V is for Vietnam

V is for Vietnam

Hey everyone (i.e. hi parents). Ooooo-eeee, the end is nigh – just a few more weeks to get through and then you’re FREE! No more photos of dough in various guises clogging up whatever social media you use. No more wildly tangential ramblings about my overwhelming love of peanuts. No no, soon it will be no more. Rejoice!

So, here we are at the letter V. Unquestionably one of the easier decisions I’ve come across over the course of this challenge, given a) the exclusivity of the club (a mere 4 members) and b) the fact that I have only visited one of them. Actually, that is a lie: I have indeed visited the Vatican, but I was so mortified by the size of the queue snaking its way around the square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica that I opted for an hour-long pilgrimage to a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint instead. FYI, this is an extremely good example of where my priorities lie when on holiday, should you ever have the bad luck of finding yourself stuck in a foreign country with me. Vanuatu and Venezuela didn’t even get a look in this week: for me, it was time to say xin chào to Vietnam.

Vietnamese food has rightly been lapping up plenty of attention on the food scene for a few years now but maaaan alive, NOTHING can prepare for the sheer joy of the food available in the country itself. Vietnam was the first country in South East Asia I’d ever visited and it was basically love at first bite (baaaaahahahaha). Hmm, in retrospect that may not be true. No, in fact that is another lie. The first night in all round good-time town Hanoi, my cuz/travel bud and I consulted our VERY well-known brand of guide book and ended up in a sadly sub-par little restaurant, dining on mediocre noodles and rice, and inevitably surrounded by other diners with said guidebook sticking out of their pockets. From that dismal moment on, we decided to eschew the book with a firm hand and trust our noses to lead us in the right direction. By the end of our month there, we had managed to convince ourselves that it was in fact normal to eat 6 meals a day, so flippin’ incredible was the food on offer. Needless to say, my body did not thank me for it the first few days into an epic bike ride in Cambodia a few days later!

Fundamental to Vietnamese cuisine – touted as one of the healthiest in the world – is the concept of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Each of these five elements is represented by a certain, hmmm, ‘type’ of flavour, known as ngũ vị – sour, bitter, sweet, spicy and salty, respectively – which in turn correspond to a particular organ in the body. The term ngũ vị means ‘five spice’, which is so beautifully succinct and to the point that there is absolutely no need to go any further into the etymology of it. Hoorah! The Vietnamese are also big on the idea of food as being a multisensory experience in which every one of the five senses should be made to feel like they are the most important one and should be getting all the gold stars at school. Aside from the more obvious senses of taste, smell and sight, the sound is said to come from the crisp freshness of the ingredients, and touch from getting stuck in with your hands wherever possible. This philosophy towards food results in a lot of very happy diners, but believe me when I say that it is certainly more complex and interesting than the measly little description I’ve just given you. I won’t do it the injustice of trying to delve any deeper here, but hey, why not read up on it yourself? Live your life!

The range of sublime dishes and ingredients in Vietnam is vast, but speaking purely from my personal experience, there are definitely a few things which I feel make it stand out from the rest of its neighbours. First of all, the freshness of, well, everything goes above and beyond anything I’ve ever experienced: almost every meal or snack I ate there (every 45 minutes or so, HA!) was accompanied by fistfuls of fresh salad and the herbiest damn herbs you could think of, regardless of what was going on in the main dish. Even the humble but MINDBLOWING banh mi sandwiches you can pick up for about 30p on any street corner (from a vendor, not just off the pavement) are absolutely stuffed with herbs, pickled carrots and daikon, and lettuce. Jesus, I am drooling just thinking about it. Secondly, I particularly enjoyed the abundance of noodles in Vietnam. Of course, nothing says “Heyyyyy I’m a tourist and have no idea what I’m doing” better than ordering a steaming bowl of phở (noodle soup with beef or chicken) for your dinner. It’s all about noodle soup for brekkie, folks – ask Cambodia, they’ll agree. Like many other noodle dishes in that neighbourhood, phở features long, thin rice noodles, making it delightfully light and giving you the sense that you are eating something very wholesome indeed. That said, 3 bowls later and that feeling of springy lightness is generally replaced by a rice noodle food baby and a very full bladder (but NO REGRETS). Finally, I have to mention the coffee. As an avid coffee-avoider for more or less my entire life beforehand, Vietnam was the country that paved the way to coffee-drinking, and therefore something akin to adulthood, for me. It is sensational, truly. Served steaming hot in little metal filters, it is a bit of a waiting game watching it slowly drip, like blots of jet black ink onto paper, onto the indecently thick layer of condensed milk at the bottom of the cup. But when it’s done, holy cow, it is the BUSINESS. Vietnam is second only to Brazil in terms of coffee production and export, but if I were a Vietnamese coffee baron, I’d be keeping all that goodness for myself and start engineering cows that produce condensed milk straight from the udder.

