A busy morning at the Hoi An market.
All sorts of delicious Khmer food from Siem Reap. We were very spoiled by 6-course, $15 tasting menus in a couple of excellent restaurants. There’s aspects of Vietnamese and Thai to the cuisine, with some wonderful coconut milk curries (“amok”). Lots of fresh fish and delicate herbs, lemongrass and ginger.
Ok, so. You’re in Vietnam, you’ve got to have a banh mi sandwich, no question. But it’s also 32 degrees from dawn until dusk, and those street carts do *not* look like they have any kind of refrigeration. And while I like to fancy myself an adventurous eater, I restrict myself to the tofu banh mi in Chinatown in Toronto (air conditioned, health inspected, etc.) out of concern for the provenance of the meat. Am I really going to eat one where the meat has been sitting out in the streets of Saigon all day? Well, I had to work
A cooking class at the originally monikered Saigon Cooking Class. Great fun, with the market visit to start, and then four dishes prepared over 3 hours. On the menu: 1. Tofu Soup with Tomato, Herbs and Whipped Egg 2. Grilled Beef, Herb and Kumquat Salad, with Sticky Fish Sauce Dressing 3. Braised Caramelised Pork 4. Chicken Curry with Lemongrass and Coconut Juice Verdict: #2 was the standout for flavour, but the technique and general flavour profile behind the caramelisation of #3 was probably the most interesting, especially so since we’d had a caramelised fish dish the night before that was super tasty. #1 was quick,
Ben Thanh Market, y’all. We got a guided tour of the erstwhile Les Halles Centrales prior to a cooking class. Most interesting was the whiteboard listing the average meat and fish prices for the month— you still get the fun of haggling, but no one gets really screwed over.
One of the things we really wanted to do in Hong Kong was go out for a bang-up Cantonese meal. We tried several weeks ago to get into Lung King Heen, but never moved up beyond third on the waiting list for Monday lunch. Undaunted, we secured a table at Shang Palace, and sailed into a couple of their set lunch menus. Quite the feast (starred are pictured): *Steamed dumplings *Barbecue meat combination *Braised fish maw broth with crab roe and fungus Braised winter melon soup with crab meat and conpoy *Pan-fried scallop filled with shrimp paste and teriyaki sauce Sautéed garoupa fillet and seasonal
I wouldn’t say you go to Fenghuang for the food, exactly (bizarrely, it seems most Chinese tourists go for the clubbing). But there were plenty of interesting eats on offer: small stalls frying up food on demand, chilies befitting Hunan’s spicy reputation, a startling variety of dried animals, a preponderance of dehydrated kiwi (why?), omnipresent sugared nuts being pounded into a candy, and dinner features still on the hoof/claw/paw/webbed foot.
One of those random things that sometimes happen: we were lolling around in the hostel café in Hangzhou. I was still recovering from my sickness, the weather was a bit minging, and we were really just waiting until it was time to catch the sleeper train to Changsha. Then the café staff approached and asked us if we would be willing to appear in a TV show about their restaurant in exchange for free lunch. And so it was that we were sitting in the restaurant watching the chef being interviewed as he prepared dishes, and then being interviewed on-camera ourselves
In a very tranquil setting, surrounded by rows of tea bushes stretching up into the hills, the China National Tea Museum just outside Hangzhou has a crazy amount of info and exhibits about the varieties, preparation, history and culture of tea in China.
In Hangzhou we went out for some local cuisine, thanks to recommendations from Cathy. It took us an embarrassingly long amount of time to decode the menu and figure out what we wanted (not helped by the fact that the chicken in lotus leaves was translated as pork on the menu), but it was excellent. I will say that while we gave it a valiant effort, we really can’t reconcile ourselves to chicken feet…an acquired taste we will not acquire.