Local Food News

A good piece on Prop 37 on labeling genetically engineered food that puts it into the context of ramping up the food movement. Link.

Once again damage to our food system directly impacts our food system. In other words: Consider the Oyster. Link.

So this idea started out because I’ve developed a serious intolerance to milk and I wanted to bring an appetizer to our monthly film night for our little club. Three members are don’t eat meat, except for sausage, strangely enough. And as I’m trying to keep away from cheese, that limited my creativity. But Asian is always a safe bet for the lacto-intolerant, and andoille is a perfect substitute for chinese sausage.

This antipasto is colorful, a snap to make and celebrates the season. I got a fine baguette sliced at Richard Bourdon’s Berkshire Mountain Bakery, which I toasted. Then I assembled the flavorful toppings on an attractive platter, made by my mom, Vera Lightstone, who taught pottery in Manhattan for many years.

Toasts, Shredded Lacinato Kale Salad, Tomatoes with Beans and Pickled Tomatoes, and New Potatoes and Andouile with Swecthan Salt and Pepper, the latter influenced the the late great Barbara Tropp.

Just enjoyed my first shrub — a sweet and sour fruit drink — at Street Eats in Northampton. It set me off on an adventure that I hope to pursue all year round, using seasonal produce. (Think strawberry shrub in the spring, pear shrub in right now.)  This version includes fresh local apples and local ginger, a real find. It was adapted from a recipe on Food52, an excellent site. For more about Shrubs, see below.

Makes 1-1/2 cups (I tripled the recipe at home.)

1 very flavorful large apple, 2 small, grated or finely chopped
2  teaspoons finely chopped or grated ginger
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup granulated white sugar

1-Add all the ingredients to a pint glass jar. Shake. Push down the solids into the vinegar with a spoon.

2-Sit in the refrigerator for 5 days. Strain, pressing firmly to extract all the tastiness from the apples.

3-Place the strained shrub in a clean jar in the fridge. (The flavor will mature over time.)

What do I do with my shrub?
Mix the resulting acidic concentrate with bubbly water to make a sweet-tart grown up soda, a dash of rum for a fine cocktail or water for a refreshing drink. (Try adding it to a salad dressing too, reinforcing its fruit base by adding fresh fruit in the salad itself.)

A little shrub info
Tasty shrubs are a sweet fermented drink, popular from colonial times until industrialized food came into fashion, but now coming back into vogue. Just add bubbly water to a concoction of your vinegar, sugar and seasonal fruit. Wait few days and strain. Use as above.

Concoct your own
Invent your own shrubs using whatever is on hand —  blueberries in the summer, peaches in the summer, etc, mixing in herbs and spices if you see fit. Or try vegetables instead of fruit. (I saw a kale shrub on-line.) Vary vinegars to your taste, using cider vinegar, red wine vinegar or even balsamic. You can fool with sweeteners like honey or brown sugar. Let me know what you come up with. Here’s a helpful link.

Food ark shrub  (link)
Shrubs are saved on the food ark slow food developed to help preserve the biodiversity and traditions of our foodways.

Tip: For the best results cook until brown and crisp both sides, then serve immediately. Makes 3 to 4 servings

2/3 cup Greek yogurt
1 pound zucchini
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup chopped dill (or dill and parsley or dill and cilantro)
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 cup flour or more as needed
1/4 teaspoons cayenne
3 tablespoons olive oil

1. Grate the zucchini in the food processor. Toss with the salt, and let sit in the colander, over a bowl, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove to a hand towel and squeeze out extra liquid. Place in a medium bowl with the herbs, feta, eggs, onions, flour, and cayenne. Stir to combine.

2.  In a large non-stick pan, heat the oil to medium-high. Add the zucchini batter in tablespoons, pressing down with the back of a spoon, until 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Test one, cooking on both sides, until crisp and brown, 2 to 3 minutes each side, then adding more flour to the batter if the zucchini is liquidy. Cook in batches. Serve with yogurt on the side or with a small dollop on top of each fritter.

The Recipe
Adapted from Ayla Algar’s Classic Turkish Cooking, this recipe was included in my first book, One Pot Vegetarian Dishes. Reading Algar’s book endeared me to Turkish food, so I dragged my family there. It was a memorable trip though the food was often disappointing. One fabulous exception was a tasty snack we gobbled up while standing at tiny bus stop atop Mt. Olympus —  warm flat bread, freshly made, lathered with butter and rolled up with feta and parsley. Food fit for the gods.

LONDON

BANGKOK

It’s impossible to ignore Hoi An’s appeal. Small bridges run across Thu Bon River, which meanders through town, bordered by semi-distressed, romantic French colonial buildings. The town’s signature lanterns twinkle at night. And during the day, it’s a snap to bike or walk, as many of the streets are closed off to cars. Good eats abound and the beach is within easy reach. We planned to stay three days and jubilated for twelve.

