All posts tagged: Vietnamese

Vietnamese Shaking Beef

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It’s been a minute since The Koala and I visited Vietnam. We visited in January 2011, completely unprepared for the winter. We got off the plane in the early, early hours of the morning, were accosted by motorcycle drivers, dropped our bags off at our hotel and went in search for our first meal on foot. We happened upon a little noodle shop that was packed first thing in the morning. We figured that any place that was packed with locals for breakfast would be a good bet. Once we were seated, we realised the shop only sold eel. Options included fried eel, eel soup, eel noodles or eel porridge. Every item on the menu was under $2NZ. And that’s how we ended up eating eel for our first meal in Vietnam. We couldn’t speak a lick of Vietnamese but we got through our trip by pointing and our drawing skills helped us out more than once. Still, we made some incredible food memories and I still think fondly upon the Vietnamese way of cooking and eating. …

Summer Rolls with Surimi and Nectarine

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When I was a kid, many weekends involved a family visit to at least one fish market. Sometimes, cousins, uncles and aunties and grandparents came along. It was a social occasion. It was sight seeing. A big aquarium alternative where everything can be fashioned into a meal. To quieten us and keep us content until our yum cha lunch or dinner, our parents would buy us crabsticks to snack on. I think they were 50 cents and I’m sure we knew they weren’t real crab, but it didn’t matter. According to Wiki, the word “surimi” literally translates to “fish puree or slurry” and I suppose things like other kiddie favourites like chicken nuggets, hot dogs and cherrios (saveloy) are similar in build. These days I forget often about surimi as an ingredient. At my market, surimi comes in frozen vacuum sealed packs of 500 grams ($4) and 1 kilo ($7). This week the big Australian supermarket chains have frozen 1 kilo packs for just $5. Maybe that’s too cheap. You can often find surimi from …

Bacon Burger Summer Rolls

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Foodie purists look away now. I love bacon. I looove hamburgers. I loooooove summer rolls. I’ve learned a few things since I posted  The secret To Making Vietnamese Spring Rolls. It’s surprising that what some have known pretty much all their life, second nature that is so simple that it’s just a given, can be foreign to others. So a big thanks to all the summer roll pros for the feedback. Now I have learned that drying on a teatowel isn’t required at all for the rice paper and if you just roll it up went it is pliable, it will continue to soften to perfection. Here in New Zealand, it’s not uncommon to put random ingredients into an exotic dish to make some oddball fusion monster. Think green curry chicken sushi and butter chicken pizzas. Maybe it’s the same in other countries too. I’m totally into it. If it tastes good, I’ll eat it. So, with a bit of streaky bacon and ground beef in the fridge, I decided to use them to make summer rolls. …

The secret to making Vietnamese Spring Rolls

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Vietnamese spring rolls (or summer rolls) are one of my favourite things to eat and I always order this as starter when we visit a Vietnamese restaurant. The light, refreshing roll contrasts with a punchy sauce and I feel like I never get enough of these things. The beauty of making food at home is you can have as many pieces as you like. You can eat as many as you like for a main course without confusing your poor waiter. I’ve made these rolls once before but it was a messy failure. My mistake was to soak the rice paper in hot water and for too long. By the time you roll up, it disintegrates and you can forget about trying to eat them with any ounce of dignity. I have found the secret which I will share with you below. When we were eating in Hanoi, Vietnam at the start of this year, I noticed that the rice paper rolls were a tad under softened. That led me to believe that the rolls …

Eating Thai and Vietnamese at The Kad

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The Kad Klang Wiang area is in the middle of Old City in Chiang Mai. An open air courtyard with shops and restaurants all around. There is a good mixture of classy and cheap places to eat here and while many are for tourists only, there are a couple of places that are frequented by the locals. Tourists spend a lot of time on their feet so it was nice to have a place that you could just have a sit at. Trees provide some good shade. Sate Salad & Spice Papaya Salad was on my list of dishes to try while in Thailand. In this dish, green papaya is mixed with fresh chili, garlic, fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar. I asked for not too spicy, but this was really spicy. The flavours were intense – salty, spicy and sour. It was like eating a whole bowl of condiments. I crossed it off my “To Eat” list but I’m afraid I’m not a fan. I have a feeling that this dish is usually eaten with other …

