Above is chả rươi, rươi being the – yes, worm, chả is a general word for anything that’s flat and made of mushy stuff that’s then hardened (like Vietnamese bologna, fish cake, etc.) This dish is made by mixing the worms with eggs, onions, and then fry the whole thing. I’m not a big fan of thrill-seeking or crazy-nutrition-craving eating, and never go out of my way to eat cockroach because it seems adventurous and cool (barf), or eat snakes because supposedly it’s good for you. Chả rươi is actually a very common dish in the North, and people eat it simply because it’s GOOD. If you can get past the, well, appearance of the worms, they taste buttery and rich in the most pleasant way, and blend really well with the eggs so that you can’t even tell where the eggs end and the worm starts. It was a pleasant surprise, because I was skeptical at the appearance at first. I’ve had crispy fried silk worms before (the inside is buttery, soft and rich, outside is a very slight crunch), but at least silk worms don’t look like this Once I got past my reservations, however, it was rewarding. If you’re ever in Hanoi, I highly recommend trying this dish.

The second surprising dish is bún ốc (snail/escargot noodles), but eaten in the style of bún chấm (dipping noodle). Normally you have the bún (rice noodle) and the broth together, but here they give you a COOL (not hot like usual) bowl of broth, with the escargots in it, and you just dip in chunks of noodles as you go. Eating cold broth is weird. Dipping noodles chunk by chunk is even weirder. Apparently you also have to add a lot of chilli sauce/paste to make it spicy, as it is a dish eaten in the winter. The cold broth is cold because there’s no point in heating it up, it’ll get cold right away anyway (hahahaha how smart!). The broth is cooked entirely from escargots, tomatoes, fish sauce, and maybe some MSG, so it’s very light and clear. If you like bún ốc, this is definitely worth a try.

Of course, Hanoi has other wonderful food that I didn’t get a chance to try. In fact, I ate so much that one of the days I was there, I suffered from intense stomachache due to bloating/overeating! Pho in Hanoi is also 1000 times better than pho anywhere else. If you ever visit Hanoi, let me know – I can provide some recs

Merry Christmas! Knowing how slow I am with posting, I probably won’t have a chance to post again until waay after Christmas, so, here we go: Merry Christmas!

How many holiday parties, since before Thanksgiving, have you been to already? How many will you have to go to? “Have to” might be the wrong word for some – yes, talking to you, party-whores. I like to go to parties when I’m not expected to bring anything. Bringing stuff on the train is annoying. Also, thinking about what to make that will please everyone at the party, including those that can’t tell the difference between cat food and pate, is stressful. I take criticism just fine, but I criticize myself a lot if someone doesn’t like my food, and at parties you never know who’s gonna be there.

Don’t take me wrong – I do love cooking for people. But most of my friends, either due to self-selection or their own niceness, often like my food, and I like cooking for them. In fact, I made a Thanksgiving dinner for friends who didn’t go home, and it was great. My own personal favorite dish (that I made, adapting various recipes online) was the cranberry chutney. I always thought the canned cranberry sauce was a bit weird, and since we were having tandoori turkey, cranberry chutney seems appropriate.

Ingredients

1 box of cranberry (about 16 oz)

1 knob of ginger, length of a thumb, minced

Salt, to taste (chutney tends to be a bit salty rather than sweet)

Maple syrup, to taste

1 piece of cinnamon, size of an average finger

Pepper flakes, or dried chili pepper, minced

Juice & zest of 1 lemon

Apple cider, enough to cover the cranberry in a medium-small pot

Nutmeg, if you so fancy

I know this sounds like a jerk of a recipe, but it’s so easy that everything can be adjusted to taste. Cook the cranberry with all the ingredients for about 20 minutes until the cranberry becomes soft. Let cool. The next day it should have a dense consistency, but not as jelly as the normal cranberry sauce. It’s chutney!

I also discovered, while trying to use up my red wine that was going bad fast (according to the internet, anyway; I can’t tell bad from good wine), that cooking cranberry with red wine, sugar & lavender, then make it into a jelly with gelatin, or leave as is as a fruit compote, is AWESOME.

