Stickyrice

VTV1 9.45am Sunday 21st March

My ugly dial will be prominent on TV screens this weekend.

And televisions are bloody big these days! If you are in Vietnam plonked in front of the box this Sunday in the a.m., look away!

'Talk Vietnam' is featuring foreign perspectives on Vietnamese cuisine. Tracey Lister, partner in the Hanoi Cooking Centre, got to cooking in the studio, then played happy families in the kitchen at home. I pretended to be an expert and waddled about the Old Quarter stuffing my cake hole with banh troi tau.

Be warned! Stay in bed this Sunday morning!

Real Chicken Pho

The Spot: A prominent corner of one of the Old Quarter's busier intersections where the traffic lights have been permanently switched off! Buses power through here, horns blasting. An antique fan repair shop is opposite, a temple of primary colours adjacent behind. Just up the street from "most famous" pho, at 1 Hang Dieu.

Space and Atmosphere: The cluttered interior is strangely triangular in shape, a pokey hole which can accommodate ten to twelve noodle-munchers, all elbows in! The major space is curbside where perhaps twenty patrons can sit. The pervading ambience is raw traffic chaos. Get ready to run from any rogue moto careening out of the path of a reckless bus driver.

Shopfront Style: A spidery shade-casting banyan dominates the shopfront. Erupting out of the concrete footpath, its hanging roots have been clipped, its branches claw at the power lines and scratch at the eatery's red signage.

Serving Station: A glass cabinet contains a bounty of assorted chicken bits. Dark meat, white meat, chewy sinewy bits, threads of boiled skin like bumpy rubber bands. The woman seated behind it is chief portioner, swivelling from side to side, dunking and separating noodles, pinching and arranging chook and spring onions, ladling soup. Crouched behind her is another woman, an expert in chicken anatomy, who cleavers at the birds, digging out every last edible shred of flesh from each carcass.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: The varnish is chipping off the sticks. Plastic plates of lime wedges and a stunning palette of fiery chilis and pin thin lime leaf strips make for a colourful table. It's comforting that the bowls are the usual floral numbers scalloped just above the base, just like Nana's.

Meat Generosity: Plenty of the sort I'm not all that fond of - chewy, attached to skin and favoured vehemently by the locals. I'm such a fussy ponce in this matter!

Service to Delivery Gap: A very popular joint, they shunt the punters in and out to maximise seat turnover. I drew breath a dozen times and the pho was before me.

Stock Factor: Slightly cloudy and not as comforting as I remembered from a previous visit.

Cost: 20,000VND (USD$1.05, AUD$1.15)

Rank: Not up there.

Dusty Pepper Trail

I'm not the type of person who goes on a holiday to a tropical island or any other beach destination to spend time off the sand away from the water. I want to see that blue liquid surface, choppy or glassy, every waking moment of my time there, to be hypnotised by the ebb and flow of waves, to feel my skin taut with dried salt water.

A beach holiday should be enjoyed prostrate, turning pages, elbow bending a beverage to one's lips - totally sedentary. I wouldn't even throw a frisbee. But when your travelling companion has a tendency to hyperactivity, a stinking rotten compromise must be made.

When I was forcibly wrenched from my banana lounge, it was not unlike a surgical procedure, the wooden slats of the chair leaving a lasting impression on my ample thighs.

And then I had to walk!

To the motorbike.

For we were journeying inland, on a dusty trail in search of pepper.

Just out of the main town, the road was unmade and the colour of Uluru. Not a drop of rain had fallen on Phu Quoc for several weeks. We knew it would be downright dirty. White safari suits and matching pith helmets were definitely out of the question!

An expedition ensued though. Our map was rather vague in its depiction of the location of the pepper farm. The map reference from memory was F5, which had not a road running through it. Vietnamese strategies for finding the way would need to be deployed - the good old common denominator technique in which a bunch of assorted locals are consulted along the way for their 'interpretation' - a bit like a game of charades. The problem is that many of them had not been to the pepper farm before. Some of them thought for inordinately long periods of time and then pointed in precisely the opposite direction to the one we were headed in. We persisted, southerly, where the majority of the fingers were pointed.

