Week 34 - ăn sáng - Vietnam

BANH CUON

Breakfast in Vietnam is decidedly savoury and usually centres on some form of rice.  If you've had Vietnamese cuisine, many foods eaten for breakfast will be familiar - Pho (meat-based clear soup with noodles and herbs), Banh Mi (a sandwich on French-style Baguette featuring eggs, meat, or pate and fresh herbs and vegetables), and Balut (an almost ready-to-hatch duck egg).  Ok maybe this one doesn't make it to many North American tables but I guarantee that unless you've visited Vietnam or have Vietnamese ancestory you've probably never heard of today's breakfast - Banh Cuon.

Banh Cuon is a very light rice flour crepe that has been stuffed with ground pork, minced shallots and minced wood ear mushrooms.  It is served with sides of fresh cucumber, bean sprouts, Cha Lua (Vietnamese pork sausage) and the dipping sauce Nuoc Cham.

It's Northern Vietnamese in origin and today is enjoyed throughout the country for breakfast and as a late night snack.  (Isn't funny how often breakfast foods double as late night snacks?)

I was hesitant to make this one at home.  The ingredients seemed difficult to find and the crepes are typically made on a special pan that is fitted with a metal hoop that stretches a layer of cloth over the pan.  (Not something I was likely to find at my local Home Outfitters.)  But there were several really great tutorials on-line and in the end I decided to take the plunge.

Finding the ingredients was the first challenge.  I was confidant that my local T & T Asian Supermarket would have everything I needed, however figuring out where they were in the store and identifying them among the hundreds of non-English labelled products was another matter.  Rice flour....check, tapioca starch....check, Nuoc Cham.....check, wood ear mushrooms.... negative.  Where the heck would we find wood ear mushrooms.  They weren't in the fresh produce section and similarly were nowhere to be found among the dried mushrooms.  With some help from my smartphone, I finally found them in a mysterious package labelled - Black Fungus.  Delicious....

I was ready for an equally difficult time with the rice crepes, but following the recipe had little trouble. (Hurray for well-written recipes!)  The filling had a horrendous fishy/pork smell as it was cooking and I started to regret putting Jon through this experiment in Vietnamese street food.  But he's always such a great sport so we plated it up and dug in....

And I am happy to report that it was really good!  I've read that Vietnamese cuisine is based on the yin and yang of the five elements and it turns out this is the beauty of Banh Cuon.  The salty, earthy meat filling (which smelt so off-putting) was balanced by the fresh crunch of the veggies and sweet/sour Nuoc Cham.  There was also a myriad of textures and aromas - soft and silky, hard and crunchy, warm and crumbly.

Correspondence	Elements[5]
	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Spices (ngũ vị)	Sour	Bitter	Sweet	Spicy	Salty
Organs (ngũ tạng)	Gall bladder	Small intestine	Stomach	Large intestine	Urinary bladder
Colors (ngũ sắc)	Green	Red	Yellow	Black	White
Senses (năm giác quan)	Visual	Taste	Touch	Smell	Sound
Nutrients (ngũ chất)	Powder	Fat	Protein	Minerals	Water

The Table of Elements in Vietnamese Cuisine - Wikipedia

The Verdict:

For Ease of Preparation:

I have a confession - we made this for supper.  And as a dinner, this was a fun endeavour. But it's definitely way too involved for breakfast.

For Degree of Separation:

Black fungus, fish sauce and ground pork, need I say more?


For Guestability:

For Sustainability:

For Costability:

I expected this one to be expensive, but T & T is one cheap supermarket.

For Overall Appeal:

I can see why Banh Cuon is not more well-known outside of Vietnam.  It's not an easy entry food to Vietnamese cuisine.  However if you are looking for something that captures an authentic morning at a street stall in Hanoi, I encourage you to give it a shot.  Putting together the recipe was my favourite kind of tactile kitchen experiment.

Well cherry blossoms and magnolias have finally blossomed here in Toronto, a sure sign that my entry on Passover breakfast is way overdue!  Check in next time to see us try Matzah Brei...

Youtube Breakfasts

While searching out new breakfasts I often come across great videos on Youtube, some of which I've already shared (Burek, Jumbo Breakfast Roll).  My favourite are videos on location because they really capture the authentic flavour and mood of the meal.  In fact, this entire blog was inspired after watching a video about a Pakistani breakfast called Halwa Puri.  Please enjoy it and others I've come across:

Halwa Puri:

I find everything about this video so fascinating.  What does this breakfast taste like?  Is it sweet, salty, spicy?  I have no idea.  And how do you eat it out of those plastic bags?  (Not to mention the mystery of how they get everything in them without making a mess!)  We've yet to try Halwa Puri, mainly because it seems like good breakfast excursion and I've yet to figure out where to buy it in Toronto. (Although I don't doubt that it's out there somewhere...)

