Stickyrice

Crab Tales

I bought some of these crabs once when I was first in Hanoi.

In the honeymoon days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still entranced with the culinary scene here but when one lands in Vietnam after years of sampling the cuisine in what I suspected may not always have been its most authentic form, I did go a bit ga-ga when confronted with the real deal. The range of herbs was infinitely wider than what I'd experienced in Melbourne, with Vietnam's markets resplendent in so much leafy green that surely its harvest was a leading cause of global warming. All those different rices shaped in perfect geometric cones pointed skywards, predominantly white. But wasn't white rice just white rice? Clearly not, I was to learn.

I don't want to go on much about live animals in market-places as I've covered that ground before. But after the relatively sterile environs of Melbourne's markets where hardly a chicken feather is seen let alone ruffled, I initially found the live produce sections of Vietnam's markets more like a visit to to the farm or the zoo. 

On one such early visit to Hanoi's now re-designed Hang Da market, while I couldn't contemplate  witnessing a bird having its throat cut before me nor a fish thwacked dead with a foot-long baseball bat, I thought I could deal with a pair of restrained crabs. In a bag on the way home, they were relatively well-behaved, their legs and more importantly their pincers tied with rope fashioned from plant matter. The awareness of having a living creature, however, with the jerks and stirrings of an unborn baby amongst one's shopping was disconcerting to say the least. It did dawn on me that I had taken on some higher responsibility, one which during the journey from market to home I was having serious misgivings about.

It was as if I was back at primary school in science class, that one when you have to take the egg home for the weekend and bring it back on Monday without a crack in it.

Once at home, the crabs went in the sink and I sought out the experts at the internet cafe for a recipe and a dignified way to kill them. I read phrases like "crabs are fairly strong for their size" and "scrubbing down the crab can be fairly intimidating" and "the crab will threaten you with its claws". I read about lifting flaps, screwdrivers, piercing and draining. I continued scrolling down half-expecting to find reference to safety glasses and protective clothing! The gastronomic part of the plan, crab in tamarind sauce, seemed like a footnote compared to what I would have to carry out beforehand.

Armed with print-outs titled 'how to kill a crab' and a slew of recipes, I returned home to stare down those crustaceans, give them a bit of intimidation of my own. But the whole plan started to go array when I checked the sink.

One was missing.

A crab unable to move because it was in a strait-jacket was unaccounted for. It goes without saying that determining the thought-processes of a crab gone AWOL was not at that stage in my realm of experience. Could it have gone to the toilet, I thought. Perhaps it was making a run for the coast? In reality, I was freaking, already imagining a mad chase not unlike those I'd wagered against my furry arch enemy, Mr Rat. This time it would be an aggressive scuttling exoskeleton, moving sideways out from under something, pincers at the ready. And I would be ready to fling my tea towel over it to subdue it, rueing that I hadn't printed the pages titled 'how to catch a crab'.

That's if I could have located the bastard. In a two-roomed apartment with a small bathroom and kitchen, it was nowhere to be found. Exhausted and having lost my appetite, I carefully placed the other crab on the bottom shelf of the fridge where it would survive for a few days, according to the experts. It would take me that long to recover from the ordeal and I hadn't even raised a weapon in anger to that point. One crab was missing but none had been killed or eaten.

Two nights later, I was reading on the couch, the escapee crab the farthest thing from my mind. A vague twitching or scatching entered my consciousness and persisted even though I attempted to will it away. My initial reaction was rat and I assumed my regular posture for that circumstance; standing on the sofa, slightly unhinged. From the shoe-rack behind the front door, the noise was irregular but frequent.

And then I remembered the crab with some relief. Up between and behind the winter shoe collection, the crab was wedged, only half restrained by the market vendor's rope, which was still attached, allowing me to drag it into the kitchen at a safe distance. I felt like administering a hanging. Instead I recalled something else I'd read in the 'how to kill a crab' pages, something about 15 minutes in the freezer putting the crab in a sleeping state.

I put them in seven years ago. And, crab in tamarind sauce is a dish that I recommend be taken in restaurants.

Dressing Up Cucumber

The humble cucumber gets a raw deal in salad land.

When people talk about the dull salads of their childhood, cucumber more than often than not gets tossed into the mix with iceberg lettuce and wedges of tomato. Flashbacks of the bottle of Kraft French dressing in the door of the fridge of my childhood home are coming to me now. That was a standard in Australian refrigerators of the 70s.

In Vietnam, the cucumber is more ubiquitous in salads than lettuce. It commonly features as a pickle on the side of wok-cooked noodle dishes like pho xao (stir-fried beef) and com rang (fried rice) - sweet, salty and with a hint of chili. Freshly prepared when the cucumber is crisp and firm, it is very satisfying.

