Stickyrice

Feeling Wintery

The coats are out of mothballs and at the dry-cleaners. Short sleeves on the motorbike are reserved for sunny lunch times only. The drier air is starting to tighten the skin and crack the lips. The autumn buzz on the streets of Hanoi is a sign that the summer hibernation is officially over and Tết (the lunar new year) is closing in. Ten years of existence here and not only are my southern hemisphere bio-rhthyms all arse-up but I'm also book-ending my years with talk of lunar new years rather than Christmases.

But...whatever my expat derangement, it's feeling decidedly wintery in this part of the world and time to jack on a few kilograms to ensure I survive. It's hearty food season and I intend to participate.

Starting with a kind of rice cake that sits somewhat discus-heavy on its way through the digestive tracts once swallowed. Known as chè con ong, this snack is a substantial one - not the kind of sweet treat you might "leave room for" at the end of a meal but rather one you would need to by-pass the entire meal for. 

While the weight of this dessert may not be so subtle, the flavours are simple and clean and the texture is moist and spongy. The colour is more than reminiscent of chocolate. But chocolate it aint.

Sticky rice is cooked in its normal manner, the vendor told me. Ginger is pressed for juice and set aside. In a separate saucepan, water and sugar go around together until they start to thicken and colour. Interestingly, the vendor at whose kiosk I was sampling from would not allow me to interject the word caramel into her explanation. I didn't push the point as she was making me feel rather as if I was privileged to be hearing the recipe in the first place. I thought I was showing appropriate deference but there is a school ma'am-ish demeanour about some Hanoi women that I still find slightly off-putting, even after 10 years.

So the sugar and water colouring to honey brown is not caramel, to which the cooked sticky rice and ginger juice is added. On a very low heat, the mixture resembling porridge gently bubbles away.

Pressed into a mould in some instances, the cooled mixture here is shaped by hand into a disc, scattered with sesame seeds and wrapped in plastic. Other variations on the theme include cốm xào (young sticky rice cooked with sugar and shredded coconut) and chè đậu xanh (mung beans done similarly).

All are fine and filling for winter but be warned; just a taste test of all three rendered me passive and defenceless for much of the remainder of last Saturday.

Thanh Ha Street Market
left hand side, heading toward Nguyen Thien Thuat St

The Bánh Đa Kê Question

I have a tendency to laziness. It's a character flaw that impedes the process here in these pages.

Here is what happens.

On a jaunt through the streets, I see a woman attired in heavy-duty blue-collar worker-wear dealing something edible from a basket. It looks unfamiliar which automatically makes it manna from heaven. These opportunities do not present very often, now that I've been dining on these streets for almost 10 years and documenting my experiences for six. And therein lies the problem. I've grown unused to these surprises. In some ways, I'll even admit to thinking I know everything about the things people put in their mouths in Hanoi.

Lazy and conceited, that's me.

These days I am not adhering to the basic rules of the food-blogger. I don't always take the camera. I make notes in my mind rather than on paper, then promptly forget them. I'm getting slack with the camera, too, not making sure that I've taken enough of a range of photographs from which to choose for the actual post. In fact, I've got several posts in draft that have may never see the light of day because the pictures are mediocre.  

Another symptom of my laziness is that I speak Vietnamese like an organism lacking any linguistic capacity. Like plankton. I have lessons but they don't seem to be getting me anywhere. I can order beer but I can't say "how do you prepare your noodles?" or "is there a history behind this dish?" If I'm eating without my right hand man, I may still be able to piece together a story but it might have an erroneous translation or a fact I haven't been able to verify.

So, the aforementioned woman and her basket on the footpath is a case in point. A few snaps, a mental note or two about the ingredients and the method and I think I have the wherewithal to write a blog-post on something I've never eaten before. Sure, there may be some aspects of this snack I have knowledge of; I see the giant rice cracker (bánh đa) broken in half and recognise it as something sold by vendors near bia hơi outlets to accompany Hanoi's famous draught beer. I also know the dried mung bean (đậu xanh) powder, commonly sprinkled on some sticky rice dishes in Hanoi. There's sugar, too.

One element of this dish known as bánh đa kê eludes me, however. It is a yellow spread, thick, sticky and almost eggy to my taste buds. The blue-shirted purveyor scrapes this stuff from a plastic basin and smears it across the rice cracker before sprinkling the yellow bean powder and sugar on top. With a resonant crack in half, a rice cracker sandwich of sorts is formed and placed in a scrap of notepaper.