Knefe:

You may remember Knefe from the Lebanese breakfast entry.  The first time I saw this video I immediately texted Jon to tell him that I wanted to add this machine to our kitchen...

Kaya Toast:

Kaya Toast is virtually unheard of food here in Canada, but this commercial gives a real window into it's popularity in Asia.  It almost rivals Tim Horton's with it's sappy sentiments.

Depression Breakfast:

This great-grandmother is 93 and has her own vlog about cooking on Youtube!  Incredible.  Even more incredible, she says they ate cookies for breakfast during the Depression years...

Plov:

The national dish of Uzbekistan, Plov or O'sh is eaten all times of day.  But in this video it looks like they're enjoying it in the traditional feast held the morning before a wedding.  O'sh is serious business and the men of the family pride themselves in their O'sh making skills the same way a North American man might pride himself on his BBQ-ing.  You'll notice that only men are invited to this particular occasion.  Exclusive perhaps, but these feasts have been known to feed as many as 1000 men at a time - that's a lot of rice!

Pastechi:

Okay, this video loses me around Dr. Horatio Kilpatient's appearance, but I do like getting to see a bit of Aruba and the food cart scene.

Sesame Street:

What does Cookie Monster eat for breakfast?  Watch to find out.....

Week 32 - 早餐 - China

CONGEE with YOUTIAO

Congee is a food I've been familiar with for a long time.  There are tons of restaurants across the Toronto area named after this dish and I've seen many a co-worker devour a bowlful for lunch.  But I've got to admit, up until now I've never had any inclination to give it a try.

Besides the foreignness of eating limp rice in the morning, consider its appearance.  As a mass of congealed off-white gruel, congee sure isn't winning any beauty pageants.  Creative sprigs of green from assorted toppings do help, until the spoon goes in and finds the often offensive mystery meat!

So imagine my surprise when despite my trepidation, I discover Congee to be.... amazingly delicious.  Comforting even.

Of course, it helps that this particular Congee was made by me with very little in terms of scary ingredients.  And actually, there are very few ingredients at all that go into Congee - something I'm learning is a plus when cooking a tasty breakfast.

Besides being the breakfast of choice for China, variations on Congee are popular all across Asia.  The recipes vary quite a lot but they all centre around rice that has been cooked to the point of disintegration in many times it's volume in water (8:1 is a common ratio).  Congee doubles as a nutritious meal and a great way to use up left-overs.  It is also commonly seen as an excellent pablum for babies and tonic for the sick.

Congee in China is most often served with Youtiao (seen above).  Here's what Wikipedia had to say about this salty doughnut-like pastry:

The Cantonese name yàuhjagwái literally means "oil-fried devil" and, according to folklore, is an act of protest against Song Dynasty official Qin Hui, who is said to have orchestrated the plot to frame the general Yue Fei, an icon of patriotism in Chinese culture. It is said that the food, originally in the shape of two human-shaped pieces of dough but later evolved into two pieces joined in the middle, represents Qin Hui and his wife, both having a hand in collaborating with the enemy to bring about the great general's demise. Thus the youtiao is deep fried and eaten as if done to the traitorous couple. In keeping with the legend, youtiao are often made as two foot-long rolls of dough joined along the middle, with one roll representing the husband and the other the wife.

Saucy!

I had every ambition of making these at home but a little research showed that these are a bread best left to the pros.  (If you're in Toronto stop by King's Noodle where you can buy Youtiao to go).

The Congee variation I made featured a healthy dose of ginger and chicken.  The texture was smooth and far from being exotic, the flavour was rich and familiar.  It had all the goodness of home-made Chicken Soup with the soothing "stick to your ribs" heartiness of Oatmeal.  I liked it so much that I ate it for a good five days afterwards.

The Verdict:

For Ease of Preparation:

At it's easiest, Congee is as simple as boiling together water and rice.  With just a little additional effort it can become worth getting up for.

For Degree of Separation:

For Guestability:

For Sustainability:

For Costability:

Traditionally Congee has also been used to feed many people with little food.

For Overall Appeal:

Congee caught me by surprise and I am delighted.  I guess I should've known that several billion people couldn't be that wrong....

For next week, I leave you with a riddle.  What food is both a vegetable, starch and sandwich casing all at once?

Week 24 - 설날 - South Korea

TTEOKGUK

Happy Lunar New Year!

Today I'd like to write a bit about the Korean holiday of Seollal (the Korean Lunar New Year).  Like most of Asia, Korea celebrates not only the Solar New Year on January 1st but also (and with bigger celebrations) the Lunar New Year.  This year the Lunar New Year fell on February 10th, and since celebrations last for three days, that right near the end of the celebrations today.

