Challenge #2 – The Tower of Hanoi.

September 1, 2010

stack2

“… because I know you hate it”

I don’t think there is a single word on a menu that makes me cringe more than ’stack’. When not associated with pancakes it is undeniably superfluous and reminds me of every (early 2000s) TAFE student’s default $2 vegetarian option ‘Roasted vegetable stack’. The common sense rules of menu writing should prevent unnecessary descriptions of the placement of food items, including the verbose detail of ‘on a bed of’ and ‘topped with’, but especially the dreaded ’stack’. I hope it is becoming clear that I’m not interested knowing the structural details of my dinner, ingredients and cooking style are all that is necessary, really. Fouad knowing this about me, set me a stack challenge, “… because I know you hate it”.

stack

Ahh, but I don’t! I despise the word, but adore the actuality, think pies and tarts, sandwiches and burgers, hell, even pizza is a ’stack’.

But this challenge isn’t about words or menus, it’s about my next favourite thing after stacks, maths. It’s about the kind of maths I like best, problems that can be solved by writing computer programs especially when the solution can be recursive. The Tower of Hanoi is a terrifying flashback inducing maths game involving a pyramid-like stack of components.
This challenge arrived video form. I was at once in tears of laughter and totally stumped, in fact, a terrifying idea about gingerbread and this tower haunted me for days. A recursive gingerbread tower, like some kind of terrifying techno-Vietnamese Hansel and Gretel.

herbs

The Vietnamese-style little bite that I came up with may not be fairy tale delicious, but it also has none of the associated danger, unless you count the low-roof, slippery traffic congested market. Fouad proposed this series to spur me into enjoying my last months in Hanoi, and so he could see more of this city. So, today I take you to Cho Tu Lien, a recently discovered market close to my house. I didn’t know exactly where it was but as soon as I spotted a stream of pyjama clad ladies carrying small plastic bags, I went against the tide and was soon stooping, squatting and bargaining amongst persimmons, pomegranates and bananas. This is my kind of place.

butcher
Buying meat in Hanoi

Interpretative dance and (my) incomprehensible Vietnamese conveys my order to the butcher, who hacks up a hunk of very lean pork, ready for the mincer. While she is busy her stall mates start talking to me in fast paced Vietnamese. I can guess their intention, laugh with them and answer Úc (Australia) and play up to their incredulity that I’m not married, as I admire their rings. In a moment I’m 30 000vnd ($1.70AU) lighter and shaking my head at offers of chicken and insides.

produce

I bypass an alley of mixed stalls and chance upon herb-only lady doing a brisk trade and buy several bamboo wrapped bunches, super fresh and fragrant.

The Dish
The rules state that this dish must be based on the Tower of Hanoi and contain Vietnamese flavours. Still smarting from my recent anti-banh mi revelation, I decide to jump in the deep end and use bread, pickles, herbs and pork, some of the main ingredients of the good old pork roll.

Soft but chewy white bread, an aromatic pork rissole (bringing the Australia to Hanoi, I am), lightly pickled vegetables, fresh herbs and a citrussy perilla salsa, all in one bite. The pickles were only made a few hours before and are drained well, so don’t overload with vinegar and the herbs are baby sized and mild. The rissoles should be just cooked to retain juiciness and maximise flavour, and would be incredible cooked over charcoal, bun cha style. Here is a mathematical stack, and pork banh mi, that I can get excited about.

stackBitten

Pickles

500ml rice vinegar
1 cup sugar
1t salt
4 carrots (or a mixture of carrots, daikon, green papaya, cucumber)

Bring the vinegar, sugar and salt to the boil. Once sugar has dissolved and liquid has boiled, remove from heat and set aside to cool.
Meanwhile Peel and thinly slice your vegetables.
Pour warm liquid over vegetables and refrigerate.
The pickles can be eaten in a few hours, but are best after a few days.

marketHerbs
Perilla is on the far right, right?

Perilla salsa

Perilla
oil
cornichons (unnecessary, but I really love them)
garlic
lime juice
calamansi juice

Wash your perilla really well, dry it and finely slice. Mix with a really tiny smudge of crushed garlic (or a whole load if that’s what you’re into. Add a little oil and citrus juice and crush the leaves a little to release their flavour. Stir through finely diced cornichons, if using.

