Shrimp Ceviche – summer is here!…?

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.)

Bò tái chanh – Vietnamese beef carpaccio

When we went to eat sushi once, my friend wondered aloud who the first man that ever ate a raw oyster was. “Did he just open it and think, ooh, look at this, om nom nom?” Live oysters do look kinda weird – messy, and very…um, raw. But then I thought, eating raw things must have come very naturally to our ancestors, who couldn’t always make fire or choose when/where to eat. We cooked things to avoid diseases, but now that we have medicine and all kinds of preventive treatment and processing for the food themselves, eating raw food comes back in vogue (and has always been in vogue in Japan).

I love raw food – it’s amazing to taste how flavorful the protein is just by itself, without seasoning. In Vietnam, because food spoils so quickly in the hot weather, and because of low standards for food hygiene, everything must be cooked. Bò tái chanh is one of the very few things that we eat almost raw, which is funny because it would take a lot to convince a Vietnamese to have a piece of steak cooked medium rare. Usually the beef is left to cook by the acid for a while, but we had no problem with raw beef, we started eating when it was only medium-rare.

Ingredients

Have fish, and good days will come

On days like this, I find fish very comforting. The thought that I’m eating something delicious, healthy, and easy to cook is comforting. The taste itself – very reminiscent of home, where the cuisine is dominated by fish (and pork) dishes – is also comforting. A stormy week has passed, and I’m slowly heading back to the future (if that makes sense). I’ve had enough of wallowing in pain and the past, words of people who couldn’t matter less and looks from relatives who are more toxic than your worst alcohol poisoning nightmare. Have fish, and good days will come.

Middle-Eastern Fried Trout

1 trout fillet

Crispy Lemon Chicken with Za’atar & Celery Root Skordalia

One of my dreams is to live in either Tokyo or New York one day. Or, if I ever manage to be fluent in French, Paris would be cool, too.I want to be in a big city that has all kinds of cuisines, from all over the world. There’s just something very exciting about trying new food with a completely different flavor profile than we’re used to. I appreciate the novelty of exotic flavors, and at the same time this novelty makes the Vietnamese flavors I grew up with even more endearing and comforting.