In some ways Hoi An reminds me of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where we now live. Both towns are ancient World Heritage Sites that capture the ups and downs of that designation: well-preserved and irresistible beauty paired with lots of tourists, shops and a self-consciousness about that beauty. Yet, peering across the river in the early morning, I felt that travelers’ thrill — transported back in time to something “other.”

Walking and biking through neighborhoods to get around, we passed kids playing with dogs, kumquat trees heavy with fruit, and always the same tiny old woman who nodded hello. Fifteen minutes to town, fifteen to the beach. Hoi An revitalized us after 3-1/2 months on the road in (links) New York City, London, Bangkok, traveling up through Northern Thailand, to Laos and Hanoi. It helped that we stayed in a fabulous, but reasonably priced, guesthouse just a few minutes out of town.

Tailors Galore
Hoi An is known for its look, good eats and tailors. The streets are lined with 600+ tailor shops where you can step in one day and out the next with clothes made to order. Pick a fabric, a pattern, bring your old clothes to have them copied. Even for a gal like me, who at times wished I were assigned a uniform at birth, it was a blast.

These people, and the Vietnamese in general, keep reminding me of my relatives — warm, but pushy, loud, money conscious and quick to emote the full range of human feelings. Here, they’re in the rags business, as my relatives were too, starting out in Lower East Side pushcarts, moving up to clothing stores over many years in the Big Apple.

One day I forgot my purse in a tailor’s shop, so went back to pick it up. When I stepped in to ask, almost in unison, the sales women said AA-MY!, High for A, followed by a dropped low note for Y — the exact tone my Great Aunts would have used to kindly chastise my poor habits.

A Food Town
If you want to really experience a town, forage the food markets early. So, on my first morning I biked into town, joining an Australian chef I’d met on the road. We hit the riverside market at 7 am, when no tourists were in sight.

Along the river, I immediately spotted a woman sitting on a tiny stool, ladling up warm black bean pudding with coconut from a giant pot, a smashing breakfast. (Get there early, as she runs out.)

Walking a tad further, we took a severe left, away from the endless variety of gorgeous fish for sale along the river. We sat at low stools at a long table, where a woman ladled up a vegetarian soup with fresh pumpkin and tofu. A cheesy condiment that may be fermented bean curd held a sourness that mingled perfectly with our herbaceous soup. These mini-feasts, served by women tending a tidy stand or squatting roadside by pot or skillet, were some of my most memorable delights in Asia.

There’s also a long covered market with rows of vendors selling everything imaginable. But the vendors were so assertive, and it was so mobbed that I had to pull my poor husband aside and walk him to a calmer place. I don’t mind crowds, but he does, and traveling well as a couple is an act of compromise. Still, I managed to grab a bowl of Cau Lau and take it outside.

One morning, wandering alone, I noticed another vendor serving up warm bean curd custard topped with gingery palm syrup. Immediately, two 20-something women sat next to me on a few curbside steps. When asked, I told them I was an American. Excited, they wanted to practice their English, as is so often the case.“We love Americans, “they told me.

“Why? After the war?….” I asked.

“Because they’re so friendly,” one replied grinning, before calling out for the pudding cold, with ice, which she rapidly stirred, breaking up the curds.

It’s hard to have a bad meal in Hoi An if you avoid the usual tourist restaurants in old town that sell too many east-west meals. Stick with the market and solid recommendations. And the food was much easier to navigate than in Hanoi.

One afternoon, we found our way down an alley where we sat on sidewalk chairs at a long table alongside other hungry patrons of Bale Well, where they’ve been serving the same dish for 23 years. The proud owner, Mai, showed how to roll her rich and wonderful combo of skewered grilled pork, spring rolls, lightly pickled vegetable salad with fresh lettuce and fresh herbs into a rice paper, with or without the Vietnamese turmeric colored-pancake (Bánh xè), before dipping it dark soya-based sauce. This memorable meal could stop a truck!

Later we went to the upscale, but not fancy, Ms Vy’s Morning Glory Restaurant, as well as Vy’s Market, two of her four businesses in town. The Market is specifically geared for foreigners to navigate into Vietnamese food. It’s a series of stalls, each featuring a different aspect of the cuisine, from workers’, wok or fried food, to my favorite —  the “weird and wonderful” category with unctuous brains, multi-textured duck and jellyfish salad. Choices of everything, most of it more conventional, including the elegant Banana Blossom or the Shrimp and Pomelo Salad, are easy to find on her pictorial IPad menus. Upstairs, there’s a school where I took her “advanced” class, a snap to handle for any home cook. The simple local clams in lemon grass broth were orgasmic.

