The first time I ever came to Vietnam, incidentally also the first time I ever left Australia, I followed all the rules for eating in the developing world. You know, If you can’t boil it, fry it or peel it, don’t eat it, otherwise known as the first commandment of travel. I’m haunted by images of PMum shovelling Vietnam Airlines salad in, as it would be the last fresh vegetables she could eat for a month.

Living in a developing country, however, is a slightly different kettle of fish. Imagine being deprived of fresh vegetables, salads, iced coffee and all the rest of that forbidden delicious. Thankfully when you can cook for yourself the sphere of acceptable expands to pretty much what we are used to at home. Regardless, salad is still a luxury not price-wise, but in terms of effort. All that careful washing is hard work, definitely not a pursuit for the lazy.

The weather here in Hanoi has been doing cartwheels, freezing when I bought this impossibly fresh (and incredibly cheap) chinese cabbage, sweltering when I came to cook it. The warming, spicy Chinese style preparation I had planned wasn’t going to happen, too much sweating over a hot stove. Luckily a quick search uncovered a recipe perfect for such unpredictable weather patterns, Karen Martini’s Cabbage, pea, mint, chilli and parmesan salad. Adapted to ingredients within reach, name shortened thusly, this salad turned out to be crisp, sharp and dotted with points of interest. A spicy bite here, a popping green pea there all bound together with a tart dressing, worth the effort.

Cabbage Salad
Adapted from Karen Martini’s Cabbage, pea, mint, chilli and parmesan salad from Gourmet Traveller magazine.

100 grams peas, podded (about 250gm unpodded)
500 grams Chinese cabbage, shredded finely
1 long red chilli, seeds removed, finely chopped
1 red capsicum, julienne
80 grams parmesan, finely shaved (use a sharp knife, or a peeler to get fine slivers of cheese)
1 handful basil leaves, finely shredded

100 ml extra virgin olive oil
50 ml lemon juice

For dressing: Whisk olive oil and lemon juice together, season.

Blanch peas in boiling salted water until bright green (1-2 minutes), drain and refresh, drain again and reserve.

Mix cabbage, peas, capsicum, basil, chilli and half the cheese with the dressing. Mix gently (use your hands!) for a few minutes until the cabbage starts to wilt. Adjust seasoning then serve topped with remaining parmesan.

I am forever trying to complicate things, unintentionally, but still. I spent years at university adding complexity in an attempt to find simplicity. Convoluted ideas can befuddle even the most intelligent and when that idea is about food the resulting dish will likely cause confusion and at worst, revulsion. Good food can be like great concepts, either beautifully spare or focussed in entwined complexity which appears to be simplicity redefined. The former is more achievable in a home kitchen, the latter best left to experts.

This cucumber salad illustrates this leanness of meaning. Crisp, juicy fruit (thats right, fruit), pungent garlic, earthy sesame oil, a flourish of seeds reinforce the flavour and add a textural counterpoint. Eat as a part of a banquet, or with steamed rice, omelette and vegetables. Or as a refreshing snack with a dish of salty roasted peanuts and an ice cold beer. Delightfully understandable.

In case you didn’t notice, I am obsessing about simplicity right now, paring back the excess and revealing the basics. Why? I’m doing an intensive CELTA course, learning to teach english. For the next three weeks I am living and breathing teaching english which means simplicity, logical thought, clarity and basics. I hope my teaching becomes comparable to this cucumber salad, clear, bright and something understandable to sink your teeth into.

Cucumber Salad

3 cucumbers, Kirby or Lebanese variety
1 Tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 or 2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
salt
garlic, pulverised, as much as you can handle.

Wash cucumbers well, cut into chunks and squeeze a few pinches of sea salt through them, lightly bruising the flesh. Set aside for an hour.
Meanwhile make the dressing. Mix oil, sugar and vinegar together until sugar dissolves. Taste and adjust.
Drain liquid from cucumbers and taste. If they are too salty then rinse lightly and drain again. Stir through as much smosched garlic as you can handle (for me it is the more the merrier), then dress. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

Oh hello! I’m here in Ha Noi, settling in and getting acquainted with the people, traffic and dust. I’m writing right now to the Nghi Tam soudtrack – staccato pounding of hammer on nail, the intermittent buzz of a motorcycle whipping by, the ever present horns beeping and the sweet sound of an opera singers practise session. I haven’t explored much on my own yet, partly because of exhaustion, though I think this feeling of being in the wrong place is keeping me locked up indoors. Never fear though, tomorrow is for exploration and you know what that means, much eating.

