Stickyrice

Best Che ... but pricey

Every now and then when I'm in the mood for a ride on a balmy evening and my sweet tooth has been activated, I head to an alley in Hanoi's business district. Not surprisingly, the surrounds of the darkened buildings and padlocked gates of this area witness little food action at night. It's mostly deserted, strangely devoid of even motorbikes.

Apart from the wheels of those 'in the know'.

Hanoi's best and most expensive che is available in this largely non-descript side alley, for which I would miss the turn if it weren't for the bright lime green signage on the main road. Unfortunately for those who live up this lane and for the operators of this che business, construction of one building or another has been ongoing here for six years. Six years of choking dust, piles of scuzzy rubble and the familiar Hanoi din of hammering and tons of heavy stuff falling from great heights onto the metal trays of dump trucks!

Am I getting off topic?

No...because noise is all-encompassing in this city.

In all fairness though, the che operators got their own back by banging up some renovations themselves a couple of years back, meaning they can accommodate their customers inside and upstairs rather than spilling tables and stools out into the lane.

On my recent visit, I struck the place in peak hour. The normally efficient system had broken down. All the staff seemed clustered in the preparation area, fearful of the waiting crowds, all staring out as if into the headlights of an oncoming bus. Occasionally one would dart out and then back in again. Customers were getting served out of order, fraying tempers and loudly shouted orders were ricocheting off the mirrored walls. I remained calm by focussing on a hapless white butterfly which had flapped tiredly into the fray, dangerously low to the ground. Incoming feet threatened death by stomping. Nobody else noticed its plight.

I forgot about it too when my che thap cam arrived at table. In my huge handled beer mug, I saw tapioca strips, crinkles, noodles and squares in a variety of colours. I saw kidney beans and jackfruit chips. I saw bite-size rice flour dumplings filled with chocolate and peanut paste. I saw pieces of fresh fruit: mango, melon, lychees and longans. I saw a huge dollop of thick coconut cream. I saw all of these things before me.

And then they were gone before I knew it, mixed with shaved ice and shovelled into my eating orifice in world record pace. Gone!

And the butterfly?

Probably ate it too.

Slugged

One che thap cam - 20,000VND (USD$1.20, AUD$1.60)

Che Thap Cam
Ngo 172 Tran Hung Dao
Hanoi

My Fritter Frier

Amidst bubbling cauldrons of cooking oil, she sits under the wide canopy of a tree in these shivering early days of Hanoi's short winter. I see her every day. I've known her for years, not in any deeply personal way - more a wave of recognition and a smile or a nod. My knowing of her is limited to observations and snippets of conversation. She rides a bike. She writes sentimental poetry. She is a spinster.

And, most importantly...

She is my fritter frier. By the roadside, this one woman operation is transforming what is essentially healthy food into artery-busting sin food. Thankfully, my lapsed Catholic leanings no longer curtail a bit of gluttony, even on a Sunday!

My fritter frier takes bananas, sweet potato chips and corn kernels, produce ordinarily rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre and energy, before drowning them in that evil obesity-friendly substance known as batter. A messy trail of the stuff follows the uncooked fritter from batter drenching bowl to frying pan, where it is gently dunked so as to avoid permanent scaring from flying oil. I do note on this day, though, that my fritter frier has just such an injury on her wrist and has patched herself up with a bit of cloth tied on with the handle of a pink plastic bag!

Upon emerging from the oil, the dripping fritters are placed on a rack to drain, where they remain warm for the next round of customers. From a distance, even up close, it's not unlike the local fish'n'chip shop back home. The banana fritters resemble pieces of deep fried fish, the sweet potato ones kind of look like a lattice potato cake made from chips. All are edged with crisp batter.

All that's left now is the final step. I grab a neatly cut sheet of newspaper and select my own fritter from the rack. The paper absorbs a pitiful amount of the oil.

The rest is now clogging my arteries and adding kilos to my arse!

The Pinch

Two fritters - 6000VND (USD34c, AUD48c)

Banh Chuoi, Banh Khoai, Banh Ngo 
Yen Phu St
Sheraton end
Nghi Tam

In summer, my fritter frier serves che.

Home Cooking

On a visit to my mate's family home in Nha Trang during the recent lunar new year festivities, his mum started running amok with desserts.

Pity is that his sister-in-law had been filling the table aplenty with the main fare for an hour or so previously. The hospitality of Vietnamese is legendary, even more so at Tet. My plate and glass were full to overflowing, not to mention my stomach. Sensibly, nobody else took up the offer to finish off the meal with a massive serve of che kho. In the interests of research for the blog and to see if I could pop the stud on my jeans, I took up the challenge. It would have been wrong and rude not to.

Che kho is sticky rice and green bean (dau xanh) steamed normally before being mixed, while still hot, with sugar and ginger. It is then fried over a low flame to brown it ever so slightly on both sides to give it a subtle crunch on the outside.

It's simple Vietnamese home cooking at its best.

Banana Barbeque

Along the roads of Laos, the sun beats down on foodstuff laid out to dry. Bananas are a common sight, peeled and regimented in tidy rows on flat bamboo baskets. The sunning process is not to shrivel them into dried fruit or banana chips. Instead it hardens their outsides, taking out any surface moisture and stickyness.

This makes them easy to manoeuvre around the barbeque. These babies are transformed into fruity sausages full of mushy hot banana goo just gunning to burn the roof of the mouth of anyone who's willing. Bite through that attractive browned outer layer at your own peril.