Hurricanes – they are annoying. Things are damaged, schools are closed, trains stop running, etc. and of course, everyone freaks out (although most of the time legitimately so). This Sandy thing is admittedly quite legit (look at that New Jersey flood photo!!), but all we feel here in Boston is very strong, ominous sounding winds raging outside. Everyone asks me if I’m prepared, to which I shrug and if possible, show them this photo below:

Yup, that’s what I grew up with, homies. I feel like I’d be much, much more worried if I was an old person living alone and could barely walk, but since I’m neither, I’m just enjoying a day working from home. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Still, gotta chuckle a little bit at Governor Christie’s words. “If it looks stupid, it is stupid”. One of the rare things I have to agree with you, Governor! I never said going out in the rain, let alone a storm/flood, is a smart thing. I don’t know why my fellow countrymen do it. I did it, had a horrible time, and always counted my blessings if I didn’t get stuck outside when it was hurrican-ing 10 times worse in my city (than here).

And because we’re holed up here for a while, I dug out my old photos and found this one I took over the summer (sounds so far away already!). I was on a basil kick, hunting down every basil dessert possible. Berryline had a pretty decent basil froyo. Then I had basil ice-cream somewhere. And since panna cotta is the easiest dessert ever, of course I made basil panna cotta.

This recipe for basic, non-flavored panna cotta is a godsend: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2009/04/perfect-panna-cotta/, although like usual, I didn’t find it in me to cut open and scrape off the beans of a vanilla pod, and we don’t have vanilla extract lying around, so I just did without.

For the basil flavoring, just quickly blanch basil in boiling water (for about 2-3 minutes, just enough to wilt it), and blend it with the heavy cream before you add the gelatin. I used a handful of basil leaves for about 4 normal-sized ramekins, although I don’t see anything wrong with adding more – or less.

Ingredients

1 sheet of pie dough (the one from Trader Joe’s will make about 12 tarts or more)

1 medium tomato, sliced, liquid drained

1 medium onion, sliced the same way as the tomato (crescent shape)

1 medium eggplant, sliced into circles (slice thin enough so it can be cooked into 15 minutes)

Feta cheese, crumbled with your hand! (most amazing anger management task ever)

Parsley

Olive oil, to brush the vegetables with

1. Cut the dough into small circles to fit your tart pan, brush your pan with butter or neutral oil and bake the tart following Trader Joe’s instructions! (yes, I told you, I am not a baker. Totally cheated, ok? Totally SUNDAY, ok??)

2. Halfway through the time that you were supposed to bake the tart for, take it out and arrange the vegetables on top. I went eggplant first – then tomato and onion on top, facing each other. Brush olive oil on the vegetables, sprinkle some salt to taste. Remember you’re adding feta so don’t add too much salt! If you like your cheese melted and toasted, sprinkle it on at this time. If not, later.

3. Bake until your tart shell is golden and crunchy-looking. Poke your eggplant to make sure it’s cooked. Sprinkle parsley, & feta if you haven’t yet. Eat!

Was very tipsy after 3 glasses of strong cocktail at the party, but I don’t think anyone noticed. They probably just thought I was normal, because I was actually schmoozing and smiling and talking and believing that everyone was so great and interesting.

I went on a cooking spree today – it has been a while since we really cooked anything serious. We did have a Korean feast at one point, and some very good Vietnamese noodles at another, but I’ve been either too lazy, or thought that it’s nothing to document. Korean and Vietnamese food come to me quite easily, I don’t have to think much about it. Vegetarian Indian food, or just vegetarian in general, is a beast, and whenever I make something vegetarian with an Indian flair, I consider it an achievement. Also have to document it, because I will have no idea how to make it later! This is why I gave up after a month of trying to be vegetarian. I learned a ton from my Indian landlord, but if I’m hungry, I want my food NOW. Cooking something you’re ill-equipped for, knowledge and pantry-wise, is like…abstaining from sex when you’re ovulating. It’s hard.

