Food Mood: Couscous, Berber Deli

There is nothing simpler than this food. Or tastier. Or versatile. Buy a pack of couscous - fine or medium grain, it doesn't really matter. Put 250 g in a large bowl.

Food Mood: Crepes with Cheese and Herbs

To me crepes are the most versatile kind of food. They are easy to make, easy to fill, easy to please your guests with. Or your husband. When you don't feel like having meat or something sweet, and all you have in the fridge is cheese and vegetables, you can try your hand at this dish.

Montreuil - Marché Croix de Chavaux

 
Yeahhh! One of my favorite places in Paris. The market in Montreuil: Croix de Chavaux. One of the most colorful, positive, cheap, crazy, awesome places ever. Enjoy! (or Yalla!)

Food Mood: Crème Brûlée

       

Crème Brûlée is a custard-based dessert with a caramel topping. The base is usually vanilla-flavored, but it can also be fruity. This 400-year dessert is also known as burnt cream (referring to its caramelized finish), crema catalana (after its Catalan counterpart), or crème caramel. 

Food Mood: Cheese Fondue

  
Melted cheese dip - a great way to bring friends and family together around the same pot. A wonderful reason for a communal table with lots of red wine and golden toast. Yumminess.

Food Mood: French Onion Soup

Onion soup is a staple of the French cuisine. It is comfort food, very filling and tasty, packed with carbs and fat, but who cares? Just have a look at what it looks like and you'll see what I mean. 

Vietnam Saga: Street Food, Rewarding Experience

To me and to many people I met in South-East Asia, Vietnamese cuisine is the best. It is, really. Not only is it super tasty, but also varied and spectacular. They cook almost everything on Earth and everything in their hands becomes delicious. Probably even rats, but I was not that curious.

  

Nha Trang Beach, Vietnam - Ladies selling grilled seafood.

Grandma's Goodie Recipe: Corn "Pie" with Yoghurt and Dill

Now, my grandma always said about this salty dish it's a cookie, or a pie, I never understood why, but maybe you will discover and let me know :) As far as I am concerned, it's so good that you can definitely think of it as a real pie :)

So here we go, you'll need:

• 500 ml of sour milk or light yoghurt
• 2 eggs
• 200 ml water
• 2 tablespoons of corn flour
• 1 onion
• dill according with your taste (a lot, in my case)
• oil, salt, pepper to taste

Health Nut #3 - Salad with Yoghurt Dressing

Very tasty, very simple and very quick! Plus, it gives you a fresh start for a Saturday morning. So you don't have any reason not to try it.

You need:

• one lettuce
• 2-3 tomatoes (you can also use cherry tomatoes if available)
• 2 tablespoons of yoghurt
• one garlic clove very finely chopped
• fresh dill
• salt
• pepper
• basil
• mint

Mix the yoghurt with salt, pepper, garlic, chopped dill, basil and mint. Tear the lettuce and cut the tomatoes into wedges, then mix itthem with the yoghurt dressing (this way the dressing will be spread equally). You can garnish it with fresh basil leaves or mint and serve it with small cubes of (feta) cheese.

To make it even healthier, add a few drops of extra virgin olive or flax oil.

Enjoy it! And have a great weekend!

Health Nut #2 - Greek Salad

 

Horiatiki salata is a perfect lunch treat in the summer. And it is indeed a summer dish in Greek cuisine. Not to mention it is a health booster and a staple in any kind of diet if you adjust accordingly the quantity of dressing. 

Ingredients (for 2 large helpings):

• 1 small lettuce (this is not in the original recipe, but I like it)
• 1 cucumber
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 medium-sized onion
• 150 gr feta cheese
• 20 pitted black olives
• 4 tablespoons dressing made of extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and lime juice
• freshly ground black pepper and extra for garnish
• (on the side) 2 slices of crusty bread or toast sprinkled with more olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic (minced)

Health benefits:

1. The extra virgin olive oil is high in monounsaturated fats and Omega-3. 

2. The vegetables are the best source of phytoestrogen, antioxidants, such as vitamin C, as well as lycopene (in tomatoes). Therefore, Greek salad translates into an excellent dish in anti-cancer diets or to prevent and fight cardiovascular diseases.