One evening I was “home” with a cold feeling sorry for myself because, poor me, I couldn’t consume another Vietnamese meal. Tommy appeared, bearing Bahn Mi, still warm, on crisp baguettes, layered with meats, vegetables and several sauces, who knows what. Rich and pickled flavors, paired with a touch of hot and sweet, transcended my fever, reinforcing my affection for my sweet hub. We went back three times and discovered Anthony Bourdain loved it too. 

After glorious meals in town, with its bridges lined with lanterns, bustling with night shoppers, we were happy to return to our Vietnamese neighborhood, complete with complimentary bikes, breakfast and morning roosters. The bike shed at our hotel looked out on the organic farm next door, emerald green, with a small cooking school and restaurant inside. We ate lunch there, looking out of the neat rows of greens, while nibbling “Three Friends”, a bundle of marinated pork and sweet river shrimp, tied with spring onion (and mint) and garnished with a tiny flower. (Pop the whole thing into your mouth.)

One rainy night, we ducked into a huge restaurant set for a banquet, but empty. We ordered the signature dish, chicken, from a warm waitress who sat at the table with us. Soon we heard cackling; the chicken was being killed for us. The waitress took my hand, inviting me to join her in the tiny kitchen, which was simply a grill with our bird , split and cooking. The chicken was tough, so we brought it back to Hoa, our guesthouse host, who’d said she liked the restaurant. But it was a Buddhist holiday, so she couldn’t eat it, as meat is forbidden. All food experiences aren’t tasty. But they’re experiences nevertheless.

Beach
We regularly biked past a rice field out of town to the Cau Dai beach. Often we heard tourists complaining about the aggressive parking attendants. But Tom earned regular hugs and laughs from an elderly woman after gaining her respect by haggling the price. The long beach had intense waves and an undertow, but we relished it anyway, sitting under shady palapas, eating good enough sandwiches and drinking mango shakes. Sweet.

Slow Travel
Our 12 fabulous days in Hoi An didn’t start well. We were driven from the Da Nang airport in dreary weather past China beach, a long strip of white sand that served as an “RNR” spot for US soldiers during the war.

The sky was darkening as we arrived at our guesthouse, which was slightly out of town. Driving past a ramshackle shed next to a smoking makeshift fire, I could feel Tommy tense beside me. The neighborhood was litter-scattered where sidewalks should be, low lying metal roofs revealing nothing. No one around.

The sun lifted in the morning, filling our spotless and spacious room with its grand en suite bathroom. And after a few days we began to notice neatly swept concrete yards in front of homes, some quite ornate, pets sleeping out front. Kids appeared in the afternoon, playing ball in the street, practicing their “hello,” as we passed each day. And we started to peel the layers of the onion that goes with slow travel, seeing beyond the odd façade a foreigner can’t place when they first arrive.

There’s a simple pattern that evolved on our journeys, perhaps common to all travelers. First you get your bearings, instinctively trying to relate an unfamiliar place to something you know. What here reminds you of a neighborhood back home? In London, my unaccustomed eye tried to compare the city’s look to the older part of Manhattan, at the tip of the island, where the buildings are kind of, well…. old Brit. In the outskirts of Hoi An, I looked for the small towns in Laos where I’d just been, but didn’t quite see them.

But soon your eye adjusts and you don’t have to compare. You look at what’s there. Then you begin to recognize faces, or at least to recognize their warmth.  In Hoi An, we began to smile at our neighbors as we passed each other on the short cut Tommy discovered into town. That tiny old woman in a conical hat who nodded hello as we walked past the kumquat trees next door to our guesthouse.

All our neighbors are becoming increasingly friendly.  One asked Tommy, ”Do you live here?”

Another, “Where’s your hat?,” when Tom forgot it one day.

Soon we were slipping off our shoes before entering that guesthouse, relieved to be home, chatting in half sentences to the owner, Hoa, about our day and hers. There was comfort in both the commonality and differences in our days — ours exploring alleyways, hers tending to her business. One night, it dipped down to 75 degrees. We joked with her about wearing a goose down jacket, showing her how high the snow sat above our picnic table back home.  Another, we gathered in the foyer while it was pouring outside. Hoa touched the flat of her hand to a spot on the reception desk, two feet off the floor, where the rain rose last year. Her small daughter watched TV, dancing in sync with the kids on screen, while her older brother stood behind us, jealous of the attention we gave her.

The longer we travel, the fewer sights we see. No doubt, I’ve seen places that will never leave me. Angkor Wat. Ephesus. But what I remember most is often lacking in world-class wonder. Those evenings in Hoi An. The elderly parking attendant and her hugs. A Turkish resort on the Aegean Sea, where my young daughter drew the chef’s portrait in exchange for two juice boxes. Clusters of children squatting over fires, cooking their meals in a rural school in Northern Laos, in the shadow of a bomb-torn mountain. A sloshing fish tank balanced on the back of a motorcycle in Kampot, Cambodia as we drove into town.