Along that southerly route, every feature of the roadscape was milk-chocolate brown. What would be green was brown, every surface tarnished. Clouds of dust swirled, lifted and descended behind each passing vehicle, eventually settling to create this brown colourless world. Travelling the dusty slipstream, where the brown powder attached itself with vigour to my sunscreened skin and was fast turning clean clothes into brown ones, could only have been worse had it been raining.

The further we ventured on, the more we felt that the pepper farm had perhaps been entirely coated and thus camouflaged in brown. Just before we were ready to retreat back to my preferred location - horizontal by the sea - a crude board with the word tieu (pepper) appeared attached to a fence at roadside. At this stage, we weren't concerned about whose pepper farm it was, whether it was the pepper farm or a pepper farm.

There was pepper in groves, dusty near the road, green and clean deeper in.

 

In a hot sunny courtyard, the male pepper folk were swinging in hammocks under some shade. Peppercorns, recently harvested from the trees, were being sorted in all manner of bamboo vessel, some still bunched, others rolling around like tiny fruit marbles. The red fruit is ripe and produces white pepper, the green produces black. Processes involving soaking, rubbing and sun-drying take place over a period of days. Keeping the dreaded brown road dust out of these steps has added further time and complication. The women pepper folk are soldiering on, crouched over and probably sick of the sight of these little heatballs.

It is not a crop of gold, with a kilo of pepper going for 120,000VND (USD$6.35, AUD$6.95). And that's the price for dumb tourists who ride miles on pot-holed trails, lungs full of dust, arriving like they've just come up from the mine. The majority of their crop must be sold for a song.

We buy up big. The mortar and pestle is going to get a right royal workout this year!

Sunday Roast

A tradition from my past has been revived, a memory of simpler times triggered - right here in chaotic downtown Hanoi of all places.

Growing up, the bird or beast would be shoved in the oven before Mum jammed us all in the car in our Sunday best for the weekly round of genuflecting, sitting, kneeling and standing. These were simpler days when kids followed their parents' directives, went to church, said their prayers, took communion, asked no questions. More religious days.

I'm more 'spiritual' these days. More like my father, who would stay home tinkering with something in his shed, drinking beer, trying not to forget to put the spuds in the oven prior to our return.

Memories...gravy...feeding the fatty bits to the dog...it all came rushing back when Tracey, Linh and the gang at the Hanoi Cooking Centre instituted the Sunday roast in their regular calendar of events. I was present at the inaugural roast last Sunday, and a leisurely affair it turned out to be. Amazing how relaxing a big food occasion can be when you have absolutely no involvement in its preparation.

I was seated, lubricated to a mellow state and enjoying the company of friends, my serviette strategically placed for gravy spillage. Deep inside I was salivating.

The first course was a soup of watercress served with a wicked crisp twist of parmesan pastry and surprise lumps of chorizo sausage beneath the surface. The Sunday roast in 70s Melbourne suburbia was never this posh. A nicoise salad rounded out the starter options. I don't think we even knew words like chorizo and nicoise in those days.

The vocabulary of the roast was more familiar. Lamb, pork, chicken, spuds, pumpkin, beans, broccoli, apple sauce, mint jelly...I knew what they meant. And in the Hanoi Cooking Centre's breezy courtyard, they appeared plentiful on my plate at about 1.30pm last Sunday. I went for the pig option, greedily thinking I may score a nice slab of crunchy crackling. The vegetables were cooked perfectly, beans bitey, broccoli and cauliflour doused in white sauce, spuds browned on the outside and fluffy on the inside.

More nostalgia has just surfaced. I didn't like beans as a kid and I remember one occasion when I was very young, lining my gums with the beans on my plate, excusing myself from the table to visit the bathroom, where I swiftly deposited them where they belonged.

We didn't get dessert if we hadn't polished off all vegetable content from the plate. Bribery was a concept well understood very early in our household.

I ate every morsel last Sunday too. To get at this pudding, I would have eaten beans by the kilo.

Money Matters

Two courses - USD$20 (380,800VND, AUD$22.20), three courses USD$23 (440,000VND, AUD$25.50)

Hanoi Cooking Centre
44 Chau Long St
Hanoi
+84 4 3715 0088

Next Sunday Roast - 28th March

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

I've not been a good blogger recently. I've been neglectful, mostly eating in.

I've been lazy. I've been reading.

I've been on holiday, too.