Light Avocado and Sesame Salad: Pure Energy for All Day

Hi, this is Dana writing on my first actual post on Nomadosophy, so please be gentle and bear with one rookie's mistakes :)

So this morning I thought that it would be a good start if we ate something raw, healthy, nourishing and absolutely delicious! I will share with you a 10-minute recipe which I hope you will try as well.

 All you need is: 

• avocado
• tomatoes
• sesame seeds
• lime
• salt
• pepper
• a bit of chilli (if you like it hot)

                                                 

Chop the avocado and tomatoes in small square pieces, squeeze the limes, mix all content with salt, pepper sesame seeds and chilli and that's it!

I guarantee you that the fresh flavor of lime will fill you up with energy and good vibes for the rest of the day! ;-)

Hearty Turkey and Potato Stew

Note: Potato stew with meat is a very common dish in Romania which is often associated with traditional food and, sometimes, well... poverty during Ceausescu's communist regime, as potatoes were something that all families had on their tables. However, I think we can say we are now experiencing a revival of this traditional dish which reminds us of the flavors of our childhood. 

Ingredients:

•  2 spoons of vegetable cooking oil
• a large onion, peeled
• 500 gr of turkey (I used some turkey hearts which I cut in 4, but you can use any kind of meat you crave)
• 5 or 6 large potatoes
• 4 medium tomatoes
• several garlic cloves (to taste; I have to admit I am obsessed by garlic, so my dishes contain it in excess) (I am already drooling, again!)
• salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste
• parsley and one laurel leaf

How it's made:

Place meat in a large bowl. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper; toss to coat. Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil over medium-high heat in a large soup pot. Add the meat and the onion and brown meat on all sides, adding a cup of boiled water when the meat juice is gone. Cook like this for 10-15 minutes.

When the meat is half-cooked and the water is reduced, add the onion to pot and sauté until almost softened, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. When the onion is sauteed, add the potatoes (cut in small to medium pieces). Then cover all this with boiling water and add the laurel leaf. Reduce heat to medium and add half of the garlic as well.

Meanwhile, sink the tomatoes in hot water for one minute, then peel them and chop them (or grate them, in case you forgot to sharpen your knives!). When the potatoes are almost completely cooked (and you know how to do that: you check with a fork how soft they are!), add the tomatoes and simmer for 10 more minutes. 

At the end, stir in chopped parsley, adjust chili powder, add the remaining garlic and serve. If you want to impress your guest with how you food looks and tastes like, you can add the parsley when you serve the food. This stew goes very well with polenta, pickles, and onion salad. Enjoy!

----------------------------------------------------

This is the first post in a series dedicated to Romanian food or to dishes that Romanians usually prepare in their homes for holidays or on any other day. The recipe below was made by my best buddy, Dana, who is a young, talented professional and a rugged cook. She loves Romanian food and cooks very often, even if she doesn't quite have time for that. Not to mention that she doesn't have time to write down the recipes and take pictures of her food. But she writes on this blog because she is very passionate about cooking and, well, she cares about me very much. :)

Que Nha Restaurant (Saigon)

Egg rice

My penchant for egg rice is definite, but good egg rice can be hard to find, even if it is common food. But when it is accompanied by grilled squid with chili

 

mango salad with dried shrimp in fish sauce

 

grilled mudfish in bamboo leaves

and fried tofu in egg batter

it makes PERFECT dinner. At a Vietnamese restaurant called Que Nha, located in a very busy intersection in district 3, north of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai:

Que Nha - 01 Cong Truong Quoc Te, P6, Q3, Saigon; Tel: (08)62907061/62/63 www.amthucquenha.com. All major credit cards accepted.

How to Dye Easter Eggs in Asia

Easter Eggs dyed by my mother in Romania.

Christmas in Vietnam is a big event for everybody, but Easter, even if we live on an alley mainly populated by Catholics, has passed mostly unnoticed. Except for the church choir that we could hear more often during Passion Week, there was no egg painting, no egg hunt, no nothing. As we celebrated Orthodox Easter one week later than the Catholics, I had enough time to convince myself that we would not have any gorgeous dyed eggs on our table. 

