Hoi An foods

Tra Que vegetable farm is just outside Hoi An and it was the first stop this morning on the shopping tour of the cooking class I had signed up for. Typical herbs of the Vietnamese cuisine like Asian basil (a.k.a. Vietnamese mint), Vietnamese coriander and sawtooth coriander are grown here using traditional methods, all organic and by hand. Wandering through the fields we smelled and tasted loads of different herbs, you'll be surprised how many different varieties of basil are grown here, one smells fishy actually. We stocked up on fresh herbs and were treated to a herbal refreshment before moving on.
Next stop was the local market where we bought veggies & spices including banana flowers and water spinach, typical for the Vietnamese cuisine and locally sourced.

fresh organic herbs

organic farming, outside Hoi An

if the grass is greener on the other side: water your own grass!

refreshment

We unloaded the purchased produce after a short drive to the red bridge restaurant and cooking school, which is located on the Hoi An river and got started in the kitchen right away!

Appetizer: Lemongrass Shrimp

Fresh shrimp marinated in a paste of lemongrass, shallots, garlic, chili, salt, pepper and sugar and then grilled on a BBQ. Properly done they are actually wrapped in banana leaves and then grilled. The dipping sauce is very simple yet delicious: 1 teaspoon each of salt, pepper and sugar mixed with the juice of a lime.

grilling lemongrass shrimps

Lemongrass shrimps with a lime, pepper, salt and sugar based dipping sauce

Starter: Grilled Chicken and Banana Flower Salad

Chicken breast is marinated in soy sauce, sugar, pepper and five spices mix and grilled until golden brown. The salad is based on banana flowers, grated green mango, green papaya and carrot, with a bit of chili, spring onions and water spinach stems and tossed in a dressing of lime juice, fish sauce, garlic and sugar, topped with some fresh Vietnamese herbs: Mint, Vietnamese mint, Asian Basil and some fried shallots and roasted sesame seeds.

Grilled chicken and banana flower salad

Phở:

Probably the best known Vietnamese dish in the west, this rice noodle soup is originally from Hanoi. 
Phở Bo is topped with beef (Bo) and the proper broth should also be a beef broth. To make the broth get a kilo of beef bones and fry them for a few minutes to reduce the fat, add cinnamon, ginger, onion, star anise, cardamom and shallots to the fry then add water and a pinch of salt and sugar and let it simmer for an hour or more, skimming off the fat from the top.

preparing the broth for the Phở

Next we were taught how to make rice noodles: It's basically rice soaked over night mixed with water and a pinch of salt and put in a blender until it's a smooth white batter. A cotton cloth is tight over a pot of steaming water, a spoon of the batter goes on top and after a minute you can lift it off with a bamboo stick and cut into strips about a cm wide.

making rice noodles

Noodles go into the soup bowl, topped with thinly sliced beef filet, cover with the stock and serve with fresh herbs and pickle to taste. In the street food places of Hanoi the herbs are on the table for everyone to help themselves to pimp their Phở with Asian basil, sawtooth coriander, Vietnamese celery, chili, lime, bean sprouts etc. Delicious.

Phở. The best ever.

sizzling fish stew in a clay pot

Main: Clay pot fish with fresh dill

Fish filets marinated in turmeric, salt and pepper for an hour, briefly fried, then simmered in a clay pot with a sauce of garlic, shallots, chili, oil and water. Topped with fresh dill and peanuts and served with rice noodles.

Clay pot fish with fresh dill

P.S.: got the munchies? you can find the recipes here.
P.P.S.: it's a blog post that belongs to my trip from January 2012. I was lazy. I'm catching up.

Hoi An suits

"I'm gay, I know what looks good on you!" the boy said. "But I really don't want a suit" was my reply. In Hoi An every other shop is a tailor. And you can't escape the offers of the salesmen and women running the shops. I wanted to get a copy of a shirt and a pair of shorts I had with me, made of another fabric but in the same cut. The boy walked me to a backstreet close to the central market arguing "...we don't have a fancy shop on one of the main streets, so we can be cheaper". So I started browsing catalogues, touching fabrics, and getting quotes for prices. The clock read 3 pm. "I'm off tomorrow morning 8.30". "No problem, you'll have your suit this evening!". Before I knew it I was standing half naked in the shop getting measured from head to toe. I chose the best fabric they had before the boy gave me a ride on his moped back to my guesthouse: "don't worry, we'll deliver your suit by 7 pm this evening" were his last words. At 7 p.m. sharp the courier delivered the suit. It suited. A two piece suit, made to measure, slim cut, the best fabric I could find: that's US $ 120.

Lanterns

Balloons & Bicycles

Flying the Vietnamese flag

Prayer time

lil' Vietnamese

Night falls over Hoi An

Hoi An, dirty old town

Ho Chi Minh impersonator, Hoi An

Had a shave in this barbershop. I always enjoy the little surprise service at the end of the shave, like when they take out a lighter and burn the hair in your ears in India. This man took out a giant vibrator and started massaging my back with it when he was finished shaving. I was shaking in my seat.