As the year of the tiger now roars, it's time for another round of season's greetings.

A rousing Chuc Mung Nam Moi is in order!

May your incense sticks burn long and curly and the smoke rise auspiciously through 2010.

I'll be back in Hanoi next week with food tales from Phu Quoc.

Winter Warmer

In winter, in the depths of the Old Quarter, a small stall opens. To the outsider, it could be mistaken as a secret members' only club, where passwords or coded signals are required for entry. If you come at the wrong time of year or day, what you have come seeking will not be there, almost as if it never existed. You will be left feeling bewildered, slightly left out...clearly not a member.

I am a 'member' of this seasonal food stall, located in what appears to be an ancient gateway to an Old Quarter family commune. This dark sheltered lane houses a smooth stone stelae of a horse, slightly military in style, perhaps acting as a protector of those living there. On a recent visit, while seated at the rear, I noticed that the alley opens out onto a communal courtyard enclosed by several of Hanoi's famous tube houses. Clothes were being hand-dunked in suds, an old woman washed her stringy grey strands of hair, a papaya was grated in a doorway. Eating in this 'club' is part culinary episode, part anthropology field trip.

But one doesn't get to stay long prying into these private moments, for the snack is small and the proprietor has a knack for moving people along.

Three exotic treats are issued in standard china rice bowls. Containing a staple of some of the sexiest ingredients in Asian cuisines, namely ginger, coconut and sesame, these 'desserts' have their origins in China.

The first one is banh troi tau, pounded rice flour covers encasing two different sets of fillings: black sesame paste and shredded coconut with ginger, each dumpling boiled before being served in a hot ginger infused syrup.The second bowl, called luc tau xa, consists of a sweetened puree of the common ingredient dau xanh (green bean) made interesting by the addition of orange zest, lotus seeds and fine slices of a fruit known as ma thay, which bites a bit like a water chestnut. What this final element translates as remains a mystery! The final offering is a smooth sugary black sesame soup known as chi ma phu.

To avoid being shunted out by the owner, who is famous comedian and actor Pham Bang, I had dragged a film crew from VTV along with me and ordered multiple bowls for all. We could sit, savour and enjoy. The film crew from the program "Talk Vietnam" were filming some footage to accompany an interview with me taped earlier for a program on Vietnamese food to be screened some time soon. I'll keep you posted on developments there - I think it could even be shown on their overseas channel.

Anyway, if venturing to Hanoi in the winter, join the throngs at this clandestine little sweet shop.

10,000VND (USD54c, AUD59c) a serve

Banh Troi Tau Pham Bang
30 Hang Giay
Old Quarter
Hanoi
(3.30 - 10.30pm, November - April)

Dressing Up Cucumber

The humble cucumber gets a raw deal in salad land.

When people talk about the dull salads of their childhood, cucumber more than often than not gets tossed into the mix with iceberg lettuce and wedges of tomato. Flashbacks of the bottle of Kraft French dressing in the door of the fridge of my childhood home are coming to me now. That was a standard in Australian refrigerators of the 70s.

In Vietnam, the cucumber is more ubiquitous in salads than lettuce. It commonly features as a pickle on the side of wok-cooked noodle dishes like pho xao (stir-fried beef) and com rang (fried rice) - sweet, salty and with a hint of chili. Freshly prepared when the cucumber is crisp and firm, it is very satisfying.

But I wanted to turn my cucumbers from mundane to delectable on Christmas Day, into something festive and classy on our table. So I hacked at my green bumpy friends to create thin but rustic slices, to which I added the best delicate sprigs of mint from my herb drawer, half a Spanish onion mandolin thin and a sparse flek of chili. In a glass tumbler I ferociously forked together a concoction of lime juice, sugar and fish sauce to pour and coat each slice of cucumber.

On the garden balcony we sat, a cool cucumber salad and a little Asian-inspired prawn cocktail to start the eating on Christmas Day, me in my apron, glass in hand, the bird in the oven.

Later there was dancing and chocolate.

It was a merry Christmas.

 

Birthday 2

In birthday celebration number two, wine was poured. A congratulatory utterance and toast to the birthday boy started proceedings. It was very civilized - worlds away from the debauchery of the brauhaus. There was white linen, waiters to pull chairs out, an array of cutlery to negotiate, etiquette to be observed.