Traveler’s Tips

Where we stayed (and would gladly stay again)

• Village Moon Homestay is run by two lovely cousins, Vy and Hoa, who call themselves sisters. Only 5 rooms, with outdoor areas. Fabulous and very reasonable, with breakfast included. Right between town and the beach. One of our favorite spots in Asia/

Some good eats

• White Rose for Dumplings: 533 Hai Ba Trung
• Banh Mi Phung, for crusty Bahn Mi sandwiches, 2B Pan Chau Trinh
• Bale Well: 45/51 Tran Hung Dao Street, in an alleyway between Trần Hưng Đạo and Phan Châu Trinh.
• Miss Vy’s many restaurants. We ate at the Morning Glory and Vy’s Market, where there are also cooking classes.

To do

• Old Town itself is the main the attraction in Hoi An. ( We paid to enter on our first visit, then didn’t) Other things to do and see.
• Japanese Covered Bridge’s Pagoda, constructed in the 1600’s
• We loved what we bought at Blue, and the price was right,  although some of the clothes wore better than others. I suggest you look for recommendations on-line though, as businesses change, and apparently there are some scams.
• My Son (as in caption)

  

  

Food that Sings
Vietnamese food came late to the to the US. But I’ve always had a soft spot for its light, herbaceous combos, judicious use of spices and touch of the French. Still, finding great food in Hanoi was tougher than in Thailand, where flavorful food from clean enough street stands is ubiquitous. Determined as ever, I had a list of restaurants, and on our first day we tried to taxi to one. But, the driver got painfully lost, so the four of us turned back in disgust. Hanoi streets are tough to navigate, better for getting lost than found, or so we learned. Chilled in fleece jacket weather with a blooming cold, I nevertheless lunged at Hanoian food, as is my way. I wanted good food and I wanted it NOW.

One day, I sat warming myself with a rich egg coffee, gazing out onto West Lake. Directly outside my window, locals were strolling home from work. On the pavement, between two lanes of mellow traffic, a grey haired woman and her daughter were selling cooked corn on the cob from a giant pot. Pedestrians stopped, bought a bag of corn, sometimes with a cup of warm corn water on the side. A high voice from several floors above us shouted down in Vietnamese. The vendor smiled and nodded, giving her daughter a bagful to be delivered, upstairs.

The following day we passed the Gothic cathedral, Saint Joseph’s. Catholics are a tiny minority in Vietnam, but mass has just finished, and parishioners came pouring out, so we stepped onto a side street. There, a woman stood in front of her 10-seat restaurant with a giant pot of bubbling oil, cooling fried rolls on a rack, a hot red menu posted behind her. We took one of everything. The crab spring roll (Nem Cua Be), a northern specialty, surprised us with its taste of the sea.

Slowly, we began to find good food, great food.

So we visited one of the tasty Quan An Ngon restaurants, set up in a series of stalls, surrounding the large dining room, each featuring traditional Vietnamese food from different regions — all in a clean, pretty atmosphere. These restaurants are generally not my style: too many tables, menus with pictures and too many choices. But I was wrong. We devoured everything we ordered on low slung tables in a roomful of lusty eaters, tourists and Vietnamese alike. And we kept ordering until we couldn’t, trawling the stalls for a delights, then ordering from menu pictures that caught our eye, such as Banh Xèo, a crisp-on-the-edges turmeric colored crepe filled with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts.

And my food pal Shirley and I ordered lacquered little sparrows, which were tasty, although I’m not sure why I ate the heads.

Xoi Yen became our favorite go to neighborhood meal, a joint jammed to the rafters, where a simple dinner costs $1.25. The staff stands out front, spooning up xôi xéo in 4 or 5 variations on a theme: sticky rice, shaved green mung bean cake, topped with goodies like pork or chicken and glorious fried shallots. All came with a tiny plate of pickled cucumbers and a bowl of stock, often served with rice dishes to sip or moisten to taste as you like.

Months later, living in Mexico, I sometimes turn a corner and dream Xoi Yen is waiting for me. In my fantasy, a small thin women is filling my bowl with a paddle of sticky rice. She’s moving swiftly within the coordinated bustle of her comrades, shaving mung bean and topping it with whatever I carefully choose, now that I’m fluent in Vietnamese and can do more than point.

My dream? Return to Vietnam to learn to cook its food, not in a school, but with women, home cooks in their kitchens. Any ideas out there?