Eating a snake and drinking cat poo coffee

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Friends of snakes, look away now. Killing and eating a snake was always going to be an interesting experience. I’d read about it online and I had a fair idea of what to expect. We talked to our hotel owner and receptionist about it and they called a taxi for us. Unfortunately the taxi driver hadn’t been briefed and “Le Mat” which was the snake village didn’t seem to ring any bells. It was only after I drew and showed him a picture of snake while we gestured eating motions that he got it. “Ahhhh La Maaaat!”. All good. He drove us to a restaurant and he communicated to us that he would wait outside while we ate. It’s quite normal in SE Asia countries for taxi drivers to wait outside for you. Something that is unheard of in New Zealand unless you’re using an ATM or something super quick. Taxis are very cheap in Vietnam and our return trip including the hour wait while we ate,  cost only 94,000VND / $6NZ / $4.50US. I’d read about …

Delicious Vietnam: Eating In The Old Quarter, Hanoi

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Before our epic SE Asia holiday, I had read a few  blogs to inspire my appetite. One of the best was A Food Lover’s Journey by Ahn in Melbourne. Mouthwatering and easily relatable, Ahn is a Vietnamese expat and reading her blog is enough to make anyone crave Vietnamese food. The monthly Delicious Vietnam blogging event conspired by A Food Lover’s Journey and Ravenous Couple was never something I thought I would participate in. When I saw their reminder this month, I realised that it was just about time I wrote about Vietnamese food and our time in Hanoi. Vietnamese food in Auckland There is a lack of Vietnamese restaurants in Auckland, but one of my favourites is Hansan Vietnamese Restaurant. One of those places with cheap, fresh and delicious food, but severely no frills service, my review can be found here. The other Vietnamese place worth mentioning in Auckland is Banh Mi. Who do great filled rolls and all the classic Vietnamese dishes as well. Anticipation “”Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best — ” …

In anticipation of eating in Vietnam

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I adore Vietnamese cuisine. I feel like it’s the lighter, brighter of the South East Asian cuisines and as a result of this, something you can eat regularly. I’ve never been to Vietnam before, but when I visit Hanoi I’m planning on Pho (noodle soup with a rich beef broth) for breakfast and Banh Mi for lunch until I can’t eat it anymore. I look forward to eating at a snake restaurant in the village Le Mat. For a set price (never just wander in without agreeing on a price it may later be extortionate amount), you select a live snake which is expertly killed, blood and bile drained into shot glasses and the heart served still beating. Then they whip the snake away and make a 6-8 different dishes using the rest of the snake. Snake spring rolls, snake soup, crispy fried skin, grilled snake, snake meat with and lemon grass and chili, … It sounds a bit barbaric I know, but from what I’ve read, it’s a culinary experience, not a fear factor …

Inspired by Noodle Pillows

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Reading a book about Vietnamese food and travel inspired me to make this chicken noodle soup. No recipe, I just made it up as I went along, so no claims on authenticity here! Vietnamese food to me, is really fresh, simple ingredients that enhance their flavours. Vietnamese food is highly underrated here in New Zealand. Hardly anyone talks about Vietnamese cuisine. I guess because it doesn’t have the hot, bright, bold or loud cuisine of Thailand or India, or the elegant, regimented cuisine of Japan, so it gets forgotten about. Chinese cuisine is pretty big here though, so maybe it’s simply been overlooked because it’s fairly similar to Chinese cooking? Vietnamese cuisine the kind of thing I can eat very often. The food is balanced and light. There is a strong Cantonese influence as well as a French influence on Vietnamese cuisine. It’s like someone grabbed two of the world’s culinary giants and married them up. Herbs help make everything fresh tasting and you are encouraged to interact with your food, adding each ingredient to …