But I wanted to turn my cucumbers from mundane to delectable on Christmas Day, into something festive and classy on our table. So I hacked at my green bumpy friends to create thin but rustic slices, to which I added the best delicate sprigs of mint from my herb drawer, half a Spanish onion mandolin thin and a sparse flek of chili. In a glass tumbler I ferociously forked together a concoction of lime juice, sugar and fish sauce to pour and coat each slice of cucumber.

On the garden balcony we sat, a cool cucumber salad and a little Asian-inspired prawn cocktail to start the eating on Christmas Day, me in my apron, glass in hand, the bird in the oven.

Later there was dancing and chocolate.

It was a merry Christmas.

 

Australian Kitchen: Asparagus

 

I did eat out in Australia on my recent trip but it was the allure of the kitchen, the produce markets and delicatessans that really got my juices flowing. After almost eight years in Vietnam's markets and eateries, where fresh noodles, Asian greens, tangy herbs and tropical fruit have become familiar fodder, I now see my own country's foodstores in a different light. The normality of my Hanoi market now contrasts spectacularly with the exotica of Melbourne's food shops.

A weird transition has occurred.

My eyes popped at the simple sight of bundled asparagus spears piled high in wooden crates at the greengrocer's. In season and going for AUD$0.49 a bundle, it was incumbent upon me to purchase a truckload of the stuff and take to it in the kitchen. I would match it with other ingredients and eat this fine green vegetable until my return flight to Vietnam was called.

It's funny how I can now sing the praises of asparagus because as a kid I hated the stuff, served out of a tin, not really green and wrapped up in bread at adult parties or in a messy tuna mornay for a weeknight dinner. Yuck!

There seem to be much better uses for fresh asparagus these days. At my sister's, we briefly panfried it in olive oil, pepper and lemon juice before placing it atop a risotto with oven-roasted salmon, lemon zest and basil.

At another family gathering, the asparagus got the same treatment in the fry-pan but became the feature of the dish, loaded up with feta and parsley and a simple dressing of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

And on each occasion after these meals of asparagus and copious glasses of wine, I would visit the loo and my pee would pong. I don't know about you but that's what it does almost instantaneously to me!

Asparagus is delicious but what is that about?

More Rural Bird

I keep getting these birds; chickens from the countryside or ga ta.

The last one came from Ha Tay. This latest one got its neck wrung and feathers plucked in Ninh Binh, a province 90 kms from the capital famous for limestone karsts rising up out of the ricefields. Not a bad place for a chook to grow up, I s'pose.

Anyway, said chook made its way to my freezer stuffed in the hatch under the seat of my mate's motorbike. It did look a bit wonky when I got it out and thawed it, as if it had been folded or something. Naughty disfigured chicken wouldn't sit straight on the oven tray. Kept falling over while I was dealing to it with the aromatics.

You see I'd thought I'd do a roast this time. Let me call it risky roast because I wasn't exactly sure how a scawny long legged fowl from the provinces of Vietnam would take to being rubbed with olive oil, garlic and lemongrass and shoved in a hot box with spuds for an hour or more. Most of these birds get boiled or grilled. I wasn't sure that the meat wouldn't end up as tough as a billy-goat's knee.

I had to be vigilant and I had to use aluminium foil for part of the cooking time. The result was well worth the risk. I cleavered the bird into pieces and surrounded them on the plate with sweet and normal potatoes. Ye olde feast ensued, drumsticks were brandished, bones flung about, tankards of wine swilled and spilled and wanton wenches pleasured.

Well, almost. Kind of.

Introducing the Hanoi Cooking Centre

Stickyrice readers, particularly those on the way to Vietnam, often make food related enquiries about Hanoi, many of them concerning cooking classes. Until now, I haven't been able - with any confidence or first-hand experience - to recommend a cook nor a kitchen.

Drum roll, people. Twenty-one gun salute, even.

Allow me to introduce the Hanoi Cooking Centre, the brainchild of long-time Vina food-phile, chef and cookbook author, Tracey Lister, and business partner Linh Phung Dinh, Hanoian born and bred expert eater and local hospitality insider. Launched softly a few weeks back, the centre is aiming to promote and teach Vietnamese cuisine from up and down the country, offering classes ranging from the dishes of Hanoi and the northern highlands to vegan tofu cookery to my personal fave, Vietnamese street food.

But, local expats and Vietnamese citizens sit up and take note. The centre is also catering for those who may have noodle and rice fatigue, those who may want to dip their cooking chopsticks into the cuisines of other regions, those who may have a new oven and don't know what to do with it. Graduate in bread, biscuits or elegant finger food if you like. This week just gone, Tracey has been earnestly bashing out dough for that old Easter favourite, hot cross buns.

So, I know that the Hanoi Cooking Centre is going to be a happening place where food will truly be celebrated. I'm also looking forward to collaborating with Tracey, Linh and the god on some unique street food tours, routed through markets and some of my compulsory eating haunts in Hanoi. But more on that later.

