Highlights from SE Asia, or, Mostly Pork

Sorry for the delay, but moving into college yet again is quite time consuming. Although it's pretty nice to come back to a roomate heavily armed with fridge magnets for our daunting grocery lists and magazine clippings of impending bacon excursions. I already have a few blog posts lined up from the city.

But this must come first: a round up of the best of my food adventures from SE Asia. And for lack of imagination, in chronological order.

THIS was the first thing I ate upon arriving in Asia:GOOSE. With BBQ Pork hidden underneath there. I actually flew into Hong Kong, and a friend of mine from school took me to Yung Kee Restaurant in Central, which is apparently one of the most authentic and oldest dim sum restaurants in the city. It tasted a lot like Peking Duck, but was inexplicably better. The key is the crispy skin. MMMmmm.

Novelty is the tastiest; this was my first meal in Thailand: Josie and I stumbled upon a small place our first morning, and we lucked out. The lone woman working at the cafe couldnt cook both of our orders at once, so she cooked mine first, served me, and then went back to cook Josie's dish. True home cooking. This is fried rice with pineapple, pork, baby corn, onion, and bell peppers. A simple dish that tasted infinitely more authentic and delicious in its native environment.

The Sunday market in Chiang Mai had a wealth of amazing street food. My friend Liz got this roast pig's feet served over rice with a vinegar dressing poured on top-- The meat was so juicy and melted in your mouth. I got some fried quail eggs, miniature eggs cooked in this big circular pan with a dozen half circle inlets. They're served with pepper and soy sauce. Soy sauce is actually really good with eggs. Try it at home with regular eggs and eat with toast slathered with coconut jam. This is how they serve it at Street in LA.

There were so many choices at Quan An Ngon in Saigon that Josie and I had to go there twice. It's an established restaurant but all of the owner's favorite street vendors line rim of the seating area, preparing their one signature dish. My single favorite dish from here was the Nom Quan Ngon, or pork salad with cucumber and bean sprouts, with rice cakes and two different sauces (a fish/vinegar sauce and a chili sauce):

But the real street food was even better in Saigon. We ate at the market near our hotel every morning and other various markets elsewhere for most of our other meals, choosing our eats mainly by seeing something that looked appealing and then pointing. One staple, however, was Cafe Su Da--iced coffee with milk. Or in other words really fucking strong espresso with sinfully sweet condensed milk. It was the only way to survive in the heat.

After only eating soups, curries, and rice in Thailand and Cambodia (the equivalent of Thai food but less spicy; left out of this section because nothing honestly made the cut and paled in comparison to the Vietnamese food we had), Josie and I were seriously jonesing for bread. Good thing Vietnam has a history of French rule and awesome baguettes to match. The result? Banh Mi sandwiches...we had one every day were were in Vietnam. They. were. so. good. Perfectly crisp/soft combination baguette with pate, various cuts of pork, picked vegetables, cucumber, chilies, soy sauce, chili sauce, and most importantly cilantro used to the extent of lettuce. Genius combination. Luckily these are pretty trendy in NYC so I can get my Banh Mi fix (and of course post them here).

Another market favorite was Banh Xeo, a crispy egg pancake with minced pork and shrimp inside. A balanced breakfast!

And, to top it off, the perfect bowl of pho, eaten at an impromptu streetside cafe while watching thousands of motorbikes fly by. So many things in Vietnam are served with a huge basket of fresh herbs--basil, coriander, lemongrass to flavor the broths, different kinds of lettuce to wrap the spring rolls in, etc. It's the most genius concept ever and just reinforces how farm fresh (mostly) everything at the markets were. How is it that I got to eat the most delicious bowl of noodle soup with unlimited fresh herbs for the equivalent of a US dollar?

That's all for now.

Can't wait to get into it here in NYC. The food adventures have only just begun.

Love,

Nosher