My outings have mainly comprised of grocery shopping and highlighted failure in my quest to become a dividing genius. See, the money here is confusing, I’ve got the notes and colours under control but the exchange rate right now is $1AU to 16,000VND give or take. Try dividing every price by 16,000  (or 17,700 if you want to be proper) and then trying to remember if this is a better deal than the place down the street. Oh, and to confuse things even more, Pmum doesn’t convert to AUD she is truly international and uses USD now.

Some things are more expensive here, but to be honest in my unemployed state I am loathe to spend any money at all, but some things are surprisingly cheap. I just bought a box of Maldon salt for 70,000 dong ($4.35), it would cost about $9 in Sydney, jackpot!

I’m sure you’re all wondering why so much grocery shopping is necessary. When I arrived the cupboards were bare, like some kind of nightmare fairytale, you know the scary ones with warty-nosed witches forcing you to eat scorpions, spiders or fusion sushi. I lie, they were not quite bare, Pmum had rice, honey, tea and coffee, fish sauce, unidentifiable Vietnamese sauces, eggs, a wide variety of dried fruit and nuts, soy milk, watermelon and 1 can of Bia Ha Noi. Making a meal of out that was a terrifying challenge which I turned down immediately, grabbed my wallet and ran to the shop. Now we also have polenta, coconut, butter, flour, basil, maldon salt, UHT milk, sweet yoghurt, cocoa and coriander seeds. It doesn’t sound much better I’m afraid. Regardless of the dire pantry situation, I managed to cobble this salad together today. It isn’t pretty, but then neither is Ha Noi.

Inspired by 101 Cookbooks Lime and Peanut Coleslaw and various others around the traps I asianed the dressing up and added some divine sweet-sour, juicy pink pomelo for contrast. A light and crunchy ensemble of finely sliced cabbage, chilli julienne, peanuts and pomelo perfect for the first day of summer in Australia, and also for the unseasonably warm beginning of Winter we are experiencing here in Hanoi.

You could roast the peanuts, I certainly wanted to and would have if only I could get the stove going. Fingers crossed there isn’t gas filling the room right now, thanks to the jury rigged kitchen set up here and my own inability to know which way a tap turns on. Seriously, this is an issue for me. A regular faucet is fine (though I did stay in a hostel in Kuching where every tap in the place was fitted back-to-front – that took a little while to figure out), but put a tap at any other angle and I’m useless especially if turning it has no immediately discernible effect. Back to the salad.

For the Cabbage, pomelo and peanut salad: Slice your cabbage finely. You can use a mix of regular and purple/red cabbage as I did, or even Chinese cabbage. Julienne as much chilli as you like. Mix together cabbage, chilli and dress. Add the pomelo and peanuts (roasted or not, but I think roasted and salted would be best) just before serving so they maintain their shape and crunch.

For the Dressing: I didn’t measure the amount, just did this by taste – try it – these measurements are guides only. Mix 1 teaspoon of sugar and with 2 Tablespoons of lime juice, stir to dissolve. Add 1 small clove of pulverised garlic and a glug of fish sauce, woah easy there fish sauce is hard to take back once its mixed in. Taste and adjust. I would have loved to add some neutral flavoured oil or even sesame oil to this but none was available, guess I’d better go to the shops again.

Now, moving along on this garden to plate series from crowd pleasing avocado, to a decidedly less exciting and well loved vegetable, beetroot. By me, of course. I think I had a few bad borscht experiences that I’ve since blocked out. I grew up with avocados, but Dad didn’t start growing beetroot until I’d all but moved out. So although I was au fait with the pickled and tinned version, fresh beetroot has taken a while to grow on me.

But learn to like beetroot I have, raw, pickled, steamed baked and even the leaves as the entire plant can be consumed. Beetroot take about 16 weeks to mature and the baby ones you see on the shelf are the same variety as the larger bulbs, just picked earlier. I have it on good authority that the root can grow to the size of a watermelon and still be edible! But if the plant goes to seed then the root becomes woody and unpleasant to eat. Also, if you’re growing them yourself you can harvest the leaves as you need them leave the bulb to continue to grow.

