Hanoi Food Challenge #2 - Day Seven!

The final day of my Hanoi Food Challenge Number Two fell on a VERY rainy Sunday. Christine and I planned to ride our bikes around the lake to Daluva to try out the new menu there. The rain had died off for a while and it all looked promising as I set out, but by the time I got to our meeting point, it had started to rain again, and by the time Christine arrived a few minutes later it had increased enough that I was already considering other options. We decided to soldier on, but a few minutes down the road, it started to rain harder, and harder, and harder, until I just said nope. Not worth it. By the time we got there I would've been drenched and miserable, and I just didn't want to have lunch like that! I rode the few minutes back home, arriving here dripping wet and still hungry. 

After I dried off I attempted to order in, feeling horrendously bad about someone having to ride a motorbike through the rain to deliver to me, but the restaurant rejected my order because they didn't have one of the dishes I'd asked for. 

At this point, finally, the rain eased up again and I was still hungry with no prospect of food coming so I put my very soggy sandals back on and headed out to this Japanese Okonomiyaki place off Ngoc Ha that I've walked by several times and always wondered about. It's also on Nonna Chong's street food map of Hanoi, which you should definitely check out!

You may remember that I'm not much of a Japanese food connoisseur, so of course I had never had okonomiyaki before. In fact, I had no idea what this place would actually serve until earlier this week when a friend mentioned that she loves okonomiyaki, and explained to me what it was. Then I put two and two together and decided I had to try this!

This place is cute, with a little upstairs room that overlooks a small lake where they're building a temple.

There's more than okonomiyaki on the menu, with sushi and rice bowls also featuring! I had no idea what to order, but since I'd come for the pancake, I decided on the bánh xèo Osaka, since it seemed to be the classic one, and added on cheese from the list of toppings.

There's another side to this with all the sushi.

I'm not actually sure that I liked this. From one bite to the next I went back and forth between finding it delicious and disgusting. I think it was the chewy cheesy bits and the meat that I liked, but could've done without all the mayonnaise.

For 50,000 dong this is worth another try, or at least I'll go to the place and try something else. The menu had the word Aozora on it, and looked quite similar to the one at Sushi Aozora from my first Hanoi Food Challenge, so maybe it's part of the same company.

On my way home I had to stop for cake. Well, I didn't have to, but this Fresh Garden store just opened up the road from me. While I'm not a fan of Asian bakeries in general (there's a reason I make my own cakes!) and this is just a chain that's all over Hanoi, I've never actually been in a Fresh Garden store so I felt like it was my duty to try it.

 After I'd examined all the cakes I decided on this nice chocolatey, perhaps a bit Black Foresty looking one.

Then the girl told me that it was buy one, get one free. I really only wanted one, but I'm never one to say no to cake. So I got another, different one. Two pieces of cake for 25,000 dong. 

I ate the chocolate one, and it was ok but as I would have expected, it was a bit dry and the frosting was a bit plasticky tasting. A girl can only eat so much cake in a day, so the other one is still sitting in my fridge!

A couple of weeks ago I met a guy who lives very near me, down lane 173 off Hoang Hoa Tham. He asked me if I ever eat at Cutisun, the steak restaurant down the lane just across from that. I told him there was no restaurant down there, but he insisted. Well, he was right! I had no idea! I must have walked past this place hundreds of times, and never saw it. How is this possible?

I'd seen this sign before, up above the buildings, but for some reason had never figured out that it meant food! I think I never saw the restaurant because I most often walk past this lane going the other way, and mostly on the other side of the street, so it would've always been either at my back and/or across all the traffic.

 

Cutisun is super cute both inside and out!

Cute birdy placemat at Cutisun.

They had steaks on the menu for 65,000 dong, with either black pepper, bbq, or cheese sauce. There was also Shaking Beef, venison, and lamb! These all come with a few fries and a very small salad, and bread. The portions are not big, but for the price, what can you say?

Christine had the Shaking Beef and I couldn't resist trying the lamb. The waiter even asked us how we wanted it cooked! 

Shaking Beef (no sauce, just quite tasty, well-cooked beef!)

The salad had purple dressing on it, and we couldn't figure out what it was.