This is an adaptation from “Red lentils with aromatics” in “Vegetarian cooking for everyone” by Debora Madison. I don’t think she understands that, uh, “soaking beans a week in advance” or “cooking the lentils for 3 hours” is something *everyone* would like to and have the ability to try. It’s a good book nonetheless. I didn’t have ghee, so I just used butter, cooked till brown and sort of clarified; also did not feel like doing a separate step of sauteing onion, mustard seed and bay leaf, so I threw everything in one pot. Also tried to roast the lentil a bit, even though not stated in the original recipe. Also did not use water but used milk all the way (the original recipe has 1 can of coconut milk and 3 cups of water). ***Interesting story/life lesson/mysterious science phenomena: I got some raw milk from a farming trip, tried to make yogurt, and it became separated into 3 layers: cottage-cheese like, yellow-water-butter-like, and heavy-cream-like. I strained the cottage-cheese-like layer for another dish, and used the mix of maybe whey? buttermilk? what the hell is it? butter-water and heavy-cream liquid instead of water and coconut milk. Think of this as the cliff-note of the original recipe written by someone high on crack (which is ironic if you know me, because I can never get high on weeds).

1 cup of red lentil, or any kind of dal (red is pretty)

2 tbs of butter (or ghee, if you’re the type who just HAPPENS to have ghee in the pantry [/eyeroll])

1/2 onion, sliced (more if you like, doesn’t hurt)

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

2 tbs of chopped herbs (I used parsley & basil)

1 bay leaf

2 tsp of mustard seed

1 tbs of tumeric powder

1 jalapeno chili, diced

3 cups of milk 

Salt & a pinch of sugar, to taste

1. Saute the onion, garlic, bay leaf, pepper and mustard seed in butter till onion is brown on medium-high heat.

2. Toss the lentil with this butter mixture, season with salt and tumeric, cook until some of the lentil looks roasted (slightly brown at edge).

3. Pour in the milk, simmer for about 20-30 minutes till lentil just about to turns soft. If you want softer, cook longer. Be careful because the lentil REALLY absorbs liquid. If your liquid runs out before the lentil reaches the doneness you prefer, add more liquid.

4. When it’s done, mix in the fresh herbs. The liquid should all be absorbed or become a thick sauce. If you like it as a soup that’s fine too – it’s quite good like that!

- Putting milk and chocolate together doesn’t make it fucking sweet. Some chocolate has sugar in it, but if you’re telling me there is not sugar in your chocolate, that your chocolate is 100% cocoa, and your hot chocolate is sweet like starbucks, I call bs. Try putting anything beyond 85% cocoa into your milk and come back and tell me if the milk fucking reacts with the chocolate and make it fucking sweet.

- Vanilla is a fucking bean. It is also not sweet. Like a sweetener, I mean. Vanilla extract is another story. But if we’re talking vanilla beans, no it is not sweet.

- Cinnamon is a fucking tree bark. Also not sweet. Please dump the whole cinnamon jar onto your tongue and tell me if it’s the same as dumping a whole jar of sugar.

- Lychee is a fruit and like most fruits, it is sweet when ripe and sour when unripe. You know, like, any other common fruit. Like mango. Like plum. Like kiwi. Like some apples. Heck, like TOMATO. Some things are bland when unripe (papaya, certain kinds of mango, nectarine), some things are forever bland (cactus fruit), some things are forever sour ( lime,lemon – but even Meyer lemon gets fucking sweet when it’s ripe). It’s…I don’t know, logic. Fruits ripen, get sweet, and attract other animals to eat it etc. etc.

I blame my still coming period on this rage. Sometimes I rage because I’m insecure. Sometimes I rage because of hormones. But I pride myself on knowing the basics of logic (doesn’t mean I always follow it), and my food. Don’t cross me on my food, or I will cook you!

The weather is super weird these days. Rain, oh wait no rain, SUN!, oh wait fucking CLOUDS. All of my “internal engergy” (kungfu fans, you know what I’m talking about) is focused on, um, praying that June 9th is going to be sunny. If I were a super villain, that’d be my life goal – HOW TO CONTROL THE SUN.

Anyway, on rare sunny days, I do attempt to make salads (salad is not a thing in Vietnam, unfortunately), and this shrimp ceviche feels like the perfect summer salad to me (I know, it’s not technically a salad, but what does a Vietnamese girl know?) Also, computer died a pathetic death, so picture is unedited, and marvelous steamed buns success and failure post has to be delayed. Oh computer, how you hurt me so!!!

Ingredients

1 not-so-ripe avocado, cut into medium chunks right before serving (ripe avocado will mush in your hands and bleed painful green tears…alright, alright.)

1 cup of chopped cilantro, or as much as you like. Life is better with cilantro!

Shrimp (I used a pack of 40 or so large shrimp, but probably ate 10 of them in the process, and found the remaining quantity perfect for the rest of the 30 something people at that dinner party I brought this to!)

