Hoi An - Street Breakfast

I broke the yolk on the egg before I took this photo. The dish was still screaming hot so I wanted to give the yolk a chance to coagulate with the gravy that is ladled over top. It comes topped with canned ham (a Viet version of Spam) some real meat and lots of onions. A nice fresh baguette is served on the side (quality baguettes are the only good thing the French did for the Vietnamese).
I ordered a coffee along side and it came to 23,000 dong (or roughly $1.50). Without the coffee the dish is 15,000 (or just under a dollar). It is easily the best breakfast deal in Hoi An. If you get up early enough they are served all around the main tailor market, otherwise head to the Hanh Cafe office the stall I ate at was just around the corner, just off the main drag.

Hoi An Street Food - Part 1

Cao Lau is the local specialty noodle dish in Hoi An. It is a bit like New York City pizza, it just can't be re-created elsewhere. The reason is actually the same as for NYC pizza; it all has to do with the water. Hoi An noodles are made with well water that has a unique mineral composition, so even if you get everything else right, it just won't taste the same.
My biggest complaint about Hoi An is the price of food. I expect to pay more in a restaurant, there is more overhead, but noodle stalls are supposed to be the cheap local's alternative. The price for the noodles at this stall was similar to all the restaurants. It turns out all the locals were Vietnamese tourists. Oh well...
It was over priced for a noodle stall, but it is nice to actually watch your dish being prepared, where you can see that everything is fresh. Behind closed restaurant doors you can never be sure how fresh your food is.
Cao Lau is not quite like Pho or Bun, there is actually little broth. It is more a bowl of noodles than a bowl of noodle soup. The rice noodles come with a healthy serving of sliced pork, and lots of fresh lettuce, basil and bean sprouts.

Cao Lau, Hoi An noodles with pork.

Hanoi Street Food Part 2

I am writing this post while enjoying a bowl of sweet pumpkin soup at a Hanoi's most popular guesthouse, The Hanoi Youth Hotel. While I have been trying to stick to street food, this place makes a great lemonade and the prices are rather reasonable (as long as you stay away from pizza and burgers), and it all comes with free wi-fi connection.
Anyhow on to yesterday's massive lunch.
I walked by this place and they were frying up fresh spring rolls, and they smelled so delicious I had to come in and try them. I shot this video while waiting for what I thought was just going to be two spring rolls (which is what I tried to order).



What I got instead of two spring rolls is a massive spread of food. A bowl of steaming broth with BBQ meat which I assume was pork, and grilled little meat balls, which again I assume were made with pork. Who knows, or cares really, as long as it tastes good, right? Accompanying this was a massive plate of noodles, which you add to the broth as you go (I watched how the locals ate it and just followed suit). When the mama set the soup in front of she tossed in a spoonful of red stuff from a plastic container, pointed to the fresh hot peppers and indicated that I should add some (which naturally I did). The salad is a mix of bib lettuce, a little mint, and basil, which you pick at as you go.

The whole spread.
This set me back 40,000 dong.

Soup with some noodles tossed in.

Spring rolls for dipping into the soup
or eaten with some of the herbs from the fresh salad.

EH-OH

The Fonz's favourite snack. Found these in Hong Kong 7-11

Hanoi Street Food Part 1

Dealing with Hanoi during the day can be a total pain in the ass. Traffic is heavy and the sky is always a crappy gray colour, presumably because of the traffic.
While the city tends to go to bed early, from sunset till 11pm Hanoi is at it's best.
Now that my stomach has returned to normal function (it seemed I suffered from slow digestion because of the switch from rich, braised French style dishes using mostly animal fats to Thai style stir-fried dishes in poor quality palm oils). I bravely stroll into busy food stall and just eat whatever is given to me.

"Little Pillows" from the spring roll stand
I read about these on blog to which I will later post a link.
This cost a whopping 6,000 Dong.

The bun stand. It was hard to find a seat so I knew it was good.