Barberism begins at home.

P.S.: it's a blog post that belongs to my trip from January 2012. I was lazy. I'm catching up.

hamster roulette

Governments are evil. As soon as people start enjoying something the government passes a law that makes it illegal. They take all the fun stuff away from their people. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, you name it. Alcohol for example is illegal in countries like Sweden or Saudi Arabia. That's right: Sweden. Ever tried to buy a bottle of wine in Sweden on a Sunday? You can't, since the government controlled system bolaget stores are not allowed to open on a Sunday to sell you a bottle of Bordeaux. In Saudi Arabia it will be impossible on the other six days of the week as well. Minor details. Some countries even go so far that they won't allow you to drive your car as fast as it possibly can on its motorways.

Now, the Vietnamese love gambling. Guess what? It's illegal in Vietnam! Now lucky enough there are usually loopholes to find your way around the law to get what you want. In Sweden you can go to a pub or a restaurant on a Sunday and order a bottle of red (let me know if you find out how to order a pint in Saudi Arabia...). And if you want to test the speed limits of your car all you have to do is to drive it across the border to Germany and off you go. The same goes for gambling in Vietnam. Cross the border into Cambodia and the first thing you encounter on the other side is a casino. But there are also other ways of bending the law and bet your money within the country. On a bus ride from the Cambodian border to Saigon, our bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a passenger terminal of the bus company with a food court and outside the terminal was a small fairground with a stage and some booths selling food and drinks.
And then there was hamster roulette. A big round table that had a lower section with a smaller diameter and doors around it with numbers on them. In the middle of the table there was a bucket upside down that had a rope attached to it. The rope went straight up, around a roll and down to a bloke standing besides the table. People started to place their bets on the numbers around the table. We are talking dong, millions of them. Once the bets were placed the bloke next to the table would pull the string and the bucket would lift up. Under the bucket was a hamster. The hamster started running to the edge of the circle. It picked a door and took the exit. The lucky person who bet his money on that particular door won. The next morning in Saigon I bought ten buckets. I'm going to open a casino.

What gambling is to Vietnam, are late nights of drinking in bars to landlocked Laos. There's a curfew. All pubs and bars have to close at 11.30 pm so that the customers can be at their registered home or hotel by midnight. There's one exception though: bowling alleys. The party goes on in bowling alleys until the early morning. Also, there is a law in Laos that forbids foreigners to have sexual intercourse with locals, unless they are married. I am not sure if there is an exception if you do it in a bowling alley, though...

I left the Kingdom of Cambodia a day later than originally planned. It was Tet, as Chinese New Year is called in Vietnam, and according to my "travel agent" who had his "office" set up on a street corner in Kep there was no transport on New Years Day. So I had to spend another day eating crab with Kampot pepper before crossing the border to Vietnam...
.

the "office" of my travel agent, Mr. Pharis in Kep

Hatien Vegas, first stop in Cambodia for the Vietnamese

good bye, Cambodia, last casino before the border

good morning, Vietnam

gambling room in the independence palace in Saigon, 70s style,
the president was a gambler, too.

I left Kep in the morning and four buses, several Mekong delta crossings and a hamster roulette break later got into Ho Chi Minh City a.k.a. Saigon when it was almost midnight. I had my first pho straight away from a street food stall. I thought I had seen mad traffic in many places I've been to before, but Saigon is just mental. You can't see the street for the mopeds. The Tet celebrations were to continue for days to come. Since 2012 is the year of the Dragon, the city had dragons installed in many locations and every moped in HCMC was on its way to one or another dragon. Chúc mừng năm mới - Happy new year!

Moped madness, Saigon

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Vietnam telecom. surprisingly it works.

Before leaving Saigon I went to see the Cao Dai temple at Thay Ninh. Cao Dai is a religion that mixes concepts of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, blends it with a dash of Hinduism (Brahma, Shiva and Krishna are sitting on the temple's roof) and honours a wild bunch of saints and holy spirits including Victor Hugo, Jesus, Shakespeare, Buddha, Jeanne d'Arc, Mohammed, Napoleon, Descartes, Churchill, Lenin and Tolstoi. If religion is a buffet, this is it. That's me in the corner, choosing my religion...

prayer time, Cao Dai temple

Prayer time is four times a day: 6 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. and midnight and this is what it sounds like.

Cao Dai temple, Tay Ninh

On the way back to Ho Chi Minh City we stopped at the tunnels of Cu Chi. During the Vietnam war the Viet Cong guerrillas built a network of more than a hundred kilometres of tunnels that served as routes for supplies, homes and even hospitals underground. It was probably due to these tunnels and the booby traps built around the area that Vietnam became a war the U.S. troops could not win. Some of the tunnels have been restored and can be visited. We were told that they have been somewhat enhanced in size (so that over-sized tourists fit) but they are still very claustrophobic and get narrower and narrower as you crawl through the tunnels for the final exit (there are several exits before that just in case you panic...).   

wrong door. booby trap, bamboo spike version.

Cu Chi tunnels: I am disappeared

Claustrophobic Cu Chi tunnels