And off I go. I have one hand steering the motorbike, one hand bending this snack into the hole in my face while my mind is regretting not seeking out the information about the sticky yellow paste. Later, in desperation, I utilise the lazy bastards' method of research, googling and tweeting for answers. Seeds eaten by birds are mentioned, the grain millet comes up. But I'm none the wiser about how seed or grain becomes paste or about whether my egg suspicions are warranted.

In short, I'm questioning my own legitimacy as a food-blogger, if I should be persisting, given my inadequacies. A kick up the behind is clearly in order.

But...also...WTF is that gooey yellow stuff on that rice cracker?

Bánh đa Kê
mobile vendor on wheels
Old Quarter
Hanoi

The Road to Greek Apples

A drive in a rural setting with only a vague itinerary can be one of life's great pleasures.There are guidebooks and websites, of course, but sometimes it is better to find things out...or not...for oneself. In Greece recently, there was a whole peninsula to explore east of the port of Volos, with mountains and seascapes, woods and quiet dilapidated villages.

On curving frequently dog-legging roads.

When going upward, the vista through the windscreen is grey tarmac and autumn hues topped with hazy but blue skies. On the descents, we see ancient orchards, neglected sundried grapes on twisted vines and a steely blue sea. The other beauty of it is that being October, we are virtually the only vehicle on the roads. Tourist season is over and it seems that yes, on this particular day, I do own the road…as much as one can own the road driving a tiny Fiat Panda.

This part of Greece – the north of the Pelion Peninsula – feels remote and antiquated. From my romantic foreigner’s perspective, I see the ramshackle stone cottages and I want to live in them. I see the large scarved women in black, ambling up the roadsides, climbing rotting fences and I want to befriend them…and steal their recipes. A slightly dazed and bedraggled sheep stares dumbly and I wonder if I would keep him as a pet or kill him and freeze him for winter.

The road takes us on to villages where cobbled churchyards blow cool with leaves. The corner of one churchyard in the village of Zagora adjoins a small collection of family run restaurants which seem open but might involve a degree of self-service or at least reconnaissance within to find the proprietor. Beer and olives are managed. Anything more substantial will require someone fetching yaya from across a nearby field.

We have supplies from a Volos delicatessen so we depart with directions for the village bakery and instructions to hurry before it closes for the afternoon. A crusty loaf is procured to sandwich salty feta, chunks of sausage, cucumber and tomato hacked with a pocket-knife and our bottomless bag of olives that have travelled with us all the way from Athens. We sit in a bus shelter for which the bus surely only stops once every few days at this time of year.

All around us are the signs of early afternoon lethargy, barely a person in sight. Shops and workshops are shut. Cars are parked slipshod, their drivers certain that no traffic will be coming through. A crate of quinces is left unguarded in front of the fruit shop. One of the black clothed widows is pulling a shutter shut.

The time is right.

For a spot of fruit picking. This peninsula is Greece's apple orchard. During our aimless cavorting, apples have been everywhere: stacked up in crates waiting for pick-up, in large kilo bags for sale (money in the honesty box, please) by the side of the road, rotting in piles under trees, even rolling down the area's grassy slopes.

And, indeed, in the trees. Trees with ladders leaning up against them, crazed apple farmer with a shot-gun not far away.

More Mooncake

I cannot pretend to like...nor defend...the mooncake in this instance.

This is stodgy brick masquerading as food and I cannot acquire an understanding of it as a pleasurable culinary experience. I imagine many other uses for this object, deadly weapon near the top of the list. Fired from a cannon at speed, it would knock people senseless, even win wars.

Well, food fights anyway.

The cover for this variety of mooncake is made from glutinous rice starch, the centre from a paste of lotus seeds and sugar. Interesting ingredients in miniscule proportions include pomelo flower extract, the subtlety of which completely escapes me. Scanning the nutritional information on the box, knowing that I'm headed to the pointy end of the healthy diet pyramid, I find that sugar constitutes 35% of this mooncake known as Bánh Dẻo Nhân Hạt Sen. I'm sure something has been lost in translation with the second most prominent ingredient, humidity (25%).

So, while I will not apologise for not liking this festive cake, I do wish to offer season's greetings to one and all in my adopted home.

Tết trung thu vui vẻ!

The Streets are Red with Mooncake

Red has numerous associations in Vietnam. The national flag is predominately red. Communists are reds. It is considered lucky. At Tet (Lunar New Year), lucky money is gifted in little red envelopes. Red is also heat in Vietnam. In the past when I've worn a red shirt, my colleagues and students complained that it made them feel hot.