And this is how I found out coloring the eggs with natural, organic dye. Yay! So I tried my hand at that using turmeric (for yellow eggs) and red onion peels (for brown):

Ingredients:

turmeric (2 tablespoons) boiled in 500 ml water

red onion peels (from 3 large onions) boiled in 500 ml water

1 teaspoon of vinegar for each color

6 white eggs

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

 Instructions:

Boil the turmeric and the onion skins in two separate dishes. Before bringing the water to a boiling, add 1 teaspoon of vinegar and stir well. Then submerge the eggs in the water and let them boil for 9 minutes. After you remove them from the stove, check on the color of the eggs periodically and leave them in the solution until you get the color you want. I kept mine in glass jars for 5 hours, until they turned orange and medium-brown, to match the color range of my dinner setting.

Pretty simple! Once the eggs have dried, rub vegetable oil to bring a shine to them.

You can also boil the eggs separately and then put them in the coloring solution - the colors will be lighter. Here is what you can use in order to get naturally dyed Easter eggs:

Turmeric / Saffron - yellow

Onion peels / coffee - brown

Beets - red

Blueberries - blue

Green tea - green 

Red cabbage - purple

Not so simple when you want to cook traditional Romanian Easter dishes, so I had to improvise and decided on:

stuffed eggs

humus

toast with mozzarella

fried fish with garlic paste

oriental salad
Vietnamese sweet bread with coconut

 

Back at home, my family cooked "the real stuff":

Boeuf salad (decorated accordingly as only my Mom can)

Drob (minced lamb or chicken with eggs and shallots)

cozonac (sweet bread)

and Pasca (sweet bread stuffed with cheese and raisins)

Hristos a inviat! (Christ is risen!)

Banh Xeo - Vietnamese Sizzling Crepes

Banh Xeo literally means sizzling crepes. They are savory and very thin crepes made of rice flour, turmeric powder, and coconut milk, and filled with pork, shrimp and veggies (such as bean sprouts or mung beans). The thinner and crispier they are, the better.

How to Prepare the Batter

• 2 cups of rice flour mixed with half a teaspoon of turmeric
• 1 1/2  cups of water
• 3/4 cup of coconut milk
• 1/2 cup of chopped scallions
• 1/2 ts salt

What to Put in the Filling:

• 1 /4 lb pork (thin slices)
• black pepper
• 1/2 ts salt
• 1/2 ts sugar
• 1/2 ts fish sauce
• 1/4 lb of shrimp
• 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 2 cups of bean sprouts

It Goes with: lettuce, mustard greens, mints, basil, perilla, fish sauce, pickled carrots and radish. To eat, just wrap it with a lettuce leaf and herbs.

How to Do It:

1. Whisk together the rice flour, turmeric powder and salt. Add water and coconut milk and whisk until mixture is as smooth and fluid as yoghurt.  Set batter to rest for 30 minutes.
2. Heat up a 10-inch non-stick pan/skillet/light wok over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil and then add one portion of pork, shrimp, onions, scallions, and mushrooms. Stir fry until pork and shrimp are half done, and ladle 1/2 cup of batter into pan. Swirl pan to coat bottom evenly. Add bean sprouts over half the crepe (on the right). Drizzle another 1 tablespoon of lard/oil around outer edge of crepe and lower heat to medium.
3. Cover pan and cook for 1 minute. Remove cover and continue to cook until edges begin to brown. Loosen crepe from bottom of pan with a soft spatula. When bottom turns light brown and crispy, fold crepe over bean sprouts.

How to Eat It: Wrap pieces of banx xeo in a  lettuce leaf , together with leaves of mint, basil, or any other Vietnamese herb, dip it in fish sauce, and gulp!

Bourdain's Lunch Lady: Sunday Treat

Sunday morning hangover in Saigon. Minor, though. But major crave for Bourdain's Lunch Lady's soup. This modest taverna, which is even marked on Google Maps, is tucked away on a quiet alley on the border between district 1 and Binh Thanh, under a fabulous tree, probably a chestnut. Small shabby plastic table and chairs, roosters crowing their way among them, steamed bottles of Red Saigon for half a buck, and this wonderfully smiling lady who serves amazing pho. Woooohooo!

