush my teeth and wash my veg in tap water. I go by the "innoculation" theory of water consumption. Tiny bits over a long time...I've never been sick, even after eating on the street. The water looks cleaner than the water I got in my apartment in Incheon! There, the problem was deteriorating pipes, though.

The Vietnamese sensibly boil all their water up and drink it as hot or cold tea. Water coolers are common in public buildings. They use shared cups - every time I look at them, I think "Typhoid Mary!". But I guess it's environmentally friendly.

I see a lot of ex-pats in restaurants questioning wait-staff probingly about the provenance of vegetables and how they were cleaned. A lot of them won't even eat on the street, especially those who work the embassies. They seem to live really isolated lives. Oh, well. More for me.

[Pan]

Do you know if nightsoil is used for fertilizing vegetables, as is the case in China?

[nakji]

Do you know if nightsoil is used for fertilizing vegetables, as is the case in China?

No doubt. Most of the vegetable vendors hose down the produce with water periodically to make it look more appetizing, to, so it's hit by a lot of dodgy things. I try not to think about it.

Really enjoying the blog, even though it often makes me hungry !

Thanks! That seems to be a common theme....

[nakji]

We had some time after meeting our French teacher to have lunch in one of our favourite restaurants, Stop Café. It’s hard to say why I like this place so much…it looks utterly unprepossessing on the outside, but inside, it warm and cozy, with terracotta floor tiles and wrought iron chairs; and photos of the hilltribes people in Sapa on the walls. They serve French and Vietnamese dishes. Now, I’d never really had “French” food growing up in Halifax. My parents were keen on Asian home-cooking and restaurants, and to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure that Halifax had a decent French restaurant as I grew up. (And even if we had, my parents would have been unlikely to take me there!)

Stop has really great bread, the kind that you don’t take for granted when you’ve lived in Asia for any length of time. It’s billed as pain au levain, and as you walk by the window outside, you can see it cooling on the sill. We often buy one or two loaves to take home, as we did today. They make steak frites, omelettes, simple sandwiches; and Vietnamese dishes like Cha Ca, braised pork and fish, and some salads. I think the owner is Alsatian, because they have flammenkuche on permanent rotation. I find it hard to resist.

We were with our classmate, and he ordered a lovely looking Caprese salad. Peter ordered the daily special, listed as tournedos of beef.

I resisted the flammenkuche and had “Le Hanoienne” – a platter of nem, green papaya salad, and their amazing honey-braised pork. I need to learn how to make this!

Completely full, I went to work.

Edited January 3, 2007 by nakji (log)

[nakji]

After my afternoon class, I had a snack. One of the other teachers had bananas, so I snagged one of those. You can never just buy one piece of fruit here, you have to buy it by the weight – if you want just one or two of something, the vendor will curse you and call you crazy. Plus, you won’t have enough small change anyway. And your Vietnamese co-workers will demand to know what price you paid and then mock you mercilessly when they find out.

Buying fruit is fraught with anxiety.

So anyway, she had about a kilo of bananas, so we all sat around and had one, as you do. Eating fruit is a major time-passer in the non developed world.

I also went down to the Star-Mart, the supermarket below where I live- I mean work, and bought a “pain chocolate”, which I understand is a French translation of : “Chocolate for your pain”. It’s not the best chocolate croissant in town, but it’s the best chocolate croissant in walking distance, if you know what I mean. Imagine my utter joy upon moving here to find pastry untouched by red beans. Hurrah! (Although – it’s not like red beans are bad, it’s just that when you bite into a pastry for the first time thinking it’ll be chocolate, and instead it’s red bean … for me, a little disappointing. I understand that there are whole countries out there, full of people who prefer red bean to chocolate, to which I say: More for me.)

Where was I?

Star-Mart: I could only fire off a few shots before the security guard came after me, but here you can see the roast pork and duck stall in the front, where you can by roast meat by the weight. Also a steamed bun stand, and some Chinese preserved fruits. You can get goat’s milk yogurt and crème caramel here, as well.

Inside – canned drinks. Our pipeline to Orangina.

Coffee! Note the hideous incursion of Nescafe.