Beetroot actually grow above the ground, the ones in these pictures are just covered with soil to shield them from predators. You know how sometimes in the shops the top third of the beetroot looks pale and unappetising? Well don’t worry, this is just a little bit of sun damage and doesn’t affect the taste, colour or quality of the bulb at all.

The beetroot (beta vulgaris – oh how I love that name) is related to the sugar beet and silver beet or chard. If you’re growing beetroot on a large scale then about one in a thousand will revert to the white of the sugar beet but will be identical to its red sibling in everything else. When I was on the farm I harvested a cubic megatonne of beets walking down the rows picking the exact size that I required for pickling.

Raw beetroot is often overlooked, except shredded as a tasteless, limp and boring filler for salads and wraps. This is a shame as it is crisp, sweet, earthy, complex and beautiful. I made this very simple salad after a beetroot picking expedition where we also harvested a mutant sugar beet. Only use super-fresh beetroot as its flavour and crunch is incomparable. Paired with creamy sharp goats curd and dill it is like tarted up salad-borscht, only better.

Beetroot, goats cheese and dill salad

Peel and finely slice beetroot, arrange on a plate and dot with goats cheese and sprigs of dill. Drizzle with olive oil and white wine vinegar, sprinkle with sea salt and pepper and serve.

Asparagus is one of my favourite vegetables, eating the tender young stalks straight from the ground is a joy. So this is the right time of year to visit the farm, tiptoe along the rows plucking the day old shoots from the earth and nibble them all the way back to the house. Hopefully the yield was high enough so that there is still some left over for dinner.

If you leave asparagus growing for too long it quickly turns into a fern, fennel-like and dotted with tiny spherical green seed pods that turn red with time. It looks just like the fern that used to grow in our front garden, back when I thought asparagus came from a tin. But really asparagus spears shoot up in a day and are best eaten fresh or with minimal preparation.

Dig under the mounded compost and cut the stalk with secateurs. The stalk gains a little length that only that which is poking above the earth.

The beginning of daylight savings, although necessary when you rise with the sun, is a rude shock on the farm – market day requires a 5:30 wake up, which is now 4:30am. The asparagus require daily harvesting, sometimes in the morning, but here it is done at dusk. An asparagus dinner, which they should all be, gets pushed back an hour. Dad says that in regards to asparagus here he doesn’t talk about food miles, instead it is measured in food metres. The distance between growing and kitchen is less than 50 metres and we eat them only hours after they’re picked, so tender, sweet and definitely asparagussy.

Tiny new asparagus spear, just breaking the ground, still white.

Asparagus is powered from an underground battery pack, called a crown. In the 8 or so months of the off-season the asparagus fern grows, photosynthesises and stores all the gathered energy in the crown like a battery pack, ready for the 10 week asparagus season. White asparagus is the same variety, but the stalks have been shielded from sunlight leaving them pale, instead of the usual purple and green hue.

A new asparagus stalk growing up through one of last years.

Dad just walked in, hands full of these bright green stalks. This season hasn’t been too good, but todays harvest was plentiful, maybe because of last nights rain. Despite the spareness of the crop, there is always enough spears to spread around to the neighbours.

Asparagus Mimosa

Normally he would just eat them raw, as a part of his Dad-style salad – chunky cut vegetables bunged on a plate – but I blanched these to take off the raw edge leaving them ever-crisp. Paired 60′s style with tangy vinaigrette and creamy organic boiled eggs, mimosa style evokes a young Grandma’s dinner party complete with martini’s and floral dresses with cinched waists. Freshen up, pour yourself a drink, switch Mad Men on and eat some Asparagus Mimosa.

Asparagus Mimosa
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine. I omitted the mustard because thats how I roll.

2 bunches medium asparagus, trimmed and lower half of stalk peeled
2 Tablespoons tarragon vinegar
1 finely chopped spring onion
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 hard-boiled large eggs at room temperature
salt and pepper to taste.

Prepare the asparagus and blanch quickly in boiling salted water, the length of time depends on the size of your stalks. I like them a bit crunchy still, so I cooked them for 2 minutes only. Refresh in cold water and drain well.
For the vinaigrette, mix together the vinegar, spring onion and seasoning. Add the oil in a thin stream, whisking continuously to emulsify.
For the eggs, peel and halve them, then force through a medium meshed sieve. Coat asparagus with some of the vinaigrette and place on a serving plate, top with egg and remaining vinaigrette.