But is she really THE Lunch Lady? I don't think it's her. I saw this other lady fidgeting around the food cart. Well, it seems the Lunch Lady (Nguyen Thi Thanh by her real name) got herself an assistant. No problem at all - the pho was fabulous: flavored broth, thin pieces of pork, shrimp, chives, quail eggs, liver, bean sprouts, and two kinds of noodles. 15,000 VND per bowl.

The Lunch Lady's sister has a smaller food cart right next to her and sells equally famous (so I've heard) traditional fresh spring rolls, stuffed with pork and shrimp. Other street peddlers toss around the lunch place, trying to talk the patrons into buying desserts, steamed corn on the cob, sunglasses, or combs.

We caught a glimpse of the celeb noodle lady and tasted one of her dishes, but can't say been there, done that. We plan much more visits to her stall - at least to figure out what her current menu is, if not to stuff our faces with one of the most gorgeous soups we've ever had.

Lunch Lady's Noodle Cart - 23 Hoang Sa, District 1, every day from 11:30 to 13:30.

Che Ba Mau (3 Bean Dessert)

I manage to order a glass of Che Ba Mau only recently, after almost 4 weeks in Vietnam. I don't know why, but the mushy/spongy looking drink didn't appeal to me at all. I knew it was a traditional Vietnamese 3-bean dessert drink, yet I refused to try it. The kind they serve at Quan An Ngon really made me crave one and I was not sorry at all.

Che Ba Mau (or the Rainbow Drink) is typically made of three types of beans - mung, azuki, and tapioca, coconut milk, jelly, and sugar. It is served with crushed ice and costs around 22,000 VND at any restaurant or 5,000 VND at the market. It is a fabulous drink, but probably not all the vendors have the right recipe. It happened to me to buy some tasteless che from the market - I really suspect it was made with soy instead of coconut milk.

Che Ba Mau Recipe (from www.asiarecipe.com)

3/4 cup skinless split mung beans, soaked for 3 hours and drained, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup red azuki beans, soaked for 4 hours and drained, 1-1/2 cups coconut milk, 1/4 cup tapioca pearls, 1 can longan, drained.

Directions:

1. Bring 2 cups water to a simmer in a pot over medium heat. Add the mung beans and 1/4 cup sugar. Cook, stirring constantly, until the water is completely absorbed, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Refrigerate until ready to use.

2. Bring 2 cups of water just to a boil in a pot over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low, add the azuki beans and 1/4 cup sugar. Cover and simmer until the beans are cooked through, about 3 hours. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Refrigerate until ready to use.

3. Meanwhile, bring the coconut milk and 1-1/2 cups water to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, add the remaining sugar and tapioca pearls, and simmer until the tapioca pearls have become completely transparent. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Refrigerate until ready to use.

4. In an ice cream soda glass, working in layers, place 2 tablespoons shaved ice in between 3 tablespoons each of everything else starting with shaved ice, coconut tapioca, shaved ice (again), azuki beans, shaved ice (again), coconut tapioca (again), and a few longans and jelly bites on top. Use ice cream spoons to eat and a straw to sip.

My (Phở)-rst Morning in Saigon

I literally could not open my eyes this morning. It's our first morning in Saigon. We are so damn tired after an almost 24-hour journey from Romania to Turkey and then Vietnam. But it is so all worth it!

My first full day in Saigon started brilliantly. Chris went downstairs to bring me some coffee and came back with a huge tray with phở (yeah!), omelet, fluffy baguette, bananas, and coffee. Phở is mind blowing: so many flavors - garlic, ginger, lemongrass, cilantro, shallots; I think this is going to be my addiction here.

If this means breakfast, I am very curious what dinner is all about. Only 10 hours to go :D.

[caption id="attachment_1227" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="My craving for the past 6 months."][/caption]



[caption id="attachment_1229" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="View from our room - De Tham St."][/caption]