4 limes (or lemon, if you so prefer. What’s wrong with you?)

1 red onion, sliced

1. If you have time: marinade the shrimp in lemon juice until it’s pink and cooked (by the acid). Might take a long time and more than 4 limes, however.

2. If you don’t have time and want to be safe: steam/grill the shrimp lightly until JUST cooked (if you pinch the shrimp it’s not completely hard yet, but still kinda squishy, even though it already turned somewhat pink). Then marinade in the lime juice or another hour or so.

3. Right before serving, mix the onion, avocado and cilantro with the shrimp. Voila! I found the shrimp salty enough, but feel free to accelerate your way to a heart attack and add some salt, if you want to

That day, people who eat unpeeled shrimps are my enemy. It takes SO.FUCKING.LONG to peel shrimps (don’t even talk to me about frozen peeled shrimps. Such a thing does not exist. And if it does, I don’t want it. Shrimp skin?peel?shell? shrimp shell is excellent for soup stock!)

Being the naive foreigner that I am, I asked my friend, “What’s cannabis?”, DESPITE THE IMAGES.

She said, sort of surprised, “oh, it’s the stuff they make weed from.”

OMGHAHAHAHAHAHAHA <- my reaction.

I’ve always thought it surprising and funny that I did not try to smoke any pot at all, being effing SURROUNDED by the stuff and the people doing it at Oberlin. Ugh, the horror of Dascomb, walking around the hallway and coming back smelling like weed only because you fucking WALKED around the hallway. I don’t have anything against weed, I really don’t. It’s apparently non-addictive, although I have heard stories of people who are mentally dependent on it. And as far as I know, it’s not terribly expensive either, unless you want high class stuff that smells better. To me it seems to be the same as drinking, and I drink, so there was really no reason for me to oppose or not try it, other than the fact that it fucking stinks.

I guess I just never felt like it o_O.

Eating, though, presents the perfect medium to try weed without putting up with the smell. I think a lot of people might have thought this way, because this book got an almost 5 stars on amazon LOL. I got so excited seeing this book and texted my pothead friend right away – I finally found a way to combine both of our interests! LOL He was like, “is it all brownies recipes?”, and I had to laugh. There’s a PIZZA recipe – yes, effing PIZZA, people, and bloody mary, and a million other things. For someone who doesn’t even care about weed, I got probably too unreasonably excited, and bought the book, just because it’s so…creative. Gotta give props to these stoners.

The best part? When I paid for the book, the cashier guy gave me detailed advice about cooking with weed -”My experience with this is, you don’t want to use expensive stuff for this. It can go wrong easily! Do fried chicken or something. It’s not water soluble, but fat soluble.” Do I need to explain to you why this is So.Effing.Hilarious?

If I ever get to make any of these recipes, I will report the results. This is a clever cookbook – however the result comes out, the eaters are gonna enjoy it anyway. That probably explains the almost 5 stars on amazon LOL LOL

Accidents and laziness can bring great things. Today D and I reached a new low: we were too lazy to cook so we decided to go out and eat, only to decide to stay home and cook 15 minutes later because we were too lazy to get dressed to go out. Figured.

Anyway, because we were lazy, we pretty much threw everything in the fridge together in the quickest, simplest, most delicious combination (ok, this last part is made up. We didn’t know it’d be delicious until later). Soup. The most beautiful thing/brainchild of laziness on a rainy day. Also, no chilled soup. Chilled soup gives me the heebie jeebies.

Ingredients (sounds fancy; really just leftovers from the fridge) 

1 bag of frozen petite sweet peas

1 parsnip, sliced thin

1 white onion, cut into chunks

1/4 a bunch of cilantro, or 1 cup of roughly chopped cilantro

1.5 cup of chicken broth, or vegetable broth if you’re vegetarian

5 tbs of Greek yogurt/labne/strained normal liquidy not very good American yogurt

Salt to taste

1. Cook everything in one pot with the broth, in this order: parsnip & onion, for about 15 mins, then peas, for 5 more mins, then cilantro, for 2 minutes. The key is not to overcook the peas and cilantro, otherwise you’d end up with a very unappealing green color soup!

2. Blend everything in a blender/food processor, mix in yogurt. Eat!

If you’re fussy like me (!gasp!) you can saute some onion and put on top.