Eating sweet dessert avocado was a delicious surprise to me. But now for another ingredient out of its savoury western comfort zone: corn. I have grappled with the sweet presentation of this fresh grain before, but never in Hanoi. Are my taste-buds up for Vietnamese sweet corn? I love fresh corn but I despise the sound people make when eating it but I really don’t like that sweet salty gloopiness of that creamed stuff from a tin. Grilled corn with salt, chilli and coriander is some small piece of heaven for me and I even prefer my popcorn salty. Looking at this glass of che (I don’t know the correct name for it, but I call it everything che, because it’s got everything in it, naturally), sweet corn would be the least of most people’s worries.

As a child I loved junket. Pmum bought some for me when I was a teenager. I was so excited to taste this dessert that I recalled adoring, but whose flavour I had lost. I was excited when the dessert was set and ready for tasting, and inconsolable almost immediately afterwards. It was revolting, but I did quite like the texture.

Texture is what is key in this everything che. It has all manner of jelly from wibbly wobbly, through squidgy to firm, strange jellied fruits, soft and fluffy lotus seeds, red beans with bite, gloopy tapioca and crunchy fresh corn, and I love it all. This corn was tender, sweet and crunchy delicious.

I was actually going to skip lunch dessert when I saw a woman preparing this for two customers. She held two cups in one hand and deftly extracted spoonfuls of one jellied treat after another, putting exactly the same amount in each glass. For comic effect I stared wide eyed, looking like a tourist, and ordered one. The other customers laughed at me taking a photo, and eating my textural oddity dessert. Unfortunately my favourite south east asian iced dessert ingredient palm seeds aren’t commonplace here (though I often get overly excited by lumps of ice disguised as palm seeds).

While there are some flavours and textures that I just don’t enjoy here, avocado and corn in desserts isn’t one of them.

Che spots, all over town.
This one is on Hang Dieu in the old quarter.

I’ve eaten a lot of avocados. A Lot. I bet I’ve eaten more avocados than you. Actually, I think my parents would beat me in the avocado eating stakes, but I’m sure that I’ve eaten more than all you non-avocado farming mere mortals. I’d put money on it, in fact.

Once I wore a ‘Cholesterol Free’ sticker to primary school one morning after hanging out in the shed ‘helping’ Dad pack fruit while I waited to be taken to the bus stop. I remember because Mrs Curnow picked me out of the crowd of silent year 2 babies sitting cross legged on the ground, backs as straight as possible and said “Cholesterol free? My husband could eat you then!”. I didn’t realise how dirty that was at the time.

Despite the cubic megatonne of avocados I’ve consumed over my lifetime I was firmly rooted in the hippy End-Of-Freeway style of eating them. That is savoury, simply and probably to excess. It is only very recently that sweet avocado preparations have hit my radar but I was instantly hooked. I remember my first taste well.

In 2005, Felix and I went overseas together for the first time. First stop: Hanoi. We stayed in a hotel in the old quarter, and were both smitten by the rush and bustle of the city. We frequented a Sinh To shack nearby, eating plates of mango and tasting all manner of exotic fruits. On our last day we took the plunge and shared a Sinh To Bo (Avocado smoothie). Nervously I finished all the pineapple and mango slices before taking a tentative sip. I was scared that this fruit that I knew so well and loved would be tarnished by the addition of sweet milk and ice. How wrong I was. Now I am making it my mission to eat a buckload of dessert avocados to even up the playing field.

There is a cafe near my school that serves instant noodles, coffee and fruit drinks. Since the avocado season started some colleagues have dismissed the coffee altogether and now order Bo Dum Sua Chua (chopped avocado with yoghurt). I had drunk blended avo drinks far and wide, but this is the first time I had ever seen something like this. You chop up a ripe avocado and put it in a glass. Top with yoghurt, a slug of condensed milk and ice. To eat you stir the whole thing up, mush it all together and eat it with a spoon. Snack, drink and dessert all in one. Perfect in the heat.

If you make this at home make sure that your avocados are ripe and easily mushed up. The yoghurt and condensed milk must be sweet and be generous with the ice. As much as I enjoy it, I don’t think that this snack, an avocado smoothie for the blender-less, will take off in Australia where the avo season is in winter. But if you’re in Hanoi in the summertime be sure to order Bo Dum Sua Chua, or the more commonplace yet equally delicious Sinh To Bo.