In the meantime, visit the centre's website...book a class. Have an espresso in their cafe.

Tell them Sticky sent you!

Chicken Salad

So a mate from Ha Tay, a province adjoining Hanoi which has recently been re-zoned as an official part of the capital, brings back what is known locally as a countryside chicken or ga ta. I'm not sure if that qualifies these chooks as free-range in the western sense of the term. I mean I have seen lots of chickens wandering about in the alleys of rural villages and I suppose they are much happier than shed ones.

Anyway...whatever...the god and I got together in the kitchen to do some justice to it. We divided up the labour. The god took to the already cooked bird with his bare hands, tearing it limb from limb, wing from wing, greasing up his hands in the process. Shredded flesh and skin along with thinly sliced heart and lung were the first ingredients ready for the salad bowl. Further up the bench, I was dealing with the vegetable and liquid content. Limes were softened with a roll to loosen their juice. From the sink, the stunning spicy scent of  bathing Vietnamese mint (rau ram) was rising. A red onion lay sliced on the chopping board, paper thin. Freshly ground pepper, sea salt and chopped spring onions were ready to be sprinkled.

The assembly is not dainty, human hands being the most effective implement to mix this fine marriage of ingredients. It could be served with rice crackers or pushed on top of a bowl of hot steamed rice. The god and I opted for no carbs.

Basically we each ate half a bird!

Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

"Making pho can't be that difficult, can it?"
"Nah....it's just a broth, few bones, water, bit of this, bit of that."

My first attempt at it started with me talking to myself. Then I wrote a shopping list, shot down to the market and picked up some pig bones, some this and some that.

Back in the kitchen, I filled up the pot with water, dropped the bones in, fired up the gas cooker and started messing about with the other bits. I bashed the ginger up, bruised the lemongrass and, along with the star anise, nutmeg and cinnamon sticks, half an onion and a bulb of garlic, they took a synchronised dive. Bloody simple!

The broth boiled, I skimmed the scum, turned down the flame, took to my book and drank two cans of Bia Hanoi. Two hours and one nap later, I returned to the kitchen for the moment of truth. The aroma was intriguing.

I put the spoon to my mouth.

It had a pungent herbal wallop that would kill a brown dog.

I'm going to follow a recipe next time.

Three Soups

A couple of weeks ago, I went mad at the vegie stall in the local market, bringing home a sackful of herbage and vegetation for some kitchen treatment. The street eat blues had set in, due largely to the drop in temperature in Hanoi. Managing the chopsticks while wearing woolen gloves ain't much fun - don't know whether to eat or knit!

So...to the kitchen. After polishing off most of the greens and roots in our normal day to day eating, I was left with my trusty plastic bagful of aromatics, half a pumpkin, some spuds and a bunch of the best green veg in 'Nam - rau can tay. The Viet-English dictionary reckons it's celery but it throws up dyslexic translations all the time. It is a subtle lemon on the tongue and, when steamed and eaten simply, should have crunch. Like with most vegetables, overcooking this little number would be a sin. Anyway, have a gander at it.

So, what to do with this miss-mash of veg? Make a bloody soup, I say. A week before, I'd blended far too much Thai curry paste, so that went in with half a tin of coconut cream and an inch of smashed ginger to start off proceedings. The spuds were peeled and drowning in water to avoid the big brown, the pumpety-pump had been murdered and was sitting in clumps on the chopping board as I threw a diced onion and half a dozen thin stems of chopped celery into the pot of spluttering aroma. Next in were the pumpy and half of the potatoes, followed by a kettle full of hot water and a pho ga stock-cube. In our poxy little oven which nonetheless packs a punch of heat, I roasted the remainder of the spuds.The one-two-three of boil-simmer-blend finished off the show.

Serving was simple: I'd cut the rau can tay into 5cm lengths and blanched them momentarily, plonking a scissored-into-bite-size pile of them into each bowl before ladling the soup over (good way to suck the kids into eating their greens, hey what?). Prettified with a few roasted spud chunks, coriander, celery leaf and cracked pepper, the bowls were whacked on the table with a basket of toasted banh my and spooned down as we looked out the kitchen window at the drizzle and grey sky that is Hanoi in winter AND spring.

With renewed confidence in my cooking skills - I haven't really put knife to chopping block much in the last two years - I hit the market again for more soup vegetables. The following is the creation of Cauliflower and Coriander Soup, made following much of the above vague method without the roasted potato palaver and with a slightly different paste, heavy with Vietnamese mint (rau ram).

The third soup of the title is bun rieu, this one made out the front of a family home and eaten in their living room, after I'd bought the veggies and was wandering around the alleys behind the market so ravenous I could've eaten the crotch out of a low flying duck!