Instant noodles. Fuel for the younger set.

Couldn’t get the dairy aisle, as the staff were eying me suspiciously. There’s no meat aisle, like all supermarkets in Hanoi – just some bacon and pate, and if you’re lucky, frozen shrimp. This limits my ability to cook at home as well, since I’m never awake early enough to buy the meat sold on the street or in the wet markets.

When I got back upstairs, I remembered my students had given me a tangerine, so I ate that as well.

[nakji]

As an amuse-chef – you know – the snack you eat as the cook, as you’re contemplating the mess that your kitchen is in, and how much you’ll have to do before you get the kitchen into decent enough shape to actually start cooking in…I had a slice of that great break from Stop with slices of cold President butter.

Kimchi is delicious, but kimchi cooked in pork fat is one of God’s gifts to humanity, as far as I’m concerned.

Dinner tonight was solo, as my husband was working later than me, so I took the opportunity to make one of my favourite Korean dishes, kimchi bokkumbap. My husband doesn’t care for kimchi, so it was a good opportunity to stuff my gullet with the stuff while he wasn’t around. .

Whenever I did food lessons with my students in Korea, where we discussed favourite foods, kimchi bokkumbap always came up. It was a favourite of many of my younger students, the kind of dish they’d ask their mum to make for a special treat.

It’s widely available in food courts everywhere there, and in small bunshik restaurants – the kinds of places we’d call cafes, specializing in one-plate meals. Open all night, cheap, and invariably orange in colour, bunshik restaurants are a haven for students on a tight budget, and beacons in the late night to people stumbling home; in need of a grease hit before sleeping off the soju. (Or maybe that was just me..) They always have names like “Gimbap Heaven” or “Gimbap Country”, and serve gimbap, jigae, bibimbap, bokkumbap; doncasse/tonkatsu; shin ramyeon (500 won more to add American cheese!); and ddeok bokki.

I like to make it because it marries pork fat; kimchi, sesame oil, and crispy rice – all the flavours I love from Korea.

I took steamed rice (cold)

Some onions and bacon – normally Spam is used, but a) I don’t like Spam, and b) you can’t get it here anyway.

Chopped kimchi – chopped with red handled scissors, of course, in a dish that keeps in the “juice”.

Local kimchi brand – not as good as the stuff that I used to get from my boss in Korea, but any port in a storm.

A little extra gochujang, to make up for inferior kimchi “juice”, cut with a little baekseju.

Fry it up, and season with some sesame oil and toasted seeds at the end.

This is usually served with a fried egg on top, and piercing the runny yolk and letting it flow all over the rice in molten rivers is the best part...but considering the amount of pork fat and eggs I’ve already consumed today, I decided to give my heart a break.

[SuzySushi]

Kimchi is delicious, but kimchi cooked in pork fat is one of God’s gifts to humanity, as far as I’m concerned.

Dinner tonight was solo, as my husband was working later than me, so I took the opportunity to make one of my favourite Korean dishes, kimchi bokkumbap. My husband doesn’t care for kimchi, so it was a good opportunity to stuff my gullet with the stuff while he wasn’t around. .

Whenever I did food lessons with my students in Korea, where we discussed favourite foods, kimchi bokkumbap always came up. It was a favourite of many of my younger students, the kind of dish they’d ask their mum to make for a special treat.

It’s widely available in food courts everywhere there, and in small bunshik restaurants – the kinds of places we’d call cafes, specializing in one-plate meals. Open all night, cheap, and invariably orange in colour, bunshik restaurants are a haven for students on a tight budget, and beacons in the late night to people stumbling home; in need of a grease hit before sleeping off the soju. (Or maybe that was just me..) They always have names like “Gimbap Heaven” or “Gimbap Country”, and serve gimbap, jigae, bibimbap, bokkumbap; doncasse/tonkatsu; shin ramyeon (500 won more to add American cheese!); and ddeok bokki.

I like to make it because it marries pork fat; kimchi, sesame oil, and crispy rice – all the flavours I love from Korea.

I took steamed rice (cold)

Some onions and bacon – normally Spam is used, but a) I don’t like Spam, and b) you can’t get it here anyway.