Chopping up the pork hock for the noodle soup.

After suffering from a cold worsened by
train and plane A/C. This bowl of soup did my soul good.

After the Bun stand I made my way to a busy corner where locals were chowing down on bags of sunflower seeds washed down with cold lemon tea. I opted for a beer and sat with the only two other white people there. They left shortly after I arrived, so I sat there soaking in the atmosphere. I was almost done my beer when the corner shop was broken up (not in the violent sense) by the police. I had to hide inside the shop with a few locals while we waited for the police to leave. I would have taken a photo but most people left and the cops were still hanging around the area, breaking up other tea joints.

Asia Scenic Cooking School - Chiang Mai

Our Class (that is Mam on the left).

I am supposed to be starting Culinary Training at George Brown this January, although it looks like I might have to defer for a semester while I try to organize funding. Anyway, I came to Asia with the plan of attending a few different cooking schools to pick up a few tricks.
I spent a day checking the different options out before finally deciding on Asia Scenic Cooking School. Walking into the school I received a friendly greeting, from Mam the main teacher, and a break down of what we would be learning.
The other schools, which seem to be more popular, like Baan Thai and others, were more like factories than schools. All the prep work was done for you, and in some cases you had little choice in which dishes you learned to make. Not so for Asia Scenic, every step was hands on, to the point of making your own pastes, and tasting and smell herbs from their backyard organic garden. If different students chose different dishes you also got to watch them prepare their food, essentially learning them too.
All the photos from this post are the property of Asia Scenic and are reproduced with permission (Thanks Mam)

Making noodle dishes,
Pad Thai for me, just to see what if anything I was missing

Learning to properly wrap spring rolls,
for some reason I have always found it harder
than hand rolling Vietnamese fresh rolls.

The class proudly showing off their spring rolls.

Making deep fried bananas, made before the mains
as they are often eaten cold from little plastic bags from street vendors.

Prep work...chopping garlic

That's me cooking up some Cashew Nut Chicken

Our class relaxing after gorging
ourselves on all the food we made.

Chiang Mai BBQ

I couldn't tell you where this place is, or what it is call, other than by it is close to the shell station outside the moat. It is all you can eat for 139B/person (or just over $4/person Canadian), however you pay 30B for not cleaning your plate. For somebody like me this means a long slow meal, but one you can relish in.

I had been recently suffering from "slow digestion" but the Thai chemist/pharmacist totally sorted me out so this was the first real full-on meal I had eaten in days.

Old friends we met here 2 years ago, Greg and Janine, brought us here with their friend Eve who had recently made the move from Koh Lanta to Chiang Mai. These all-you-can-eat BBQ joints are common in Chiang Mai, and are quite popular with locals. Apart from us, the only falang there was with his local girlfriend. I had a rather long and interesting conversation with a man who spoke no English, and I of course speak no Thai.

The Table Is Set.

You toss a big chunk of fat on the top
so that meats don't stick. The juices run
down the grill and flavour the broth where you cook veg & prawns

Eve Working The Q

Janine teaching me the art of cleaning
a cooked prawn. And yes, I did suck out the head bits!

Greg starting his own prawn genocide.

The mid-meal prawn body count.
These are just Greg's. Ours paled in comparison.

Prawn corpses and Chang beer.

Greg's final prawn body count.

Lub'd - Pt II

So just had breakfast downstairs in the Lub*d.
Croissant was the best I have had yet in Asia, light and flaky like they should be. There is nowhere near the amount of butter that there should be, but it is understandable.
The coffee that came included? Just as bad as the first cup, thankfully they provided Abby with milk for her tea which she didn't use, so 2 shot glasses of UHT milk made it un-coffee-like substance at least potable.

No Name Part II

Mama's In The Kitchen

Makin' Up NoName

I got Mama to show me how to make it at home.
Here was a bit of a language barrier but I think I got it.