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Pork patties
lemongrass, white part only, minced
fish sauce
sugar
garlic, minced
shallot, minced
pork mince

Mix all ingredients together, with your hands is best. Work the pork so it becomes a bit gluey. If your meat is very lean then you may need to add some oil. Form into small patties and fry in hot oil.

Banh mi, or other bread
coriander, mint, Asian basil and other herbs.

Assemble as per pictures, and eat immediately.

Posted in challenge, market | Tagged 5 Comments >>

Banh Tom

August 26, 2010

BanhTom

We sit on plastic stools pulled up to laminate tables in a near empty shopfront. We are down a dead end street, opposite a temple, waiting for Banh Tom (West Lake prawn fritters). Three tables of colleagues, chattering over the ever present construction noise, simply happy to be free of work for another week. Meanwhile, an elderly lady supported by a large family group, shuffles in and sits queen-like at a neighbouring table.

salad
Nom bo kho: salad with dried beef.

Almost giddy with excitement at the coming bounty I’m disturbed by the confused looks beaming at me. “Do you like seafood?” Miss Linh asks. A strange question as they’ve spent all afternoon laughing at how excited I was to be eating banh tom. On mentioning this, Linh laughs at me “But this is not seafood. This is from the lake… Fressss water”. Apparently in Hanoi there is a difference, and tonight we’re eating lakefood.

BanhTom2

Regardless of what it’s called, I’d prefer not to think about where this lakefood came from. Really, it’s better that way. Dispel thoughts of pollution and dead fish and enjoy these deep fried sweet potato cakes topped with prawns, shell intact, heads blessedly removed. Crisp cake, tender prawn with surprisingly pleasant shells are best when given a quick nước chấm bath. But this is all in the future, we are still waiting. A plate piled high with fritters is heading towards us, then at the last minute veers to our neighbours. Being a timid foreigner I grumbled under my breath while several of my companions took a stand and complained loudly. I don’t understand much Vietnamese, but I’m pretty sure they were saying “Hey lady, those fritters are ours! We were here first and if we don’t get some satisfaction soon there’ll be a riot”.

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Large plates of riot-averting snails arrive first, intoxicatingly fragrant with lime leaves and ginger. Burn your fingers extracting the sweet flesh from the blistering hot shell, the pain will be more than soothed by these tender mollusks. Dunked in a special concentrated nước chấm with chilli and lime leaves, these are the very best snails I have ever eaten.

snail3

The banh tom exceed expectation. The fritters aren’t heavy, sweet or potatoey. In fact they are the polar opposite of the idea ’sweet potato fritters’ conjures. Think light and clean, only enhanced by the accompanying nước chấm. I think I ate half the plate.

Other options here are bun oc and bun rieu, so I’m slightly confused when an improbable salad arrives. Heavy with perilla and a fish sauce dressing, the highlights of the nom bo kho (other than it’s name) are the well roasted peanuts and tangle of finely shredded dried beef.

banhTom3

The best bit about my job is the snacks my co-workers bring in. To celebrate special days on the lunar calendar, weddings and birthdays (though keeping well to office tradition, birthday cakes are cardboard tasteless), as well as just because. Going out to eat with my co-workers comes in a close second in the ‘highlights of my job’ race (I’m not sure what gets bronze, but it sure as hell isn’t being told that I’m a man, that I look like a boy and that I’m fat. This is Vietnam, after all).

This lakefood banquet is the clear winner of all work meals, ever.

Banh Tom
Eateries surround the pagoda at the lake end of Dang Thai Mai.

More photos on flickr

Posted in Vietnam, Vietnoms | Tagged , , 3 Comments >>

A challenge – sugarcane granita, jelly, cream.

August 22, 2010

mojitoGlassCombo

When I arrived in Hanoi last year I was beaten. Exhausted by some recent hard travelling and more broken than I realised from the unpleasantness that came before. Life was clouded with uncertainty and nothing felt new. Everything was a challenge. As much fun as you can have visiting a city it is a totally different experience to actually live there and making that necessary nest for yourself is tough even under the best of circumstances.

3sugarCane
A makeshift nước mía đá stand on Yen Phu street, Hanoi.