It scars!

Doughnut Skewers

All kinds of food vendors traverse the streets and alleys of Hanoi. Bread vendors balance baskets on their heads, fruit vendors resemble human scales with their basket on each side, sticky rice and hot corn cobs are pedalled around on run-down bicycles and, occasionally, I see a bowl of noodles being delivered on two wheels.

It’s a hard life, pounding the footpath for much of the day for not so much money in the pocket.

This banh ran vendor bailed me up as I was negotiating with the custard apple seller below. Her thinking was “if he’s spending on fruit, if he’s got his hand in his pocket, if he’s parting with 20,000 for custard apples, what’s another 1000 for one of my sugary doughnut skewers?” It’s a sophisticated marketing technique used at supermarket checkouts all over the world.

She thought she’d nab me on the impulse buy.

Custard Apple High

As a drug-addled twenty-something traveller, I first tried this exotic fruit on the sands of Kovalum Beach in India. In a post-chillum haze, my sensory perceptions maximised, I declared the custard apple an eating experience I would never forget. My travelling companions and I threw superlatives around with wild abandon but no one word came close to actually describing it. Paradise was mentioned but we agreed that was too much of a cliche.

The setting had something to do with it - sunset, beach, southern India. No doubt the appetite had been stimulated, too! But the custard apple itself, together with the fact I'd never encountered it before, is central in this foggy memory...

Paring back the green diamond scales of skin with my fingers, the mushy creamy flesh that truly does taste like custard, the smooth black marbly pips, the sticky fingers afterwards...

In Hanoi, whenever I run across custard apples (mang cau) being sold off the back of a bicycle, it takes me back 15 years to that time. And I try to re-live the experience by getting myself a kilo or two.

Minus the sense-altering substance, the fruit's still good but it's never quite the same.

Fruit Fee

A late summer fruit, expect to pay about 20,000VND (USD$1.25, AUD$1.50) per kilo.

The Mangosteen

Run a knife around the diameter of a mangosteen this summer. When you examine them closely, they are more manufactured product than fruit. All so identical in size, shape and composition, they could have come off the assembly line at a sporting goods factory. I can imagine them as pucks being whacked about with a bamboo stick in a game of primitive, tropical hockey. The rind on these orbs is virtually impenetrable without a blade. I've bruised my thumbs trying to break into mangosteens.

Inside, the cut rind issues a vexatious juice the colour of beetroot that will stain your clothes.

But then, there's sweet, white, soft segments of perfection.

An early summer fruit in Hanoi, I negotiated a kilo for 15,000VND (USD93c, AUD$1.10) not long ago.

Dessert Cart

The town dessert vendor plies her wares on a prominent corner in old Hoi An. She operates from a stationary cart, probably rendered immobile due to the pot-holed and uneven streets in these parts. If she tried pushing it, a hundred china bowls and her big pot of pudding would be shunted onto the asphalt.

It looks pretty messy in the pot as it is.

In the mouth, it's divine sweet stickyness. It coats and oozes around the eating orifice, a warm mix of fruit, sago and coconut. Issued in tiny bowls, I find it impossible to eat only one. What ensues is a greedy two bowl sitting on a plastic stool, my back to a window through which a four-year-old wannabe Obi-Wan Kenobi is waving a flashing green sword about my ears.

My gluttony induces a torpor that impedes my reactions. The infant Obi has me where is wants me.

Metaphorically, I am dead.

Hoi An Che Chuoi - 3000VND (USD18c, AUD22c)

Lick

Stickyrice is coming up to summer number three in Vietnam with not one mention of ice-cream. This is a post of rectification. It has been remiss of me. There are some famous ice-creameries in the capital which I'll be licking at later, but the specimen above was consumed beach-side in Nha Trang.

It's a coconut, filled with three or four different flavours (banana, chocolate, orange, vanilla, taro....), crushed nuts, maraschino cherries and shredded coconut. Implements to work the ice-cream include a rolled wafer and a spoon, doubly useful as a scraper of the fresh coconut flesh from the inside of the nut. A glass of juice from the said nut is delivered alongside to cleanse the palate afterwards.

During this experience, I re-visited my childhood.

There is a simple excitement about ice-cream, isn't there? I didn't care that it dripped on my shirt, that I had an ice-cream moustache and sticky hands.

Little Balls

On a post-lunch ride to the wall with the god yesterday, I struck a long-faced, pith-helmeted bloke with a bike, a set of scales and bunches of balls. Red and yellow balls. Meticulously bunched, from a distance they resembled malnourished lychees. Up close, on the corner of Ba Trieu and Nguyen Du streets, where this bloke works in tandem with some pink rose sellers, the fruit's altogether berry like.

Grown in Ha Dong on the outskirts of Hanoi in the summer, I hadn't clapped eyes on these in four previous hot seasons. Purchasing fruit in Hanoi is a 'try-before-you-buy' experiment, a bit of bluff and negotiation, a raised voice, a smile and, all being well, an agreement. Our vendor clipped off a sample of his wares which we duly popped in our fruit holes.

The flesh is yellow, sweet like a ripe plum but there's not much of it. Most of this berry is a big pip, some of which you can see scattered about on the road in the photograph. In Vietnamese, they go by the name of soan dao (dao meaning peach).

In English, your guess is as good as mine?