To do and See
Hanoi, Vietnam’s second largest city after Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) has been its capital for more than 1000 years. Its historical layers rear up as we walk past the mercantile bustle and young hipsters — working, working, working, drinking coffee and working —pushing forward the city’s future with rapidity. If you’re ever in a cab, drive by the 4 kilometer mosaic wall decorated 2010 to celebrate Hanoi’s millennial. Visit the Museum of Fine Arts, especially the ground floor, for the stunning larger-than-life Buddha carvings, dating from the late 18^th century, about the time of the American revolution. So much of Asia’s art is in its temples and monuments, but this museum captures some of its treasures.

Quite by accident, we past the Northgate, built in 1805, and the only one of the five city gates that survived France’s bombardment of the city in the late 19^th century. Before you walk in, look in the front, where you can see the canon ball’s destruction to the walls of this massive brick and stone structure. Climb to the top, overlooking the neighborhood.

Of course, the Vietnamese have been at be conquered numerous times — by the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, and again after WWII by the French, who wanted “their” colony back. And course by the US, whose war resulted in 58,000 American military deaths and, by some counts, more than a million Vietnamese. They’re a tenacious people, whatever you think of their government, who deserve self-rule.

As an American baby boomer who spent my formative years during the Vietnam war, I’ve never been able to forget the war and its many protests, some of which my husband and I participated in. Tom’s draft lottery card was high, and so he got off. But this trip brought back the haunting TV images of combat and death that were broadcast in a time when TV actually showed war, rather than slick animated graphics.

The Vietnam Military History Museum  with it’s spacious rooms is not sleek and was almost empty when we visited. Its focus is on the French and American war, more on the latter. There are armaments galore, but it’s also worth studying the pictures of the Vietnamese, and seeing the war from their point of view, a rare gift. (In some they’re surrounding their beloved Uncle Ho.) The Vietcong didn’t live in a vacuum, and so followed the massive US protests against the war. One museum wall boosted a framed hat of Vietnam Veteran’s against the war that I found particularly moving. And I was caught off guard by a chilling shot of Nixon with this “advisors” very early on, before the official start of the what the Vietnamese call “The American War.”

Movie freaks, we try to see a film everywhere we visit. That way we get three hits in one — pleasure in the film, the local’s reactions, and a chance to see how a culture sets the tone for experiencing movies. (Think: Standing for the king before the movie in Thailand, or a ticket seller reserving seats purposefully placed side by side in an almost empty theatre in Istanbul.)

The members only Hanoi film club, Cinematheque, is down an alley at 22A Hai Ba Trung. It shows a vast array of foreign films in a 98- seat screening room, where you can tell from the chuckles and sneers their viewers are sophisticated film buffs.

We tried for a hit of literary Hanoi, but there were no readings at the funky-hip bar, Tadioto, a hub for the artistic community. It’s owned by Vietnamese-American journalist and former NPR commentator Nguyen Qui Duc, whose book, Where the Ashes Are, tells of his experience during the war. His father was a senior official in the South Vietnamese government, imprisoned by the Vietcong while his family fled to settle in the US.

One day, while Tommy lay in bed chilled with a cold, I walked to the Temple of Literature. Dedicated to Confucius, it was built in 1070 and served as the first university of Hanoi, honoring the great scholars of Vietnam, some with stones (stela), some with carved tortoises as bases. (Tortoises are good luck in Vietnam.) It’s a sanctuary within the bustling city, a series of 5 large green courtyards, each with its own significance. Walking into the last one, my solitude was broken by hoards of orderly school children in crisp white uniforms with matching hats. A teacher stood in front of the stone building explaining something about the large square of green where they stood. Then, they sang.

On our last morning, I woke up early to visit the park on Hoan Kiem Lake in central Hanoi. Noticing the usually jammed footbridge was empty, I walked across to the shrine for an important tortoise. The Vietnamese consider the dragon, unicorn, phoenix and turtle sacred. As the turtle is the only one that exists in the here and now, it links the temporal to spiritual world. It is said that in the 15th century a Vietnamese hero borrowed a magic sword and used it to repel Chinese forces, before returning it to a turtle that surfaced in the lake. For decades, some say centuries, a 360 pound tortoise lived in this lake, dying only a few years ago, deeply saddening the Vietnamese people. The tortoise of the lake has as long been a symbol of nationalist pride and endurance.

Travel has made me more conscious of the world’s chauvinism, the racism that colors our lives. And so I was taken aback when an otherwise promising New York Times article on the death of the lake’s tortoise, Cu Rue, called the Vietnamese “very superstitious” for believing in what Westerners might consider a fable. Why not say: “this is what they believe” rather than label it. Do they call Christians superstitious for believing that god’s son was born of a virgin and rose from the dead?