This season in Hanoi the streets are luminescent red. The traditional mooncake is being sold in retail outlets permanent and temporary, by mass producers and artisan bakers alike.

And they do not come packaged in blue!

This year the Mid-Autumn Festival occurs on Wednesday and it has become a big commercial occasion causing one of the Old Quarter's biggest traffic gridlocks of the year. On the Christian calendar, this festival would be like Easter but...um, minus the crucifixion and resurrection. If Tết is like Christmas, Tết Trung Thu is like Easter, essentially for kids, not with chocolate but with toys and cakes. Masks, fluffy stuffed toys, simple stars made colourful with tinsel and cellophane and every cheap spinning, jumping, swimming, flashing, noise-making wind-up or battery-operated toy imaginable is sending kids dizzy and setting parents on edge in Hanoi's Hàng Mã Street.

One only needs to experience this phenomenom once.

 

But I do give the mooncakes a go each year. The baked one above is known as Bánh nướng nhân thập cẩm, which consists of a mix of funky ingredients including sugar, pig's nape fat, winter-melon, lemon leaves and Chinese sausage. Not surprisingly, it's hardly everybody's cup of tea. But there is enough mooncake variation to find a cake to suit one's palate.

Another variety is made with glutinous rice, but that will do until my next post. 

Banh Cu Do (Or Stick Jaw)

I mentioned this in a briefer format today.

In my workplace, I have a certain proficiency for sniffing out anything that's palatable, like those pigs in France that dig out truffles. If food walks in the door, I'll be sticking my snout out for a whiff.

Today, one of my new scholarship candidates tried smuggling in a package. It was a poor attempt. I saw the plastic bag swinging in her hand, the contents wrapped in paper and knew it immediately to be food. It was after the rice hour, so I reckoned she would be offering me something sweet within the quarter hour.

"What's that?" I said, brazen and direct. She searched for the right word.

"Cake," she replied in a not too specific way. Could be awful, could be a revelation, I was thinking. The Vietnamese word for cake refers to all manner of foodstuff in Vietnam. It could be a banana fritter (banh chuoi ran). Or tiny sweet cubes of green bean and sugar (banh dau xang). A steamed meat pie (banh gio), a steamed bun with mystery mix or quail egg (banh bao), even a plain bread roll (banh my) ...the list goes on.

"Oh," I muttered, not so sure I was any longer interested. I would have to miraculuosly appear again once it had been unwrapped. "Careful not to drop it on the carpet, " I continued, before heading off to some subject verb disagreement in another student's writing.

Ten minutes later I was back, peering through the glass of the door, like a rat with a gold tooth.

And I liked what I saw. Unwrapped on a chair, the 'cake' sat. Actually, a stack of cakes. The girls insisted I take two. I tried to act embarrassed but I knew this would happen and I knew they would answer all my questions. The generosity of students to teachers in this country continues to astound me.

From the province of Ha Tinh, one of the poorest in the country, this cake originates. Cane sugar and ginger are boiled to form a rich brown toffee. Peanuts are added and the mixture is spooned onto and then sandwiched between two rice crackers.The name is banh cu do and it is crisp, crunchy, sticky and sweet, all good attributes in a cake, whatever its name.

I departed. But not before saying thankyou. Genuinely.

Look Out! For Mangosteens

The war ended in Vietnam in '75 and bombings in Hanoi before that.

But the green pith helmet remains, worn by folk young enough to be the grandchildren of ex-servicemen. Before the compulsory wearing of motorbike helmets became law a few years ago, this headwear was worn by the great majority of Hanoi's xe oms (motorbike taxi drivers) and the odd man about town who wasn't quite ready for a new-fangled cap. In 2005, a mate's buck's night saw a dozen blokes riding from beer venue to beer venue in these retro noggin protectors. Not quite as ubiquitous as the non (conical hat), they will nonetheless be an enduring symbol of Hanoi for me.

And, by the end of the summer, I will have eaten the equivalent of this young man's entire tray of magnificent mangosteens.

Still Solving Little Mysteries

I came to live in Vietnam in early 2002 and while I don't want to boast or seek higher ground, I can claim to have been here longer than most ex-pats. Some would say that I have a right to feel jaded, that I'm probably significantly bruised and bitter about Vietnam after this amount of time, that I must know everything there is to know about life and the people here.

In some ways, yes. But I try to remain optimistic for the most part, though a natural cynicism does show its ugly head from time to time.