Veg. NoName

Shredded flesh of coconut (1 whole coconut seems to be enough for one large order)
1 - 2 Tbsp of palm sugar
1 - 2 Tbsp of Naam Po (not quite sure what it is but I think it is the water used to rehydrate dried shrimp; there was a pink sludge at the bottom but clear water on top, they said it is like fish sauce but different)
1/4 - 1/2 c of white flour, enough to form a very loose dough)
add desired veg (corn, cut up green beans, peas, et.al.)
Form into rough patties.
Deep fry.
NB Mama's had more of a shredded coconut texture, others have had more of a pakora/pancake feel, I imagine you could use coconut powder and adjust wet as needed.

Lub'd

Worst. Coffee. Ever.
It tasted like dish water and used coffee grounds accidentally brushed against one another in a subway.
It was like if a malicious man (not evil like Hitler or Stalin) were reborn as a cup of joe. It actually made me miss the instant crap with non-dairy creamer and too much sugar.

Koh Samui - Night Food

Unless you want to eat McDonald's or grossly over-priced and bland "western food" Koh Samui can be a foodie wasteland. Thankfully every night, next to the girly bars, a line of stalls sets up offering up cheap Thai dishes of varying quality.

My Favourite
Baan Lamai Night Market Food Stall

The first night Abby grabbed a Penang curry that left much to be desired, under-spiced, over salted, and tasting largely of kaffir lime.
Thankfully I scoped out this gem of a stall. Serving up freshly cooked Kebabs, satay, springroll, and most importantly to me, Noname. I first ate Noname when I visited Koh Tao (2 islands north of Samui), in that case it was Prawn Noname, since then I have only found Veggie Noname. I have tried time and time again to find a Thai restaurant at home with no luck. The closest thing I can liken it to would be an Indian Pakora, but even that isn't really close.
A heaping plate of Noname with a Kebab and a springroll topped out at a whopping 75 Baht (1$CDN = 32 Baht) so under $2.50. The next stall over is the shake stand (Thai Shakes are raw fruit, ice and a lot of sugar), mango shakes are the most expensive at 30B, all others are 25, if you opt for "alcohols" all shakes are 50B and contain 2-3 shots of Sang Som (Thai Rot Gut Whiskey)

Thai Veggie Noname

Pad Thai - Part 1 of ?

Asia is a land of amazing street food, especially so in Thailand. While many lament the loss of traditional home cooking, the quality of what is available on the streets puts Toronto to shame, even with our new expanded "healthy", "international" options. Even the worst street Pad Thai is freshly prepared to order, unlike those hot dogs that sit, drying out, on the top rack of the grill only to be finally sliced and cooked again to oblivion.
We grabbed this Pad Thai from some random stall lining the walls of a downtown Bangkok park.

Temple Spice Crab

I have never really been one for seafood, for myriad reason. Foremost is our general treatment of the oceans, meaning it is at once a toilet and a pantry. The few fish species that I do enjoy eating (fresh blue fin tuna, salmon & swordfish) carry such a heavy price tag (in terms of both price and cost) that I feel more and more guilty with every bite. There is a reason why it is so hard to find decent Toro (the fatty under belly of the Blue Fin) these days; the mature tuna that yield the best cuts don't exist anymore.
Wild seafood is the one product that people have no qualms about eating into extinction. In Canada I could not hunt a moose and then serve it in a commercial kitchen (and with good reason) yet there is nothing stopping me from serving mass quantities of our dwindling salmon stock. With the exceptions of trout, carp and catfish, farmed fish is an environmental nightmare.
Another reason I eat little seafood is that often it is expensive, of poor quality and generally not overly fresh.
Anyway, enough ranting about fish. When I do eat seafood outside a sushi bar it is only because it has been out of its native waters for hours, not stored in a tank for days, or flown on ice half way around the globe. The only lobster I have eaten and liked was in Mexico and we bought it from the fisherman almost immediately after it was caught, and we ate it shortly thereafter.