Chopped kimchi – chopped with red handled scissors, of course, in a dish that keeps in the “juice”.

Local kimchi brand – not as good as the stuff that I used to get from my boss in Korea, but any port in a storm.

A little extra gochujang, to make up for inferior kimchi “juice”, cut with a little baekseju.

Fry it up, and season with some sesame oil and toasted seeds at the end.

This is usually served with a fried egg on top, and piercing the runny yolk and letting it flow all over the rice in molten rivers is the best part...but considering the amount of pork fat and eggs I’ve already consumed today, I decided to give my heart a break.

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God, that stuff looks good! "Kimchi fried rice" is on some restaurant menus here -- and it's really addictive, though yours seems to be more kimchi than rice!

[ldenney]

Forgive me if I am being politically incorrect or an ugly American, but what are the sanitation conditions of most restaurants or other food establishments in Vietnam.

And let me say I have eaten food in America I was quite sure I did not want to look into the kitchen from which it came.

[miladyinsanity]

But my young students, the teenagers, all want Levis jeans, iPods, Vespa bikes, the fastest and best cell phones. Singapore is seen as the example to emulate, and students speak of it in hushed tones, like the promised land, a good TOEIC score and a scholarship to a school there the only barriers to the sweet life.

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Huh. Well, the Singaporean government does offer scholarships, sometimes through Asean etc, but according to my Vietnamese classmate, those who can afford it are already here or if they are really rich, Down Under, in the UK or the US.

But now I really want to go visit. Except that I imagine that my passport will be in the hands of the UK embassy and then after that I'm off to the UK, so I won't be able to visit my classmate--who's off to the US.

[Abra]

I knew there was a reason I just bought a big bunch of kimchi! I can't use "gochujang, to make up for inferior kimchi “juice”, cut with a little baekseju" cuz a) I don't have them, and b) I don't know what they are. I thought I had most basic Asian ingredients, but evidently I need to go shopping. Can you talk more about those things?

Oh, and did you see my earlier request for a recipe or hints on the Vietnamese coffee cheesecake? It's been staying on my mind since my husband's birthday is coming up. We do have powdered Ca Phe Su, so I suppose I could improvise.

[Pan]

I knew there was a reason I just bought a big bunch of kimchi!  I can't use "gochujang, to make up for inferior kimchi “juice”, cut with a little baekseju" cuz a) I don't have them, and b) I don't know what they are.  I thought I had most basic Asian ingredients, but evidently I need to go shopping.[...]

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Gochujang is Korean hot sauce. You will find it in any food store catering to Koreans.

[nakji]

Huh. Well, the Singaporean government does offer scholarships, sometimes through Asean etc, but according to my Vietnamese classmate, those who can afford it are already here or if they are really rich, Down Under, in the UK or the US.

That's true - a lot of my TOEFL students are competing for those scholarships. It breaks my heart when they tell me the score they need, and I know they just don't have the English to get it. They always give themselves ridiculous targets, like giving themselves three months to "learn English". I always say to them - "Did you learn to speak Vietnamese in three months?". Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of avenues to practice English here, and class fees remain out of reach for many Vietnamese people.

God, that stuff looks good! "Kimchi fried rice" is on some restaurant menus here -- and it's really addictive, though yours seems to be more kimchi than rice! laugh.gif

The Kimchi is the best part!

Forgive me if I am being politically incorrect or an ugly American, but what are the sanitation conditions of most restaurants or other food establishments in Vietnam.

And let me say I have eaten food in America I was quite sure I did not want to look into the kitchen from which it came.

This is the sort of thing I try not to think about. But truthfully, most places are as clean as they can be, under the circumstances - people are always out on the street, scrubbing dishes, pots, glasses, and chopsticks down. But floors aren't ever mopped, and rubbish is often thrown right on the floor. Like I've said, I never get sick, but I occasionally suffer from an overdose of MSG!

I knew there was a reason I just bought a big bunch of kimchi! I can't use "gochujang, to make up for inferior kimchi “juice”, cut with a little baekseju" cuz a) I don't have them, and b) I don't know what they are. I thought I had most basic Asian ingredients, but evidently I need to go shopping. Can you talk more about those things?