I did not want to drink until silly again but instead there was the not much lesser danger of gourmandising myself - like the fellow from that Monty Python film, who ate so much he self-combusted.

For we were dining at the big hotel buffet.

When guests are staying at these kinds of hotels, they sensibly sample from the buffet over a period of days. On Monday night it might be sushi, Tuesday the carvery, Wednesday it's salads, cold cuts and bread...and so on. We were at a significant disadvantage. We were in at 6 and had to be out by 10, thus having only a few hours to do this giant smorgasboard justice. The risk of popping the stud on my trousers was very real.

This experience is a bit like going into battle, a prize-fight in rounds. A true physical challenge.

DING! Round one saw me loitering in the Japan section, amongst the mounds of shaved ice, minimalist plateware with raw fish arranged in perfect symmetry and dainty teapots of soy sauce. An air of restraint pervades this little corner of the buffet and, much as I love sushi, sashimi and the clean flavours that accompany it, I thought it might be somewhat sacreligious to pile my plate high with a cuisine that is subtle and elegant. I win this round, conserving room and not expending too much energy.

DING! Round two was a two-step through the salad station, where I made my own caesar with greedy helpings of bacon, croutons and parmesan. No-one admonished me, no mother, no stick, no stern looks. If I wanted more, I took more. I also contructed a little plateload of gado-gado, with cabbage, green beans, beansprouts, boiled egg, potato and a gorgeous dollop of sate sauce...and got away with it!

DING! In round three, I started lifting up the shiny silver chafing dishes. They revealed main dishes of curry, rice, stir-fries, meat and vegetables. A bouillabaisse and a pea soup comprised the liquid food options. Uninspired, I shuffled across to the grill, located behind a glass pane, which was replete with fresh seafood, cuts of lamb, beef and pork, chicken wings...all ready to be selected by me and cooked to my specifications, even delivered to table by the chef himself. I availed myself of this service more than once!

DING! Round four found me moving up the weight divisions, verging on heavyweight, unable to run my thumb between the waistband of my trousers and my ample belly. If I could not stagger to the dessert stand and at least put something sweet to my lips, I would be beaten in a technical knock-out! Urged on by my mates, all hearty eaters, I stuffed in bits of cake and spoonfuls of both mango and chocolate ice-cream. You know those contestants in eating competitions you see on TV segments about state fairs in the US? I felt like one of them! 

DING! Blue cheese, a cracker, a dried apricot, a walnut. I feel sick thinking about it but I survived the birthday festival of excess.

I'm still waiting for the referee to raise my arm up in victory!

West Lake Brasserie
Sofitel Plaza Hotel
1 Thanh Nien Rd
Ba Dinh District

Birthday Festival Part One

About 10 days ago, I turned a year older.

Normally I let it pass without fanfare. I don't like to make a fuss. Being so near Christmas, I'm used to my birthday being swallowed up with the other festivities. I've received joint birthday and Christmas presents, many birthday gifts wrapped in Christmas paper. Rarely have I celebrated with a party.

This year I had two. Call it a birthday festival, if you like.

The two celebrations were a study in contrasts, one a drink-fest with eats, the other an eat-fest with drinks. After one, I suffered with hangover, after the other, indigestion and flatus maximus. Vietnamese mates joined me for the former while ex-pat friends enjoyed the latter.

Let me go into detail about the first.

A boozy, noisy beerhaus played host to celebration number one on Friday night. Our sober half-past seven entrance collided fantastically with the red-faced revelry of the after-work drinks crowd, all two hours further along the highway to a headache. It was kind of like the feeling experienced when arriving late at a party, having to down a few drinks to fall in with the atmosphere, to catch up to the 'in-jokes'. As I've mentioned before, beer houses tend to have that atmosphere of excess, as if, upon entering, a licence is issued to drink as much beer as is humanly possible. If one vomits yet returns to one's stein for more, hero status is bestowed. All jolly good fun albeit with a slight stagger and fewer brain cells to call on the following morning.

At this particular beerhaus, there are booths where beer gushes from a magic tap in the wall, each drop measured by a gauge not unlike those at a petrol station. These booths are essentially self-serve beer stations which of course cut out the need to go to the bar, to catch the waiter's eye and thus ensure that time between drinks is minimised. The problems occur when people attempt to stand up from these booths. There is a tendency to sway, for the legs to disobey instructions, for them to fold like those on a collapsible card table.