The crab served up at Temple Spice Crab (in the Temple Street Night Market) was wonderfully fresh and sweet. The platter (carrying one lone crab) arrived smothered in wok fried garlic and chili peppers. The crab is market price, so we ended up paying 120 HK$ (or just under 20$CDN).


We also paired the crab with Spicy Eggplant with Pork. The eggplant is a fave from home, both Abby and I make this regularly, and first started eating it at New Ho King on Spadina St in Toronto. The eggplant wasn't as good as either our homemade version, or that from New Ho King. Not so strangely, it tasted a little fishy.

Wanderlust...

Our first wedding anniversary is fast approaching and with it a full calendar year since I have been outside of Canada. Abby and I casually resolved to go away for 5 weeks this November, at first I was a little unsure that we actually would. A number of events have conspired to give Abby a year off of school, so we plan to take advantage of the time off. So it is official now; we are Thailand bound!
The plan is to spend most of our time kicking around the Islands. Friends of ours, The Loves of Ol' Blighty, suggested this little paradise on Koh Phangan. We can't make it our first stop though, as this seems exactly the type of place where a week turns into a month and then we have to rush to the border before our visas expire. Not that 5 weeks on Phangan would be a bad thing.
After the 5 weeks Abby will have to come home and return to work, I don't have to though. I am going to stay behind to take a two week Thai cooking course.
I am so excited!

Rude Light Switches and Damn Fine Pizza

Growing up I spent most of my summers in a small railway town really far north of the city. The town itself grew up around two different industries and two different populations; the railroad and the Italians, and logging and French Canadians, the two were, and still are, divided starkly by the Chapleau River and the CPR Tracks. This division isn't important to this post, it is just an interesting fact, and as another aside, as both these industries are dying a slow death so is the town.
My grandparents lived on the Italian dominated side, not to far from the tracks. I have to say that I only vaguely remember our next door neighbour, Tony Principe, except for 2 things, he had a glow in the dark light switch where the toggle represented a pantless trucker's penis, and he made the best pizza I have ever had. According to the legend the secret to Tony's pizza, was the pan, he brought it from The Old Country; the copper relic had belonged to his grandmother, and perhaps even to her grandmother.
Pizza is the second food that I learned to how to make, and it was all in an attempt to recreate his recipe. Since then only twice have I ever found something close (and both lacked the chili pepper heat), at a little pizza shop on Prince St in NYC, and at a long gone bakery at Kane and Eglinton, an area once settled by Italians, slowly shifted to Jamacian and West Indian, as each community improved their lots.
Like all good food, Tony's pizza was perfect in its simplicity; thick crust baked in a lake of olive oil, which would soak into the dough as it baked, topped with whole canned tomatoes, broken up with a fork, season lightly, heavly spiced with hot pepper flakes and nothing else. The mouth numbing tomatoes would collect in divots in the lightly sweetened dough making each bite a sweet infernal heaven.

Chueng's Family Restaurant Campbellford

Saturday was a bit a trek through Eastern Ontario. The day was spent in Belleville at Toronto Punk legend Warren 'Spider' Hasting's funeral. For various reasons we ended up visiting several small towns in the area, Madoc, Marmora, Havelock and Campbellford.
We stopped for dinner in Campbellford at Cheung's Family Restaurant. In a way small town Chinese is like McDonald's or Starbucks, you pretty much know what you are going to get, the menus are more or less the same at every one, and while the are rarely stellar they also rarely disappoint. Cheung's Family Restaurant, like so many other small town Chinese Restaurants, served up heaping plates of cheap, decent food.
For $5.95 you had a choice of 3 items from a set menu. Pictured above is my combo, 2 eggrolls, chicken chop suey, and almond soo guy. Sadly my club soda was $2.45, had I had a coke it would have been $1.25. I know WTF?!
As an aside...Abby ordered from North of Bombay on Dundas W, and yet again they didn't fail to disappoint. North of Bombay's chef is clearly talented, as it takes a special skill to render Vindaloo totally flavourless.