I’ve now spent almost 6 months in Hanoi I’ve settled (both in and down) and am feeling that boredom that comes along with feeling comfortable. I’m looking ahead while still trying to live in the present, perfection in theory but a little more difficult to put into practice. So when Fouad decided that he would set me a Hanoi challenge, wrenching me out of comfortable diffidence I accepted happily.

The Challenge: create something interesting made out of sugar cane juice.

Actually, I lie. This was a side bar to the original challenge which I declined to participate it. It wasn’t that it was a bad challenge I just didn’t feel I could fulfill it adequately. Why? I’m going to tell you an embarrassing secret now.

I’ve been in Hanoi for almost 6 months, and I have yet to eat a filled banh mi. I know, SHUT UP! I know!! There is always tomorrow, right?

Procurement.
As soon as the weather heats up torturous looking sugar cane presses start appearing on street corners city-wide. Peeled sugar cane stalks are sent through the presses time and again to relieve them of their juice. The resulting pale green liquid served over ice, called nước mía đá, is pure refreshment. It isn’t as sweet as you’d expect, being pure sugar juice, has pleasant vegetal notes and an interesting nuttiness.

4sugarCane3

Last weekend Pmum and I went on a little adventure. It started with pho cuon, continued with Vietnamese coffees and the planned finish was at the best ice cream/second hand clothes shop I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting where I intended to purchase some nước mía. To my dismay the ice cream and sugar cane press had disappeared and the waist-high clothes piles had been replaced with racks. Boring! If this is the price of modernity then I’m not interested.

4sugarCane

Instead I bought two iceless sugar cane juices from this tea stall, poured into plastic bags for takeaway. I waited, took some photos and ignored the shirtless men drinking tea and smoking bongs. Total cost: 12 000 vnd (~70c AU).

The dish.

mojito2_2

I decided against cooking anything with the juice, fearing that all vitality would be lost. I considered savoury, but the ingredients required were a continent out of reach, so sweet it would be. Unfortunately my first idea melted in to a puddle that tasted of failure and broken hearts, then came an epiphany.

Despite what I wrote here, I do drink more alcohol here than when I was in Sydney, and when I go out my order is often a mojito. Towards the end of the night I’m sure they substitute rum for locally produced rice spirits, but ever present is a stirring stalk of sugar cane. I think Fouad would fail me if I just made a drink, plus, how boring is that!

So I took a mojito and tweaked it into a dessert: Sugarcane and rum granita, lime and sugarcane jelly, lime cream.

mojito1

This granita is fairly alcoholic, but the subtle super-fresh sugar cane flavour shines through. Paired with the lime scented cream, sour and sweet cubes of jelly and mint leaves this dessert has everything: refreshment, interest and alcohol while managing to bypass cloying. My favourite part is where the cream gets frozen by the granita, instant ice-cream.

So, Fouad, what do you think?

Sugarcane granita

500ml sugarcane juice
1/4 cup white rum
sugar syrup to taste (the more sugar syrup the softer this will freeze. Err on the side of a bit more if you want to keep this for more than a few days)
juice of 2 limes.

Mix all ingredients together and freeze. Just before serving, fork the ice-block to produce light flakes of frozen goodness.

Lime jelly
This recipe makes much more jelly than is necessary, and because it uses agar agar it sets very firmly. Halve or quarter the recipe if you don’t love jelly.

250ml water
50ml lime juice
3T sugar
1/2 packet agar agar.

Heat the water, sugar and agar agar powder in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar and bring to the boil. Once boiled, remove from heat and cool as much as you can before starts to set. Stir in the lime juice (I do this because I want to heat the lime juice as little as possible to ensure it retains its sharpness and freshness). Pour into a container and set in the fridge.

Do the same thing for the sugarcane jelly, but use 100ml water and 200ml sugarcane juice.

Lime cream
I had planned to make this recipe, but forgot that the under-par cream (UHT, erk) available here doesn’t whip. So, I added two yolks, and cooked it to form a crazy anglaise, omitting the lime juice.

Julienne mint leaves to serve. Assemble as per photos, eat immediately!

view
The view from my roof top where I take these food photos. Stormy skies.