Lamb with BBQ sauce.

Lovely warm fresh bread.

Christine's was delicious. My lamb didn't taste much like lamb, but maybe that's because it was drowned in a very overpowering barbecue sauce. It was still tasty enough, after I scraped off most of the sauce. Next time I would ask for that on the side instead.

Because the portions were on the small side, we then had to have dessert!

Christine had the crème brûlée, which had the proper crunchy top, and she said was tasty but perhaps a bit more on the eggy side than the creamy side.

I had the mousse cake with chocolate syrup, which was almost more cheesecakey than moussey. Next time I'll try the passion fruit syrup instead.

Considering the price and that this is only a 5 minute walk from home, I'll definitely be back!

Cinnabon Cake



I LOVE cinnamon buns. In particular the ones from Cinnabon; huge, ooey, gooey messes of dough and cinnamony sugary goodness and loaded with cream cheese icing. You don't have to tell me how bad they are for me; believe me, I know. Chock full of carbs, butter, and sugar, and a whole meal in itself, a Cinnabon is a treat I rarely get, and feel immensely guilty when I do. But, because it's a rare event, when I get the chance I have one. This probably explains why I had one every single day that I was in Bangkok for a long weekend last fall, and even brought one back with me for breakfast!

So then you say, so why don't you just make them? Cinnamon buns aren't that hard, right? Well, no, probably not, and they have been on my list for quite some time, but they involve yeast, and kneading, and rising, and rolling, and finicky things like that, which combined with the general bad-for-me-ness have prevented me from doing it so far.

Until I saw this cake on Sweet as Sugar Cookies. There, Lisa basically describes how when she saw this cake all the other recipes she was planning to make flew out of her head. The same thing happened to me. I've had things in my head that I've wanted to make for months now, but this just took over. And part of the appeal was that it's so easy!

It begins with a regular old, run o' the mill vanilla cake batter. Then you whip together butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar and swirl it in. This is pretty tricky, because it doesn't "swirl" easily. I kind of just shoved it in and moved it around as best I could. I didn't quite get it as close to the edges as I should have!

Then you bake it, and top it with a basic glaze.

And you eat it while it's still warm!

Next time (and there WILL be a next time) I'll try making cream cheese icing to go on it. WAY easier than cinnamon buns, and just as good!



Cinnabon Cake

3 c. flour

1 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 1/2 Tbsp. baking powder

1 1/2 c. milk

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 c. butter, melted

1 c. butter, softened

1 c. brown sugar

2 Tbsp. flour

2 Tbsp. cinnamon

2 c. powdered sugar

1/4 c. milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

For the cake, preheat oven to 350F. Grease two 8" round cake pans, lining the bottom with parchment paper.

Blend the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, milk, eggs, vanilla, and 1/4 cup melted butter. Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans.

Beat the 1 cup butter with brown sugar, 2 Tbsp. flour, and cinnamon. Continue to beat until fully blended and fluffy (about 3 min.). Using a tablespoon, drop butter mixture onto cake batter. Use a knife to swirl right to the edges and cover with cake batter.

Bake cakes for about 25-30 min. Remove from oven and cool in pans 10 min. Turn cakes out onto serving plates.

For icing, whisk the powdered sugar with 1/4 cup milk (or more as needed for desired consistency) and vanilla. Drizzle over warmed cakes.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

It's pineapple season! That means that just about anywhere you go in Hanoi right now, you can buy a whole small pineapple for less than 50 cents US, and the seller will cut the stem, peel and eyes off for you in a cool diagonal pattern. And it's some of the sweetest pineapple you'll ever eat.

Sometimes I go to the market outside my house, and find so much fruit that looks so good, that I really go a bit overboard. On this particular day I had bought a kilo of mangoes, about 10 bananas, and two pineapples. I live alone, and that's far more fruit than I can eat before it will go bad! Solution? Well, usually, it's bananas that I end up with too much of, and they end up being banana bread, but this time I decided to go another way. Pineapple upside-down cake!