Having invited over numerous guinea pigs to get involved with my Vietnamese venture, I decided that a few different dishes was the way to go. Also, it gave me a good excuse to cook way more than I usually would (*ahem* admit to), which is never a bad thing. So, I raided my bookshelf, looking for recipes that would have me weeping into my noodles and longing to jump on the next flight out. One thing I knew I wanted to make was bánh xèo, which are basically Vietnamese style crepes filled with pork, prawns and, of course, an entire herb garden. The name literally means ‘sizzling cake’, so with these babies, you’re getting a double dose of sound (re: the five senses situation, see above), from the crunchy sturrrrffff and the crepes themselves. They’re also a big hit with the ‘Bodians across the border, but as far as I know, the Vietnamese are the geniuses that came up with them. The batter is made using rice flour (among other things, naturally) and the addition of turmeric turns them – and inevitably everything else within a 2-metre radius - an alarming shade of yellow. What’s not to love?

The second recipe to catch my eye was a gloriously and characteristically simple dish of rice noodles and tofu. At the time of writing this post, I’m a 6-hour train ride away from the recipe book and I can’t remember for the life of me what the dish is called. If I Google it, all I get is many, MANY links to vegan and “clean eating” sites, which is definitely not where I got my recipe from, so I shall have to forego the name and just describe it instead: rice noodles and tofu – ta da! OK, the tofu was tossed in seasoned flour and fried so it was all yummy and crispy, but seriously, that was as complicated as it got. And once again, simplicity took home the gold medal, with this dish coming out on top with ma’ g-pigs. If you are one of those folks who is still a little sceptical about tofu, on the basis that it is a wobbly, bland block of beige nothingness, I implore you to give crispy tofu a try. Get yourself a decent dipping sauce or season the flour with ridiculous amounts of salt and pepper, and prepare yourself for a trip to your new happy place. You are welcome.

Finally, as I am getting close to the end of this challenge, I decided to treat myself by making one of my absolute favourite South East Asian desserts. Oddly enough, it doesn’t involve tapioca, which seems to be the go-to dessert ingredient over that side of the globe, but the pud still does have a pleasing gelatinous quality to it: Chè Trôi Nước. Actually, I’m not 100% sure that is the name of what I made, but again, my cookbook is not to hand, so I’m gonna have to trust Google on this one. This is a dish of little glutinous rice balls with a chunk of palm sugar tucked away inside, boiled and then served in a bath of warm, sweetened coconut milk and topped with toasted sesame. These little monsters are popular in Cambodia too, which is where I know them from, but dammit, they were in my Vietnamese cookbook, so I allowed myself to believe that they are indeed Vietnamese (apologies if Bodge did actually invent them!). Apparently, the name translates to something along the lines of ‘dessert wading in water’, which is so wonderful that I’d be tempted to make them even if I didn’t adore them with every fibre of my being. They are a little time-consuming to make, but for me, it was absolutely worth it. The jury was out from the guinea pigs, as some found the sweetness a little too hair-raising, but this time, I didn’t even care ‘cos it just meant I got to inhale a couple of more. Yay!

 Vietnam, your food is divine, and your reputation as one of the greatest cuisines is well and truly deserved. Well done you!