Oh, and did you see my earlier request for a recipe or hints on the Vietnamese coffee cheesecake? It's been staying on my mind since my husband's birthday is coming up. We do have powdered Ca Phe Su, so I suppose I could improvise.

Oi Xoi! Sorry, I sometimes forget that not everybody spent those three years in Korea with me. Gochujang is chili pepper paste, as Pan described above, and baekseju, the bottle in the picture, is a kind of Korean wine. Its name means "One Hundred Year Wine", which is supposed to mean how long you will live if you drink it; not how long its aged.

Not all kimchi is inferior, just the kind I bought here. Even that's not bad, but if you're going to make kimchi bokkum, you need a lot of the dregs from the bottom of the bag - the extra chili, ginger and assorted other seasonings from the cabbage. It helps flavour the rice.

As for the Vietnamese coffee cheesecake, I'm afraid I can't help very much. I don't have the language to communicate a request for a recipe to the lovely people at Highlands coffee, and even if I could, they would think it pretty strange, as nobody bakes at home here.

If it helps to describe it, I will: it's a fairly standard cheesecake, although I would say that it has been set with gelatine of some time, as there's not a lot of cream cheese available here. Many places use Laughing Cow cheese as a substitute. The top layer is intensely flavoured with Vietnamese coffee; and the bottom, white layer is mildly sweet. It has a standard cookie crust.

[nakji]

The power was out when I woke up this morning, so that meant breakfast on the street.

I went across the street to my local pho shop. Not the best pho, but at 7,000 VND a bowl (roughly 50 cents), a good value.

The pho pots on the stove. (Which is essentially a concrete block with coal burners underneath) The big one is the Broth of Tomorrow; the little one, The Broth of Today. The other pot holds boiling water to dip the noodles.

I ordered tai (raw beef) again, so the shop son chops it up for me. Dad is in the back somewhere, wrangling vegetables.

Pho! No leaf plate at this place, the herbs are pre-added. Limes, chili sauce and pickled garlic are all available for your convenience. I use lots of pickled garlic.

Edited January 4, 2007 by nakji (log)

[GourmetLight$]

Hello: I'm so very fascinated by your blog. I'm 1/2 Inuit and living in the Seattle area. Very impressed with your adventurous spirit with locating and food. I grew up all over the U.S. (if I have grown up) and have very little experience with Vietnamese cuisine. Now I will explore a little more, thanks!

Cheers,

[hathor]

How cool that you are blogging!! The photos are beautiful...I think my favorite so far, is the woman balancing the piles of plates.

Remember our conversation about the similarites between VietNam and Italy? The vegetable vendors, the neighbors looking out for you, the friends scolding you for paying too much, the traffic! How true it is.

But those piles of chilis and limes....that I would die for!

I'm sorry I found this blog so late in the week...now the week will go by much too quickly.

Thanks for sharing....and may your internet connection be fast and steady!!

[Nishla]

Nakji, all that food looks so good! I'm totally craving pho now...

[nakji]

Thanks for sharing....and may your internet connection be fast and steady!!

Thanks!

I'm burning ancestor money every night out the street to maintain it!

[nakji]

Lunch today was a trip to KOTO, which is a training restaurant for street kids.

From their brochure:

"Nearly half of Vietnam's rural population lives below the world's poverty line, and more than 50 percent of the country's people are under the age of 25...in Hanoi alone, there is an estimated 19,000 young people living on the streets.

/snip/

KOTO has 70 trainees from disadvantaged backgrounds on its 18-month program. All are aged between 16 and 22.

Studying either Food & Beverage service or Commercial Cookery , the curriculum is accredited by the internationally recognized Box Hill institute. The courses are complimented by hospitality-based English language classes."

They're located across from the Temple of Literature, which guarantees a steady clientele.

Their menu is simple and delicious, heavy on sandwiches and some Vietnamese dishes. Their desserts are some of the best in town.

We started off with juice - banana smoothie for Peter, Passionfruit juice for me. It looked like a jewel.