It was only 7 am when I strolled off the bridge into the deep green city park. Already, it was buzzing with activity, as is the way with open areas in Asia, where living space can be small. I walked in search of Tai Chi, which I know is an early morning group affair. I found none. Instead I passed: a Zumba class, lessons in the Lindy Hop, old men in a line, swinging their arms in sync, a man in a yoga twist, runners and vigorous walkers and a thin teenager wearing a bike helmet exercising on his own. My favorite? A group of women in their sixties, obviously old pals, taking turns, leading their group in what sounded like traditional songs.

The vigor of the Vietnamese is unstoppable.

Good Resources and Don’t forget
Mostly, we simply walked, seeking out only a few sites. In part, this was because we had colds, but mostly, after months of travel, we wanted to internalize Hanoi, rather than simply visit it. And we had two weeks to do so, which is unusual. But solid nuts ‘n bolts guidebook-style Hanoi information can be found on wiki travel, which is good in general, and often more up to date than guidebooks. Good sites abound, but people seem to adore Sticky Rice for a tour, or just to read on-line and Rusty Compass. It’s worth noting that many Vietnamese and tourists make the pilgrimage to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum.

Hulong Bay 

*Gulf of Tonkin ring a bell?  In 1964, the muddled, wildly disputed and false “incidents” in the Gulf of Tonkin between US and North Vietnamese forces gave President Johnson, via reports from Secretary of State McNamara, the momentum to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, legalizing the Vietnam War to stop “communist aggression” in SE Asia, while never actually declaring war.  There’s a wider story, of course, and plenty of reading on this, as well as the movie Fog of War, in which McNamara disavowed a Gulf of Tonkin “incident” that sparked the major escalation and bombing of Vietnam.  

After sleepy Laos, caffeinated Hanoi woke us up. Seconds after leaving our guesthouse, we were crossing anarchistic avenues jammed with shops and cafes. Vietnamese sat everywhere on tiny plastic foot stools, spilling out from cafes onto sidewalks, drinking iced coffee, engaging in chatter, while peeling sunflower seeds, dropping them, along with everything else, the ground. Walking by their emotive faces, arguing, laughing, haggling and hustling reminded me of my old Jewish relatives in New York. Not remotely like the smiling Thai or shy Lao. Intense! 

After Lao curlicues, modern Vietnamese street signage popped out with its Roman lettering, dancing digraphs and accents for emphasis and tone. Hanoi’s youthful buzz felt new, too.

This city never sleeps. From our 3^rd story room we heard traffic and chatter all night long. Then, shortly after dawn, cars with megaphones drove through neighborhoods, urging everyone to clean up, hang their flags high, and I’m not sure what else.

But even before light, street vendors cycled in from country villages to work an endless day selling crispy crab spring rolls (Nem Cua Be) and dozens of other goodies. There’s oodles of plastic styrofoam for take out. But for full meals and wetter fare, plastic plates and bowls are used. Vendors squat curbside, washing them in sudsy, big bowls.

One job alone won’t suffice. So everyone juggles several forms of work. Or so I was told by a 20-something Vietnamese man before he offered me a tour. The Vietnamese government learned fast, dumping a communal work model for this working economy, which includes zillions of forms of entrepreneurship, often selling tours or clothing, at least in the touristy areas like the old quarter.

There’s peace old growth trees, which are so beloved that last mayor lost his job, in part, because he ordered 6,700 trees cut down. Soon, we were slipping into quieter alleys lined with bright red flags with their yellow stars, savoring coffee along with the crowds.

Caffeinated Hanoi

Iced coffee anyone? Powerful, with a distinctive caramelized flavor, Vietnamese coffee is an ideal when mixed with the sweetened condensed milk and plenty of ice. (Carnation captured SE Asia before refrigeration was common and it never let go.)

Hanoians are addicted to coffee, hot or cold, and we quickly joined their ranks to fuel our walks. The famous egg coffee with egg yolk and condensed milk whipped until frothy or coconut coffee, topped with coconut sorbet, make a tasty meal. (Though I ate plenty more.)

Coffee should be at home here. After Brazil, Vietnam’s the largest coffee producer, although much of it’s used for instant coffee, earning it a bad rap. Good Vietnamese coffee is long roasted, historically in butter, giving it a deep, rich flavor. It’s dripped over each cup through a simple metal double metal filter, called a phin, solo, or over a layer of sweetened condensed milk. The results are strong, unique and quite magical, although they don’t please all Westerners because of its acidity and slight bitterness. It DOES please me, although it needs the rich lift it gets from sweetened condensed milk.

Some status seekers and coffee connoisseurs prefer expensive civet cat coffee, which is supposed to work like this: the wild cats sniff out the best beans and eat them. Then, something fabulous happens in their digestive system, and the improved beans are collected from their feces. Sound appetizing?

Walking

I hear the traffic here doesn’t compare with Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). But Hanoi’s streets were wild, requiring a new point of view to cross. Our travel pal, Shirley, remembers not long ago when there were no streetlights at all.