And, I'm not done. Some lobe in my brain is still pulsing with curiosity. The frantic pace of street life in Hanoi means that inevitably some questions are left unanswered, filed in the 'must-get-back-to-that-later' basket. On the motorbike, the goings-on around me are speeded up to a kind of chaotic, fast-forwarding slideshow, a montage of movement, colour and noise too rapid for the human brain to process. My mental note-taking is therefore haphazard stream-of-consciousness:

"...must take a photo of that...what was that?...is he really doing that there?...is that edible?...WOW, love to try that...never seen that before...watch where you're going knucklehead!...oh, banana flowers, what a sight...never seen that temple before...wish I had the camera...god it's hot today...INDICATE! INDICATE! INDICATE!...geez I'm not a mind-reader...I know there's a bia hoi around here somewhere...is that fruit or veg...what's she peeling...looks under-ripe...wonder what that herb's called in English...that looks familiar...on the weekend I'm coming back to that..F*#K! screech...watch the bloody road, Mark..."

Some of these notes get scratched into a notebook but many filter out of my consciousness completely, never to return. I don't get back to them. Other notes constantly irritate, like reminders popping up again and again, but never at the right moment

Recently, I resolved one of these. Each year for years, I've been fleetingly observing street vendors peeling these small round brown objects which, with the skin on, look like big nuts. From a distance when piled plentifully in a basket, they could be mistaken for snail shells. However, when peeled, a white fruity looking thing with the texture of an apple appears and goes into a clear plastic bag. Once the vendor has the bag filled with about 20, it's ready for sale.

I've discovered that they are water chestnuts (ma thay), crisp, sweet and nutty, eaten as a fruit. Or sliced into this dessert. When my mum cooked Chinese in my youth, water chestnuts came in a tin and got sliced up and thrown into stirfries.

Another puzzle solved!

Cake Celebration

Friday just gone was 'sexy cakes day', an official date on the lunar calendar celebrating food. On the third day of the third lunar month each year, these balls are rolled, dunked and popped in cakeholes across the capital. There should be a holiday, nicely aligned with the weekend this year, it would've been!

To mark the occasion, my landlord kindly delivered a plateload which I accepted and despatched with haste. Like ping pong balls down the throat of a laughing clown!

I wonder if there are any other lunar days in the Vietnamese calendar with links to certain specialities or ingredients?

Winter Warmer

In winter, in the depths of the Old Quarter, a small stall opens. To the outsider, it could be mistaken as a secret members' only club, where passwords or coded signals are required for entry. If you come at the wrong time of year or day, what you have come seeking will not be there, almost as if it never existed. You will be left feeling bewildered, slightly left out...clearly not a member.

I am a 'member' of this seasonal food stall, located in what appears to be an ancient gateway to an Old Quarter family commune. This dark sheltered lane houses a smooth stone stelae of a horse, slightly military in style, perhaps acting as a protector of those living there. On a recent visit, while seated at the rear, I noticed that the alley opens out onto a communal courtyard enclosed by several of Hanoi's famous tube houses. Clothes were being hand-dunked in suds, an old woman washed her stringy grey strands of hair, a papaya was grated in a doorway. Eating in this 'club' is part culinary episode, part anthropology field trip.

But one doesn't get to stay long prying into these private moments, for the snack is small and the proprietor has a knack for moving people along.

Three exotic treats are issued in standard china rice bowls. Containing a staple of some of the sexiest ingredients in Asian cuisines, namely ginger, coconut and sesame, these 'desserts' have their origins in China.

The first one is banh troi tau, pounded rice flour covers encasing two different sets of fillings: black sesame paste and shredded coconut with ginger, each dumpling boiled before being served in a hot ginger infused syrup.The second bowl, called luc tau xa, consists of a sweetened puree of the common ingredient dau xanh (green bean) made interesting by the addition of orange zest, lotus seeds and fine slices of a fruit known as ma thay, which bites a bit like a water chestnut. What this final element translates as remains a mystery! The final offering is a smooth sugary black sesame soup known as chi ma phu.

To avoid being shunted out by the owner, who is famous comedian and actor Pham Bang, I had dragged a film crew from VTV along with me and ordered multiple bowls for all. We could sit, savour and enjoy. The film crew from the program "Talk Vietnam" were filming some footage to accompany an interview with me taped earlier for a program on Vietnamese food to be screened some time soon. I'll keep you posted on developments there - I think it could even be shown on their overseas channel.

Anyway, if venturing to Hanoi in the winter, join the throngs at this clandestine little sweet shop.

10,000VND (USD54c, AUD59c) a serve

Banh Troi Tau Pham Bang
30 Hang Giay
Old Quarter
Hanoi
(3.30 - 10.30pm, November - April)