I had Bun bo nam bo, a beef noodle salad with peanuts, rice noodles, fried shallots, herbs, shredded carrots, and bean sprouts. Its dressed with a lime and fish sauce dressing.

You pour the sauce over and mix it up!

Peter had lasagne, which wasn't interesting enough to take a photo of. More grape tomatoes.

Dessert:

Carrot cake for me:

Caramel "Appling" for him:

[nakji]

I forgot to add this in the post above, but I just want to put it on the record that that Bun bo nam bo was one of the finest things I've had in my mouth this year. Crunchy, tangy, sweet, salty and smooth all in one...I can't believe food that tastes this good isn't full of fat or cream or something. It's the fish sauce that gives it the complexity of taste, I suppose, the kind of taste in the west we're used to getting from fatty ingredients like cheese. Magnificent. I wouldn't be disappointed if you told me I had to eat that every day for the rest of my life.

In the jumble of the power being out this morning; and then having to run some errands for my husband's photo exhibition, I wasn't able to hunt down the Bun Bo Hue for Miz Ducky, but it's on my plan tomorrow. I also plan to do some more Korean cooking tomorrow - this time a Friday night favourite of ours, Dalk Galbi. (Spicy pan fried chicken with rice cakes). I've been looking for a recipe forever, and then one popped up in the Korean Home Cooking thread the other day, so I'll be using that. Thanks ChryZ!

I was also hit by the mega cold that has been cutting a swathe through our teacher's room the past week, so I haven't been as active as other days.

We crawled out of work around 10pm, which limited our dinner options. Hanoi is not a late-night dining sort of place, unless you stay up until 5, when everything opens for breakfast again. The only thing for it was to go to the best pub in town, the R & R.

The R & R is run by a Dead-Head from West Virginia. He and his wife make pie. Not meat pie, like most tourist traps in town, but good, honest fruit pie.

It is very hard to find good, American-style fruit pie in Asia.

They make cherry and pumpkin, and it makes your heart sing to eat it. The sidewalk outside is crowded with Minsks (Old, Belo-Russian motorcycles left-over from Soviet times. Long term ex-pats adore them, as no one would deign steal them, and they're great for touring trips in the mountains.) and the walls inside are decorated with tie-die and the latest speeches from the president of Iran. There is a faintly herbal fog in the air. It is an excellent place to lift a pint.

They also make the best burger in town. Actually, it may be the best burger I've ever eaten. The bun is toasted in butter, and the patty is made from proper ground New Zealand chuck. You can get it done with local beef, but I always pay a dollar more and get the imported. It tastes of beef fat and butter. Beetroot is not offered as a topping.

It tastes really, really good. I'm not sure the picture does it justice.

They also do really good tex-mex - about as good as I imagine you can get it this far from the Rio Grande. They do not perform such perfidies as serving whipped cream in the place of sour cream. It is not run by Australians, like every other Western joint in town. (No offense to Australians, but too many of them in Hanoi have offered me whipped cream in place of sour cream in this town.) Peter had the nachos with refried beans, which I assure you tasted much better than they look in this picture.

In short, when I want really good, really accurate American food, and I don't want to cook it myself, I go to the R & R.

[nakji]

For my cold, I took a cup of my Dad's home remedy:

It never fails!

[MarketStEl]

The President product is actually butter, although a whole range of President products are available. A lot of the dairy here is imported from France, Australia, or New Zealand. (Aussies will note the Bega cheese in the fridge door. Tasty!) This reflects the overall effect France had on Vietnam. For example; in Korea, the only foreign goods available in major supermarkets were American cheese, Spam, hot dogs, and bottled spaghetti sauce. Here, we have Brie, baguettes, Normandy butter, pate, pain au chocolat, Orangina - even the smallest supermarket carries these goods.

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Actually, I wonder whether the biggest French import to Vietnam wasn't the Roman alphabet. As far as I can tell, Vietnamese is the only East Asian language written using Roman letters; all the others either use ideograms or their own distinct alphabets.

You teach languages; care to speculate on why this is the case?

[nakji]

I don't have to speculate when the Lonely Planet Vietnam can answer this...