But they’re still scant, and turning either way is a vehicle free-for-all. One morning, Tom was waiting to cross a particularly busy street, when a tiny old woman grabbed him by the elbow and walked him across. A reversal of roles, eh?

The sidewalks that exist were crowded with cafes. And the wider ones were sometimes used for badminton games, or by motorcycles that skittered pass us to avoid road traffic.

At first we stood waiting for a Vietnamese to cross with, matching their pace as motorcycles zoomed past us. This took a live-in-the-moment attitude. But soon we were on our own. Just breathing, never stopping, while moving across in a consistent walking rhythm, so vehicles can estimate where to drive around you.

Meandering Hanoi

In Hanoi we learned to slow down. At first, this large city simply swept over us with its billboards, endless shops and loud motorbikes. But once we began to pay attention, we were seduced by its romantic shutters, narrow alleyways, large lakes and by its vibrant people. We stopped and saw some sites, sure, but when we took it easy we began to absorb Hanoi.

Unlike Bangkok, where it seemed most people were indoors escaping the heat, Hanoi has dynamic street culture. Everyone was out eating, drinking, selling, gathering around itsy sidewalk tables, engaged in chat.

The most visited spots, the adjacent French and Old Quarter, sport varied architecture in French Colonial and Chinese shop house style, 2 or 3 stories with a shop on the bottom, living quarters up top. Many of the colonial buildings are painted light ochre with white trim, pleasing to the eye, especially in combo with the deep green of their palm trees out front.

Astride the Old Quarter is Hoan Kiem Lake, with trees whose trunks tip over its edge and cultivated green area running around it. Women in orange outfits clean and maintain, students approach tourists to practice their English, everyone exercises. At night, walkways along the lake are well used, bright with pretty lights overhead, next to the whirr of headlights on the wide boulevard beside it.

Heading northwest through the old quarter, blocks are crammed with narrow stores, often grouped by category — a block with shoes lined up on sidewalk tables, another with hanging red lanterns and hundreds of red and gold calendars for sale, and on. In about fifteen minutes we come to a second lake, West Lake, in a quieter area, away from the bustle, popular with ex-pats and young professionals.

The southern part of the area had a hip vibe. We passed a good bookstore, cooking school, and climbed the stairs to the Manzi Gallery in a restored French building, where we browsed some of the emerging young Asian artists, whose works are for sale at an affordable price.

The War

Walking back to our room, we passed bikers with conical hats peddling oodles of flowers. Women wandered by, carrying the iconic bamboo shoulder pole with baskets hanging on either end. Before I could respond, one walked up to me on the sidewalk, took her heavy pole off and hung it on me. Its weight —maybe 50 pounds — cut sharply into my shoulder.

By that time, I’d been obsessing about the Vietnam war, which was engraved into my teen years. I’d been looking at the Vietnamese, especially women my age, wondering about their anger level, and about what they’d been through during the war.

So, the second I felt the basket’s weight on my shoulder, my first guilty thought was: Is she punishing me for the damage done to her country? But she held up both hands in front of her face, as if holding a camera. No, it appeared she thought Tommy might want to take a picture of me with her baskets, and then pay her for it.

A few weeks later, in Kampot, Cambodia, we spoke to a Canadian, who worked in a Hanoi facility for Vietnamese damaged by agent orange. (The chemical is a defoliant that Americans war planes dropped that brutalized the Vietnamese for generations. It continues to appear in the DNA of the grandchildren of those who originally felt its effect.)

She told me that the victims, even the older ones directly affected, don’t blame Americans. They seem to understand that governments are not people.

I’m a tourist, skipping along the surface like a rock on a pond, so I don’t understand this culture in depth. But Americans would not be so forgiving.

Street Soup

The time had come. I’d passed her two or three times and watched her ladle, steam rising from her soup. Her little stand was neat with bowls of leafy greens, cilantro and celery lined up, waiting in their bowls. Noodles, rice and wheat, thick and thin, pressed into the front of her glass case.

The soup lady sat waiting too, on her stool, in her large-brimmed cotton hat, complete with a yellow scarf tied around her mouth, obscuring all but her inner face. But gave her the eye, holding up one finger. In turn, she held up a plastic bag in case I wanted to take-out. I motioned to her bright blue plastic table, one of two.

She pointed to the noodles. And I picked the yellow wheat ones I’d noticed yesterday when I’d passed two sidewalk diners slurping soup. They’d popped out lusty in their bowls, yellow against greens in the breakfast sun.

Instantly, she was assembling my soup. She threw in the bonus I’d hastily asked for, raising my eyebrows to indicate: Can I have these dumplings too? She slipped my noodles in cold water to wash off their excess flour, then into a bubbling pot of stock with fat chunks of turnips bobbing to the top. The plastic bowl received broth, dumplings, noodles, turnip, greens and tiny sticks of raw celery.