I found a basic recipe on allrecipes.com but of course, being me, couldn't do it just like it said, so I added a few extra spices! I started by making a syrup from brown sugar, melted butter, pineapple juice, the juice from some grated fresh ginger, and a tiny bit of ground cloves. I poured that into the bottom of a pan, and arranged some pieces of pineapple on top in a pretty pattern.

Then I made up the batter as the recipe said, but added about 1 tsp of cinnamon to it. I poured it on top of the pineapple and syrup, and baked it for 30 minutes like the recipe said. The syrup started to come up the sides of the cake and it smelled amazing!

After it had cooled for about 10 minutes I turned it upside-down onto a serving tray.

This cake was delicious. It's quite dense, despite the beaten egg whites that went into it, and the syrup on the bottom (er...the top?) soaks into the batter and makes it sticky and gooey. I would make it again. And again. And again. When I took it to work even Emma, who doesn't like pineapple, picked off the fruit and loved it!

Staff Class Cooking Day Part 1 - Western Food

Many of you know that I am an English teacher here in Vietnam. One thing my university has done occasionally is provide English classes for not only the students, but also the Vietnamese staff that work there. Most of them already speak very good English, but of course there is always room for improvement! 

I was assigned to teach one of these classes last September. It's difficult for the students to find the time to come, so there wasn't a huge turnout, but I ended up with a core group of 4-5 young women that showed up fairly regularly, and we began to have a lot of fun!

The class was held at the end of the day, so you can imagine that by the time it was over we were often feeling pretty tired and hungry. It was around that time that I started this blog, and one of my first posts was the Spooky Monster's Fingers that I made for Halloween. I took a few of these to class to share with the girls, and they were a big hit! This prompted a discussion about how much they would like to learn to bake delicious cakes and other western food, and about how much I would like to learn to cook Vietnamese food. Thus the idea was born: Staff Class Cooking Day!

After much discussion about the menu, ingredients, cooking equipment, and scheduling, delays due to holidays and family visits, plus one cancellation due to an ache in my tooth, we finally got to have our day! 

Tu, Xuan, and 3 Vans (from now on referred to as LSU Van, ELRC Van, and Van Comm) came over to my place at about 9am on a Saturday. I had already bought most of the things I needed for "my" dishes (the Western ones) but we still needed a lot of vegetables. Luckily there's a market RIGHT outside my door! I watched as they negotiated prices for various vegetables, bought more garlic than I would ever imagine we would use, and negotiated for tofu, chicken, beef, pork, and live shrimp. I never buy meat in the market. For some reason I'm much more comfortable buying it at a supermarket, but the girls were adamant that the quality of the meat in the market is much better!

 The first order of business was to make a Mango Mousse Cake. I'd never made such a thing before, but it was Xuan's birthday the day before, and this was the birthday cake she requested. I wouldn't normally teach people to make something I've never made before myself, but after perusing some recipes I came up with some ideas I could work with, and we decided to give it a try.

LSU Van beating eggs for the sponge cake base.

They were so excited, I couldn't even get in to supervise!





ELRC Van preparing mango to be pureed.

They learned the most important lesson of baking - always lick the beaters!

And they learned it from the master.

When the mango mousse cake was done, it went in the fridge for the rest of the day to set.

We spent most of the rest of the day whipping up some Vietnamese food....look for my next post for details about that!

The other Western style dish we made was lasagna. Again, it was Xuan's request, as she was the only one who'd ever had it before! It was a bit questionable at first as to whether I'd be able to find the ingredients (you can get things here, but you can't always count on being able to get what you want when you want it!) but at the last minute I was successful!



Cheesy lasagna!



Vietnamese people don't tend to eat a lot of cheese, so the amount of cheese that goes into my lasagna was a bit of a surprise to them! Especially to girls who have never seen a cheese grater before! ("Jenny, how do you do this without grating your fingers?")

Tu, Xuan, and LSU Van enjoying their first taste of lasagna!
Too bad we were SO full by this time we couldn't eat very much!

After the lasagna, it was finally time to take the cake out of the fridge. We all crossed our fingers that it would be set!

Birthday wishes

The moment of truth.
Is it set?

Yes! Perfect!

Stay tuned for Staff Class Cooking Day Part 2 - about the Vietnamese dishes we made!