If a booth cannot be garnered, beer - black (den) or yellow (vang) - is delivered to the table in individual steins or tall four litre test tubes with their own taps.

Oh...and there is a food menu! The first round of drinks is delivered with threads of smoked Russian cheese on a plate, which disappears in five seconds flat, hardly enough to line the stomach for the beer onslaught to come. Serious sustenance has to be had and not necessarily healthy. There wouldn't be much point in that. Before we start to get too jolly, selections are made from the menu that ought to carry warnings from the governing health bodies.

First comes the salat nga (Russian salad), one of those salads that falls outside of the weightwatchers' definition of a salad, tiny bits of ham, egg and veggie all bound together by a whole jar of mayonnaise! Sure, lettuce, cucumber and tomato is scattered about underneath it on the plate but surely that's to take home for the rabbit. We don't go near it. Another giant test tube of black beer, instead!

Followed by some squid...deep fried in beer batter and glistening, clearly not drained or even rested momentarily on any paper towel before it leaves the kitchen. But the piece de resistance is a wicked delight that enjoys a kind of legendary status amongst my friends, a hors d'oeuvre of prawn encased in a fatty rash of bacon. We have tried on past occasions at this beerhouse to make do with one serving. The spirit of excess always gets the better of us, however. These pig covered prawns would be worthy on the finger food menu at a cocktail party for gluttons in hell!

We covet them, we gobble them down and we order more beer!

The main course, a communal seafood hotpot, also materialises at the table. This is a kind of birthday custom in Vietnam, especially when the winter is approaching. There is little ceremony on this occasion, not much thought given to custom or "kultcha". The boys do say cheers again though!

So here's what transpires. An artfully arranged plate of fresh prawns, squid and clams is stabbed at by drunk blokes with chopsticks and flung into a boiling vat of soup.

Miraculously, nobody is disfigured.

Beer Tab

Deep fried squid, Russian salad, wicked bacon prawns X 2, seafood hotpot, loads of beer - 1.5 million VND (USD$81.20, AUD$91.45)

Hoa Vien Brauhaus
1a Tang Bat Ho St
Hai Ba Trung District
Hanoi

A note about the second party will follow soon.

Heavy Sticky Filler

I'm sure we all have our own little eating disorders. Mine involves sticky rice. I love it and I hate it. When I'm in the mood to eat it, no other dish will suffice. I will not be persuaded along any noodle route when the sticky rice compulsion takes hold. Though afterwards, there is a tinge of regret.

But I don't vomit.

You see I consider myself to be a healthy eater for the most part but my search for just a smidge of nutritional value in this dish is futile. Nothing green in sight. Morgan Spurlock got sick on his supersize me diet and if I were to take on a similar experiment with sticky rice, I might find myself in a spot of bother, too.

Even after one occasional serve, I'm beating myself up about it. I watch as the layers of the dish are assembled and wonder about the physiological effects on my body. The rice is the mainstay, packed into the bottom of the bowl from huge bamboo baskets covered with sheets of industrial grade plastic, cloth and other miscellaneous insulating blankets which keep it hot. This ingredient doesn't perturb me. I can burn it off. But then what looks like a big yellow ball of uncooked pastry is shaved over the rice. Actually, I think it is mung beans (dau xanh) pounded and rounded, another source of carbohydrates but also protein. All good if one is training for the Hawaiian Ironman event...

...which I'm not!

And then oil is squirted on it. Not extra virgin like Jamie glugs over his risotto! No. It comes out of a re-used la Vie bottle in a thick stream through a crude perforation in its white cap. Leaves a lovely sheen on the food as I imagine it in my arteries, all the wrong fats surging toward my heart. Deep fried shallots and chicken with the skin on are added to top things off.

I reel around, salivating one second and experiencing conniptions about what I'm about to do to my body the next.

A smorgasboard of processed meat slabs, deep fried boiled eggs and other oily treats comes into view. There are no healthy choices here. I block it out.

I will eat salad tomorrow.

Xoi Ga Pho Co
Cnr. Nguyen Huu Huan & Hang Mam
Old Quarter