Then she reached a spoon into something crunchy and brown. Fried shallots? I wondered. “Pork,” she said, although they looked nothing like pork.

“Ah,” I said, looking at her, while pinching some skin up off my arm.

We both nodded, smiling.  Of course I wanted crispy pork skin. Motorbikes, pedestrians passed. She spotted a few Thai customers wandering cross the street, heading her way. Quickly, she thinly slivered roasted pork and scattered it on top with a sprinkle of cilantro.

It was my turn, my soup now. (I was possessive after 3 months on the road, eating out every day.) Slowly, I walked to my table and chair, careful not to spill my bowl. There, the glass condiment jars called to me. She’d taken her solo, now I took mine. She cooks, assembles, then I adjust to taste. It’s the dance of Asia, where each diner is a full participant in their meal.

I tasted the mild soup. It was fresh, light, colorful, a textural rhumba of soft dumplings, slippery noodles balanced by the intense crunch of the celery, mineral greens and slightly chewy pork. The spotlight hit my bowl. And I began, seasoning it with a dash of salt, that is fish sauce, a touch of sweet sugar, hot chilies and sour vinegar before finishing with a sprinkle of chopped peanuts.

I was ready to eat my Bangkok breakfast.

The Papaya Lady

While foraging for dinner, I’d landed on a sidewalk loaded with street vendors hawking everything from whole fried baby crabs to what looked like a stew made with zillions of tiny mushrooms from the woman my Bangkok pal Joe called, “The Mushroom Lady.”

I love food the in Asia where one person makes one dish over and over for decades. Say it’s sweet black bean pudding, shrimp spring rolls or noodle soup. You can see from the way they move in their orderly stand, from their open faces when I touch hand to heart after eating their dish, that they take pride in their work.

They’re not only giving you their concoction, often you’re building it to your taste in partnership. That’s true with Papaya Lady, who stood next to the Mushroom lady and across from the Grilled Fish Lady on that sidewalk in Bangkok.

Mortar and pestle alert, she held up one chili to ask. I nodded, and so she knew we didn’t want fire. Then she pounded it with one tiny clove of garlic, half a handful of chopped peanuts, a scant serving of fish sauce. Adding sweet to salt, she sprinkled in just a tad of white sugar and half a spoon of palm sugar.

“The gritty texture helps the mash,” Joe had told me.

I could smell nothing yet, but already night was falling and the street smelled of fried chicken. The Papaya Lady held up a baby crab, but I shook my head, no. I wasn’t in the mood for the unfamiliar, and Joe had told me it was fermented crab, which he called The Worst.

It went quickly from there, made to order, seasoned to taste. A sprinkle of dried shrimp, a scant handful of cut ripe green tomatoes, scissored green beans, followed by a giant squeeze of lime. Mashing, mixing, pounding with the pestle, pleasurable enough to feel I was pounding too.

Then she reached into a plastic container filled with unripe papaya and carrot shreds, and she tossed before reaching with her fingers for a taste. When she looked up, she could see me lean forward, and so I tasted, too. Almost there, I cocked my head. More lime was needed for brightness. And so it was squeezed in: it was my papaya salad now.

Because

But it there was more than that.  I’d been mostly eating other people’s food, so I hadn’t put pot to flame for too long. How could I? We’d sold our house with its enormous kitchen. We’d given away our car, our furniture to our daughter. All we owned were a few boxes and two suitcases.

Those we used for this journey into Asia, marking our leap into a bright new phase. But I’d become weary of waking up in the dark, unable to place the room. Now standing on that sidewalk in Bangkok, filled with vendors, grilling sausages, salted fish and tiny chicken skewers, I was rudderless.

But I didn’t know this: if you are what you eat, I needed to own what I ate. I had to be part of my food’s flavor. Even greedier, I craved connection through preparation. To be at home in Bangkok, or wherever I was, both were required: participation in flavor building and connection.

I could feel it in my mouth. By watching my food’s ingredients come together in tandem with its creator, be it the Papaya or the Soup Lady, I connected with that street in Bangkok, or wherever I stood. By participating in my food’s seasoning, by making choices, however minor, it became mine, my papaya salad, my noodle soup, too. Using those principles, I could wake up home anywhere at all.

The papaya lady looked up. She was done, spooning my salad into a plastic bag, juice and all, allowing in extra air to buffer breakage, sealing it with a zillion quick twists of a red rubber band. We nodded at each other; no need to smile. Then the hub of street vendors settled around me. Each moved in a kind of choreography, differently in but sync, stirring, spooning, ladling something fragrant for someone, made to order.

I walked my salad home.