Activities during Seollal are much like most holidays in the world - families get together, gifts are given, food is eaten and games are played.  What we're concerned with of course is the food.

On the first day of Seollal it is traditional for Koreans to dress in their Hanbok (traditional Korean attire, see picture of me to the right) and pay respect to their ancestors by bowing and presenting ritual foods.  After this they eat the traditional breakfast of Seollal, Tteokguk (rice cake soup).  Eating this soup is very important to the New Year proceedings as eating a bowl on New Year's morning is believed to add a year to your age.  It is so integral that a common New Year's greeting is, "How many servings of Tteokguk have you had?" (Having more than one bowl is actually common.)

Tteokguk was never a favourite of mine, probably because I couldn't wrap my head around the Korean Rice Cake.  Far different from the Western incarnation of a Rice Cake, Korean Tteok is actually made by pounding cooked rice into oblivion and then reforming it into solid shapes (kind of like an Asian pasta).  It's used for sweet and savoury dishes and is a common ingredient in Korean cuisine.  As for flavour, there really is none, it was the texture that got me.  I'm a big texture girl and Tteok is rubbery, gummy, and slippery all rolled into one.  Not my thing.

But lucky for my breakfast blog, Jon loves Tteokguk!  In fact, whenever we go for non-BBQ Korean food he orders Tteokmanduguk, which is just Tteokguk with Mandus (pork dumplings) thrown in for fun.

Tteokguk is made from a beef broth, boiled with tteok and features seaweed and egg as toppings.  For our feature on it we decided to go out (since I was not interested in having gallons of Tteokguk left-over...) to a classic kind of Korean establishment.  In Korea, you pick your restaurant by what you want to eat that night.  You want BBQ Beef, you go to the BBQ Beef restaurant, Pork, the Pork restaurant etc.  However in every town (and I mean probably every), there will be a cozy place that serves an assortment of cheap and cheerful Korean food.  Most dishes will be under 5000 won (or $5) and might include Kimbap (think Korean sushi), Ramen, Mandu, and an assortment of Guk (soup).  Our favourite haunt like this in Toronto is called Thumbs Ups and is pretty authentic, down to the dishware and the cute frilly aprons on the teenage boys serving.

I'm going to break my rules here and forgo the Verdict, because well, I didn't eat any soup. Oh no!  I didn't gain a year.  Ha ha!  Now Jon and I may finally be the same age.....

Instead please enjoy some pictures taken from our time in Korea around the holiday of Seollal (we visited the Korean Folk Village):

The following pictures were taken in Busan a couple of weeks into the New Year. The bonfire is celebrating Daeboreum, or the first full moon of the New Year.  When we waited in line to watch this we had no idea what we were in for.  The bonfire was extremely intense with ash and cinders flying all over the place.  The whole ceremony took several hours and included speeches from dignitaries, singing, some very beautiful traditional dancing, and much prayer and excitement when the Full Moon finally rose...

Thanks for indulging me in a little trip back to our wonderful time in Korea.

Next time, we'll see what's happening for breakfast in Italy!

Week 17 - 朝食 - Japan

GOHAN with TAMAGOYAKI, MISO, UMEBOSHI, SHIOZAKE and NORI

Breakfast in Japan has been near the top of my to-do list for a long time.  But I have to admit I procrastinated.  I felt intimidated by Japan's simple and elegant cuisine.  After tackling it, I'm happy to say that with the right ingredients it wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd imagined.

Hospitality in Japan is legendary, and when staying at a traditional Japanese Ryokan (Inn), breakfast makes up a large part of that hospitality.  Breakfast is served to guests at a specific time (of the guests choosing) in their rooms and always includes a multitude of dishes served in elegant dishware.  Unfortunately, Jon and I didn't stay at a Ryokan while we were in Japan, but that didn't stop us from trying to recreate this breakfast experience at home.

Traditional Japanese breakfast foods are a world away from my normal bowl of Cheerios and this week required a trip to our local Asian grocer, T & T Supermarket.  Even though we lived and travelled through Asia and prepare quite a lot of Asian food at home, I'm always amazed and enthralled by a trip to T & T.  Jon practically has to drag me out of the aisles while I examine such curiosities as Deep-Fried Gluten and Durian-flavoured candy...

This was the most complicated breakfast I've prepared for a long while and it really tested my culinary "make sure everything is ready and hot at the same time" skills.  And even though it seemed like a lot, I'm pretty sure this was a simple version of what you might receive at a nice Ryokan.

Let's break it down:

Gohan:  (Rice)  Like most of Asia, Japanese enjoy a bowl of rice at every meal.  So much so that the word for cooked rice, gohan, also doubles in meaning as the word for meal.  Rice is not all the same however.  At our meal we enjoyed some high quality "genmai"  or Japanese brown rice (white is the norm) and it was extremely different from the rice we had with our Indian or Filipino breakfasts.  The grains are shorter, fatter and the texture was quite sticky. 

