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!

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! ;-)

Good Ol' Fake Meat - Ngoc Tho Restaurant (Saigon)

Ok... never heard of good fake meat until I got to Vietnam. Only of the usual suspects in any American hypermarket - fake burgers, fake chicken, fake hot-dogs - full of chemicals, flavorless, and spongy. Well, different story here, in Asia, even though I can't swear it's organic, but at least it has that tofu consistency, it's not mushy and has a taste to die for.

The quest for tasty fake meat in Saigon brought me quite quickly to Ngoc Tho, a little place on an alley off Pham Ngu Lao, in the backpackers' district. It doesn't look inviting, but the menu showcases an endless choice of awesome vegan options for very, very little money:

Vegetarian Fresh Spring Rolls - with a filling of crispy noodles and vegetables, that turned them into the best rolls we had in 10 months:

Fake chicken wings in satay sauce (my favorites by far, much better than the Original Buffalo Wings - shame on me!):

Crispy noodles with vegetables:

Fried rice with vegetables:

Vegetarian Banh Xeo - this version of this dish is much better than the traditional one, because it contains much more vegetables which are meant to make up for the lack of pork in the filling. And they do, believe me.

One more good thing about this kind of places is that they are amazingly inexpensive. Most prices are around 40,000 VND (roughly $2). For all the dishes above, 3 glasses of wine, many beers, and 2 sodas, we paid 450,000 VND ($23).

Ngoc Tho (Thiem Com Chay) - 175/9 Pham Ngu Lao St., District 1 - Ph: (08)38360162. Cash only.

My First Home-Made Spring Rolls (Gỏi Cuốn)

I went to the local market in Binh Thanh the other day and just couldn't help buying a stack of rice papers (50,000 VND per kilo).

Vietnamese spring rolls have been a long-time favorite and I was very curious to find out if I could cook that at home. I surfed the Internet for a traditional recipe, but it seemed to me there wasn't really one. There are so many versions and I bet all of them are good! So I just looked in the fridge and used whatever I found in there:

Chop the cauliflower and onion and stir fry them for two minutes. When these are almost done, add a few drops of fish sauce and some dried shrimp.

Then drain the oil and let everything cool down. Have the carrots and the pepper cut julienne and mixed with the other fried vegetables. This stuffing made of raw and cooked vegetables has a very interesting texture and is also really healthy.

The fun part is dealing with the rice wrappers. They are really fragile and have to be handled carefully, otherwise they may tear apart. Put some hot water in a pan and submerge each piece of rice paper for 10-15 seconds. The pan should be big enough to accommodate the rice paper. Dip only before making each roll and take it out when you see you can handle it easily.

Lay the wrapper on a flat surface. Begin with a small handful of lettuce or other green herbs you like in the bottom third of the piece of rice paper, then add two tablespoons of the stuffing on top, fold the sides in, then fold the bottom and roll it. Make sure you don't tug too tightly and place the roll seam side down. It looks like that:

We had them with lots of dipping soy sauce. Yes, I know we should have used Hoisin-chili sauce... but, hey! that was my first time! :)