"For centuries, the Vietnamese language was written in standard Chinese characters... Around the 13th century, the Vietnamese devised their own writing system called chu nom, which was created by combining two Chinese words or by using single Chinese characters for their phonetic value...The Latin-based "quoc ngu" script, widely used since WWI, was developed in the 17th Alexandre de Rhodes (A French Jesuit Scholar). [it] served to undermine Mandarin officials, whose power was based on traditional scholarship in...scripts that were largely inaccessible to the masses."

Apparently he was able to preach in Vietnamese after only six months in the country. Those wacky Jesuits! They sure did get around.

[hzrt8w]

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Hi nakji! What is the etiquette of using the fresh herb and, particularly, the fresh lettuce leaves with pho tai? When I have pho or bun hoi, the waitstaff always provide a plateful of lettuce leaves, bean sprouts and fresh herbs (cilantro, Thai basil and another one that I don't know the name of). I pour the bean sprouts into the soup, along with cilantro and Thai basil. Does one usually grab a herb leaf together with a piece of barbequed meat slices with a pair of chopsticks to eat and not put it in the soup?

I use the lettuce leaves to roll up bun hoi but don't know how to eat it with pho.

.... The meal for two cost 26,000 VND, or roughly $1.60 USD.

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Was the 26,000 VND all in paper bills? Or there were some coins involved? What is the smallest Vietnamese bill? 1 VND?

[nakji]

Hi nakji! What is the etiquette of using the fresh herb and, particularly, the fresh lettuce leaves with pho tai? When I have pho or bun hoi, the waitstaff always provide a plateful of lettuce leaves, bean sprouts and fresh herbs (cilantro, Thai basil and another one that I don't know the name of). I pour the bean sprouts into the soup, along with cilantro and Thai basil. Does one usually grab a herb leaf together with a piece of barbequed meat slices with a pair of chopsticks to eat and not put it in the soup?

I use the lettuce leaves to roll up bun hoi but don't know how to eat it with pho.

Hi! I'm not really sure of the etiquette, but I can tell you what I do - and nobody has come over to me and wrenched the chopsticks out of my hands and corrected me - yet.

Most of the pho places I go are really low-rent, and have the herbs pre-added. When I go to pho 24, the herbs are individually pulled apart. I load a bunch of them in the beginning, along with several pieces of shaved pickled garlic. Then I spoon up some meat, herb, and shaved pickled garlic onto the spoon (in my left hand) and draw up the noodles with the chopsticks (in my right hand). I balance some noodles on the spoon, and knock them all in my gullet. My favourite herb is the saw-tooth coriander, which is dark green, and looks a little like an aloe leaf, if it were darker and flatter.

For Bun Cha, when the herbs all come in a tangle, you can pull off the herbs you like with your hand and put them into the soup. Then I try and get a bit of herb wrapped around my meat with my chopsticks. I mastered this skill in Korea, where I learned to pick up bits of rice wrapped with kimchi leaves or nori.

As for bun hoi, I'm afraid I don't know what that is. I know "bun" is rice vermicelli, but what is the "hoi"? I've looked it up in my food dictionary, but I can't find it. Could you describe it to me? It's possible that is has a different name in the North.

[nakji]

Oh, I forgot about the money.

The smallest denomination available is a 100 dong paper note, but in practice you never see any of these. There are 200, 500, 1 000, 2 000, 5 000, 10 000, 20 000, 50 000, 100 000, 200 000, and 500 000 dong notes. From 10 000 to 500 000 are all printed on polymer paper, like the notes in Australia. They're in an assortment of colours. Nobody ever carries change for anything, so people hoard their small notes like gold. The most useful note, in my opinion, is the 10 000 dong note, as it is the average cost for a bag of fruit, a motorcycle taxi, or a banh mi sandwich. Things that cost less: a cup of coffee; a glass of draft beer; a creme caramel; a bowl of pho on the street.

You can get coins in the 200, 500, 1 000, 2 000, and 5 000 denominations, but the Vietnamese people don't like them, for some reason. I can't imagine why, because some of the 1 000 and 2 000 dong notes floating around are in miserable shape. When I was here three years ago, much more seemed to be transacted in USD, but these days, except for large purchases, VND is used.