Today I'm starting a new food series: YummyNowandWow!
I LOVE eating. And drinking coffee. Lots of it. I may cut my spendings on clothes, going out, or on random stuff to decorate my house. But I will never cut my food budget.
A life that isn't full of yummy delicious nomnomnom food just ain't much fun to me.
Sorry, that's just how it is.
I'm always on the lookout for new dishes to try, in the hope that they will blow my taste buds away with their combination of different flavors.
And in this new YummyNowandWow series, I will chronicle all the good stuff I come across!
Will you join me on this trip around the world?
We're starting in Vietnam!
5 🍚 Dishes 🍲 You HAVE to Try in Vietnam
Vietnam: home of the craziest traffic congested streets I have ever seen!
Me, blocking the traffic in Hanoi, in the North of Vietnam
But also of some of the world’s most stunning views:
The sun sets over Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
And of course home of amazing yummy food!
The Vietnamese use lots of fresh ingredients mixed with well balanced spice blends to create some of the most delicious meals you have ever tried.
You’ll fall of your chair when you taste the Vietnamese cuisine, for real!
Even former president Barack Obama couldn’t resist: in his last year in office, he jumped on a plane to try out them noodles with chef Anthony Bourdain.
After which his dinner partner Anthony Bourdain tweeted:
So: Are you planning a trip to the ‘Land of the ascending dragon’?
Then here are FIVE DISHES you have to try in Vietnam!
1. Chả Cá Thăng Long – Fish with Turmeric & Dill
Chả Cá Thăng Long is a famous noodle dish from Hanoi, made with pan-fried fish filets, turmeric and dille. It tastes earthy, fresh and, well, salty. It’s topped with peanuts, so this dish is both crunchy and tender.
The fish almost melts on your tongue, so soft! I ate it three days in a row. Need I say more?
2. Phở – Beef Noodle Soup
If a hamburger is the national dish of the U.S., pho would be Vietnam’s answer to that. Phở, which is pronounced as ‘Fuh’, is a noodle soup.
In its most basic form, phở consists of rice noodles topped with raw beef, which is sliced in thin pieces. As a flavorful beef broth is poured in the bowl, the beef gets cooked. This is called phở bo.
But there are many different variations of phở. For example, there is phở gà, which is noodle soup with chicken. Another variation is phở tái, for which sliced rare beef is used.
Phở is a popular breakfast among the Vietnamese, but you can really eat it anytime of the day. A visit to Vietnam isn’t complete without trying a hot bowl of beef noodle soup!
3. Cao Lầu – Pork Noodles
Cao lầu is another noodle dish, but this time from the picturesque Hoi An.
Cao lầu is made with thick noodles, pork, fresh herbs and a delicious caramelised broth. This has got to be one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes, I can eat this anytime of the day.
If you visit Hoi An, locals will tell you that Cao lầu is copied all across the country but that the real thing can only be found in Hoi An!
4. Fresh Spring Rolls
I had never heard of the word spring rolls until I traveled to Asia.
How on earth is that possible, you may wonder?
Well, I’m from the Netherlands and we call spring rolls ‘loempias’.
And not just loempias, we call them Vietnamese loempias. These are actually deep fried spring rolls, not fresh spring rolls (fresh vegetables rolled in rice paper).
Imagine my surprise when I learned that loempia is not a Vietnamese word! Fellow Dutchies: save yourself the trouble of looking for it on the menu of a Vietnamese restaurant, you won’t find it!
I did my research, and it turns out that loempia is actually an Indonesian word.
Which, when you think of it, isn’t that surprising.
Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony, so we have been influenced by Indonesian cuisine. Which by the way is waaaay better than the Dutch cuisine, which mostly consists of deep fried snacks like a ‘kroket’, ‘patat met’ (fries with mayonnaise, if you’ve seen the classic movie Pulp Fiction you know what I’m talking about) and ‘boerenkool’ (farmers cabbage).
Similarly, the most popular dishes at most Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands are not Chinese, but also Indonesian:
- Babi Pangang (grilled pork in sweet and sour sauce)
- Pisang Goreng (fried banana)
- Sate (chicken filet on a skewer in delicious peanut sauce)
- Nasi (fried rice), and
- Bami (fried noodles)
Fried spring rolls were the only kind I knew, until I traveled through Vietnam. There, I got hooked on fresh spring rolls!
Included in my cruise trip to Halong Bay was a cooking class, where we made fresh spring rolls.
Making them is really quite easy. All you need are some fresh vegetables, like lettuce, grated carrot and cucumber, etc. Add what you like, I personally really enjoy some shrimps in there too. Then take a piece of thin rice paper, wet it, put the veggies in the middle and start rolling. For those that are into Mexican food: It’s a bit like making a burrito!
Dip the fresh spring rolls in a peanut sauce and you’ll have a delicious meal!
5. Hoi An Treasure Bags
For this last dish, we’ll return to Hoi An. I don’t know if this is a Hoi An specialty, but I tried it there and it blew my mind.
The Treasure Bags look like a birthday gift: so cool!
These little presents are filled with a delicious mixture of fish, mushrooms, spring onion and soy chilli sauce. The wrapping is crunchy and cracks open when you take your first bite. And then that soft filling just falls on your tongue...
Eating them made me feel like a little child again!
I felt that same sense of wow and wonder I see with my little niece, when she explores the world around her...
This is the first post in what I intend to be a long-lasting series:
YummyNowandWow!
We could all benefit from living more in the moment, and experiencing that sense of wonder we as adults often have lost along the way. This is also why I chose my Steemit name: @livenowandwow. It serves as a friendly reminder to myself – and hopefully also to you, as a reader – to not take what we have for granted, but appreciate it.
And trying out new foods is one of the ways to accomplish that!
So next time when you don’t feel like eating that healthy salad...
...try out something completely new, a dish you have never tried before!
If you are in Vietnam, pick one of the five dishes I mentioned above. But you can also simply explore food options that are closer to home. Be creative, and bon appétit !
Which of these Vietnamese dishes would you like to try?
If you enjoyed reading this post, you may also like my other recently published post: TravelNowandWow #1 - Did You Know You Can ⛷️ Ski 🏂 on Cyprus?!
Credit: all images are my own.
