Viet Food - Part 1

Food is one of my passions and as you must have expected, I will have a lot to talk about the food there! * LOL * Scenery later k? * :P *

Vietnamese food culture is very similar to the Chinese, actually. They too eat with chopsticks and do not have very spicy food. I enjoy Vietnamese food a lot as I find them refreshingly healthy and delicious. Everything is prepared using the freshest ingredients and minimal oil. It is almost rarely seeing any oily dishes there, even those fried food has minimal oil residue - I am wholly impressed! No wonder there are almost nil fat people there!

I saw this interesting scene at one of the local Hypermarkets in Hanoi - those like Carrefour and Giant type. Their cooked food section actually sells roast pigs by the whole! In a hypermarket leh! Its actually piglets... Sorry, mates, they actually do looked tremendously delicious! A culture shock for me... Really can go to a hypermart and say "Bang, babi satu ekor bungkus!" * :P *

Another "food shock" I had was how Vietnamese have their sausages. Instead of cooking it, or even refrigerate them, they eat it at room temperature! These are packages which contains individually wrapped sausages where you conveniently do not need to refrigerate, just tote them into your handbag and eat anytime, anywhere! Em, tasted the same to me, but they have interesting flavors like beef and shrimp.

Besides in packages, they come in canned tins as well! O-M-G... I feel a lil geli la... Hot Dogs in a can... I think I'll pass...

The famous Viet food - the beef noodle (pho - pronounced as fur). I like it a lot! Unlike the ones I tasted in Viet restaurants in Msia, it is actualy very different. The soup is very clear, without even one drop of oil and despite the clarity, is heavily spiced and stewed. They also pinch in a touch of lime juice into the soup which gave a refreshing, lightly sour taste which I simply love! And the noodles are not kuey teow - some knind of rice noodles which are "kental"...

Seafood Fried Noodles - The noodles suspiciously tasted like those of WanTanMee. Another fried item which contains very minimal traces of oil though got enough "wok hei" - sedap!

Fried Rice - the rice is very fragrant, but a lil hard from being overfried...

Steamed Crabs! Not very fresh - the ones we got... Malaysian seafood better...

Fruits! As I love fruits, how I miss them? * hehehe * These are some of the fruits there which I think is wirth mentioning...

GREEN LYCHEES!!! OMG! Never in my life I've set my eyes upon lychees which are green in colour! At first glance, we thought that those were unripe lychees but from our "testing", we discovered that they are actually sweet with a tinge of sour - I love it alot! A fellow travel mate keeps saying that the lychees are sour, which the rest of us find sweet. Upon interrogation, we found out that he only picked the redder ones, as he carried the perception that the red ones must be more ripe hence sweeter and it turns out he is so wrong! The greener ones are the sweeter ones! * LOL * So if you happen to come across these, choose the green-green ones!

Plums - very small plums that are very sour and lightly bitter. We were told that young Viets like these a lot - its actually the fresh version of our "suien mui" and apparently an aid in digestion and weight lost.

Ciku! Their ciku fruit is huge compared to ours! I have always disliked ciku as I think they have a funny taste, but Viet cikus are surprisingly very sweet and rather pleasant to my taste buds...

Another famous local food called bun (pronounced as boon). Its rice vermicilli eaten in a special soup which is sweet and sour and surprisingly clear - very "hoi wai" kinda food. And this is one soup noodle eaten cold, like the Jap soba. Accompanying the vermicilli is usually the grilled meat slices or grilled meat patti. Very sedap leh!! Even the grilled meat is very good!

Crab meat soup with vege and fried fatty pork. The small bowl contains fresh figs - which I cannot tolerate.

Some sort of rice kueh - with some sort of meat sausage in it. Rather plain taste. The meat sausage is rather versatile food - i see it in many different food, especially breakfast food.

Memang banyak lagi food to share with you all... Till the next part!