Posted in Dessert, challenge 8 Comments >>

Two breakfasts in Kolkata

August 15, 2010

chai

Kolkata, monsoonal, dirty and terrifying. I had just arrived in India and was completely overwhelmed, but we’ve all heard this story a hundred times or more (mine’s here). As the days passed I realised I’d have to brave the stares, sun and mud if I was going to eat something worthwhile in this country. It started with a still-hot take away samosa, extravagantly spiced, wrapped in crisp short pastry and served in a used-newspaper baggy. Then some quickly downed cups of masala chai increased my confidence to levels appropriate to a sit-down breakfast.

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A little stall at the end of my street was the target. Near empty in early morning sunlight I manage to order some potato curry and puris through interpretive dance, before realising that the cook speaks English. Hello a marked increase in unwanted attention. I’m focussed on the food. Chunks of tender potato, well cooked tomato and onion slivers swim in a thin sauce, simple and spiced. But the vegetables are really just an excuse for the puris. These deep-fried breads quickly became a reason to get out of bed in the morning. They are light but just greasy enough, chewy and flaky. So good that I ordered another round. The unsteady wooden bench was filling up around me and people stood in the shade eating their fill so I downed my chai and went exploring.

breakfast1_2
Puris ready to eat.

Breakfast #1:
Potato curry, 6 puri’s chai, 14rs (~$0.35AU)

Flurys

Just around the corner from the breakfast cart is an air conditioned temple of European-style pastry and desserts. A doorman polices who enters, while over-efficient uniformed waiters clear, deliver and direct operations. I am waved in immediately, seated and looking at a menu as easily as in Australia. Flurys opened in 1927 catering to Europeans and from the looks of the menu which includes cucumber sandwiches, Viennese coffee and Peach Melba, not much has changed.

breakfast2_1

Flurys is filled with moneyed, modern Indians and more than a few international tourists on the morning I visit. My rich, buttery croissant comes with real jam, not that fluorescent jelly gunk, but the coffee is that watery variety you get at the breakfast buffet in fancy hotels. The food is fine, the room comfortable and cool, but a gruff waiter rushes me, this is not a place to linger on a busy morning.

The cake selection at Flurys, the drawcard that makes this place famous, is enticing, but I don’t taste any, I’ve got a train to catch.

breakfast2_3

Breakfast #2:

Flurys
Croissant with jam, orange juice, coffee 195Rs (~$5AU)

I didn’t know it then, but my two Kolkatan breakfasts, plus the over priced coffee* from the nearby starbucksian barista describe a snippet of the story of modern India. Old and new, dirty and clean, Indian and international, poor and rich, all side by side and mixed up on top of one another. Despite difficulty and distress, I enjoyed breakfast number one much more. The food, ambience and experience were expansive compared to the stilted, sanitised, stuffy and stuck-up ponceyness of Flurys.

More photos of Kolkata on flickr.

* I gave up coffee after Kolkata.

Posted in India 7 Comments >>

Peaches poached in Prosecco

August 8, 2010

peaches1

Tomatoes, coriander, tortillas, a return to the com binh dan-style school lunch. Raging out at the injustice of work, teetering on the edge of saying too much of what I feel. Alone, but only marginally lonely. Tied to my computer (it was a very happy reunion). That is what my week looked like.

Friday afternoon I was a riot of restlessness and boredom. Then I had my first Vietnamese coffee in months and I met the most intense caffeine/sugar high since high school. Memories of this had me in tears of uncontrollable laughter, a perfect end to a horrid working week. Friday evening was a reunion, peaches and gifts (hello pigsy!), going out dancing and talking to real life English speakers (after a week of grading my language for the littlies it is divine to be able to slang, slur and swear as much as I like!).

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As I walked to the market this morning the bit that stayed with me the most, as well as the speaking English, was the peaches. And they aren’t even that great, these peaches here. Mostly they go from tart and hard as rocks to rotting with no in-between, so to avert tooth-cracking sour face, I poached them. In prosecco. Oh yes. The whole process enhances their otherwise insipid flavour and adds an extra dimension as they bathe in the poaching liquor.  Serve cold with a glaze of the reduced liquor and a dollop of double cream for a perfect summer dessert. For a chilled out and simple end to a great weekend. For an easy and joyful return to the kitchen.

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