Miso Soup:  Miso soup is ubiquitous at most Asian restaurants in Toronto and it turns out that it is just as common for Japanese breakfast.  We all think we know Miso Soup, but do you know what's in that mysterious broth?  A quick google search shows that Miso soup is usually made by dissolving some Miso paste (made with fermented rice, barley, soybeans, salt and fungus) into Dashi soup stock (made with dried baby sardines, dried kelp, and dried skipjack tuna).  That's a lot of er, interesting ingredients.  Miso soup also commonly features tofu cubes, scallions and seaweed pieces.

Nori:  (Dried seaweed)  This is used as an accompaniment to the rice, kind of a roll your own sushi deal. (used in conjunction with soy sauce of course)

Tamagoyaki:  Tamagoyaki is a rolled sweet omelet that is sliced into pretty little bundles.  It features mirin (sweet rice wine) and is commonly made in it's own pan.  I made due with our ordinary fry pan and didn't find the delicate layering required to be difficult at all.

Shiozake:  (Salted broiled salmon)  Much to my normal "fish-hating" self's surprise, this was my favourite part of the breakfast.  It was very simple to prepare, (just pop it in the oven with some olive oil) and was really, really good.

Umeboshi:  (Pickled salty plums)  Common wisdom in Japan is that it is very healthy to start off you day with a couple of Umeboshi.  They are extremely high in salt and citric acid and help aid in digestion.  I was hesitant to try one of these (having been burnt by salty, sour plum flavour in the past), and wow, did it live up to its reputation.  It was so sour and salty and had a texture half-way between fresh or dried fruit.  I don't think I'll be enjoying this for breakfast anytime soon.  (which leaves 90% of my expensive umeboshi jar up for grabs.  Anyone?)

Natto:  (Fermented soybeans)  Although very common for breakfast in Japan, I couldn't find any Natto in Toronto.  I can't say I was that disappointed, this looks like a food you have to grow up with to love.  Adjectives used to describe it:  slippery, pungent, acquired, sticky, powerful.

The Verdict:

For Ease of Preparation:






For Degree of Separation:

For Guestability:

For Sustainability:

For Overall Appeal:

With such a multitude of textures and flavours, the Full Japanese breakfast rivals the Full English in terms of flavour balance, interest and variety.  Although very foreign to my morning taste buds it was certainly an invigorating experience.

Next week we hunker down as the weather turns cold with some comforting Scottish Oatmeal.

Week 9 - Agahan - The Philippines

LONGSILOG

Dear readers, due to an extremely hectic couple of weeks this entry is over two weeks late!  My apologies....

For our second breakfast this weekend we tried some Filipino Agahan (breakfast).  I have many awesome Filipino friends and was especially eager for this breakfast.  I'd like to say a huge thank-you to everyone who helped me with their input for this blog entry.

Breakfast in the Philippines seems like a bigger deal than many of the countries I've researched.  While most entries feature foods that people have on Sundays or special occasions, today's food is something people seem to recall their mothers making on any normal day of the week (and that's awesome!).

Longsilog is really a portmanteau made up of three foods:  Longganisa, a garlicky breakfast sausage; Sinangog, garlic fried rice, and Itlog, fried egg.  How interesting is that?  Points to the Philippines for the best breakfast name.

The food itself smelled awesome cooking up.  Mmmmm, does anything beat fried garlic?

The Longganisa I purchased was garlicky and slightly sweet.  Apparently these sausages can feature different flavourings depending on the province (some are sour, spicy, sweet, etc).  Unfortunately the store I purchased these at only had one kind.

The star of the show, and the feature of this breakfast that gave it that distinct Asian twist was the Sinangog (or garlic fried rice).  You have to plan ahead to make great Sinangog by making sure you have plenty of left-over rice from the meal before.  The overnight time in the fridge allows the rice to dry out and helps you to achieve that delightful fried, but not mushy texture.  Our Sinangog was extremely garlicky with just a bit of crunch from the fried bits.  Masarap!

The Verdict:

For Ease of Preparation:






Not difficult, but it does take some planning ahead.

For Degrees of Separation:







It's just like Sausage and Eggs but the garlic fried rice factor pushes it to a solid three.

For Guestability:






This would bring a thoughtful twist to an old hospitality favourite.

For Sustainability:






Although not quite as hearty as the Full English, this one still satisfies.

Overall Appeal:






I really enjoyed Longganisa and particularly the Sinangog.  I would caution that this is a breakfast for garlic lovers only, no part-time garlic eaters need apply, it is a lot of glorious, stinky garlic to face in the morning.

Where will we go next?  How about does an all-expense paid trip to Mexico sound....