 Brunch: WestSoy vanilla soymilk Dinner: Pearl green tea soymilk When my green tea soymilk got scanned at the cashier, there were two reactions from the cashier girls: “Wow, this sounds awesome! I’ve never heard of it before!” and “I don’t know… it sounds a little weird to me”. Call me a Berkeley-induced hippie if you want (although I’d like to say I’m as far from being a hippie as Japan is from Berkeley), but I side with the first reaction, cuz I like green tea ice cream and I like soymilk. Now I’m addicted to this thing. Sweet and smooth with a light-hearted, herbal accent. I finally understand why the Brits add milk to tea. In this case, it’s adding tea to milk. The mix rivals my most favorite drink number: mung bean milk. Continue reading Down the Aisles 9: Green Tea Soymilk
 Found in a furniture store. Refrigerated. In a tube, a tad bigger than a Colgate container. Cuz I haven’t seen any edible paste in a tube at Safeway or Walmart, I say The Swedes rule in design, again. But does the paste sing, too? The band ABBA had four member, but the paté has at least four times as many ingredients, as the label says, and I quote: “canola oil, crab meat, cod roe, saithe roe, salt, sugar, tomato purée, dill, aromas (this isn’t exactly an ingredient, but whatev), vinegar, potato flakes, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, spices, yeast extract”. I’ll cut the chase and tell you now that the only thing I could taste… … was the salt. In hindsight saltine crackers probably contributed in blinding my tongue, but I don’t regret. It’s pleasantly salty, like French fries and chips. It’s the other background stuff that make the scene. The smoothness melts the instant the tongue reaches it, a fishy moment whips through the air, and you sink to the bottom of the ocean watching two crabs clapping claws. If you […]
Continue reading Down the Aisle 8: Abba crab paté
 Let’s make it clear: ô mai |oh mai| is not xí muội |xi mui| (huamei), even if Wikipedia says so. The former is a cooked mixture of cut-up fruits, ginger, licorice and spices, the latter is a whole plum dried and salted. Now that’s settled, I got a bunch of ô mai from Vua Khô Bò & Ô Mai a while ago, all homemade or so the lady told. Guava, rose buds, sấu (no English name, it seems), mango, kumquat, cóc (golden apple), tamarind, and 5-fruit combo, 2 balls each at $6.99 per half pound. Sweet, spicy, chunky, velvety, gingery, tart, salty, it’s all there. The downside: they all have the same wrapper, so except for the guava one which is extra chunky, I can’t tell which is which if my life depended on it. Continue reading Spicy balls of fruit and salt
 Two oatmeal cookies sandwiching a scoop of vanilla ice cream, everything encapsulated by a dark chocolate shell. Chocolate shell with ice cream isn’t really my thing, because stuff breaks and spills, like you’re eating a hamburger and look down and see a salad on the burger’s wrapper, except now the melting ice cream replaces the lettuce and mayo. Oatmeal cookie is another not-my-thing, as it’s just too crumbly. But somehow this combination works. The chocolate keeps the oatmeal cookies from turning into oatmeal, and the oatmeal cookies are soft and chewy enough that they don’t push ice cream out in the back (as much) when you take a bite. No wonder It‘s survived since 1928. It predates the Golden Gate Bridge by 9 years. Continue reading Down the Aisles 5: It’s It
 Pretty packaging. Attractive name. Big thick bar. Teenie tiny holes that are supposed to be bubbles. The texture is rather normal. You have to really focus to feel the difference. It also tastes like store chocolate Easter eggs. Unimpressed. Bubble chocolate – $2.50 a bar at Whole Foods.
 I have a soft spot. If I like someone’s movies, I have to try their food too. Take Korean for example, I saw the actors eating bibimbap and ddeokbokki with so much joy I had to find and like them myself. Many months ago my friend Rashmi posted a link of this adorable short movie The Danish Poet, and now I’ve finally found Copenhagen. A Danish restaurant that I will frequent. Most of the menu is above twenty, which doesn’t seem to bother the elderly ladies and gentlemen dining here. They sip their white wine, take small bites, talk with their backs straight and eyes observant. I always have to watch my pitch in this kind of casual expensive place. Thankfully, the food is plentiful. A choice of soups or salads precedes every entree. I like how they top my spinach salad with boiled eggs and bacon bits and very little vinaigrette. Split pea soup seems more popular than potato and leek soup and cream of mushroom soup, but as the staff said, they’re all good. I’m not crazy about mushy soups, but a small nutty cup paired with crusty […]
Continue reading Pieces of Copenhagen in Redwood City
 Given how often my family comes here, I feel obliged to give this store a proper post. About every other week or so, my parents make the hour-long drive to get a loaf or two of cha lua (silk sausage) and maybe a few Vietnamese between-a-snack-and-a-meal goodies. The affable owner lady knows our usual grabs, and we know her trustworthy provision. Whether it’s wrapped in banana leaves, aluminum foil, or cling wrap, Giò Chả Đức Hương has the best of its kind in Bellaire. The shelves of nem (fermented pounded pork sausage), bánh tét (sticky rice log), and bánh ít (sticky rice pyramid). These small bánh tét are sold all year round, they are only about 4 inches long, usually with vegan filling (mung bean paste or banana). They make an appropriate snack for a teenager, but usually a little too much for me. Unwrapped below, left-right-down: bánh giò – bánh ít – bánh tét: Continue reading Giò Chả Đức Hương – sausage and so much more
 One of my retirement plans is to translate these books into English. This one is about Southern Vietnamese food. Most of these dishes are still there, some hidden behind coconut trees and around small branches of the river net, some popularized in Saigon’s expensive menus, national tour, and exported oversea. Some have vanished as the species of the land died out or became unfavorable, as time is too short to make good treats, as the abundance of resource and imagination is replaced by the greedy fight over benefits, and as people simply forget. I remember bắp nấu. It’s corn kernels without the peel, cooked like rice, white, soft, and gently sweet, eaten hot with a sprinkle of salt and sesame mix. Mmmmm… I remember thịt kho nước dừa. “Kho” is to simmer meat or fish with water and nước mắm, preferably in a clay pot, believe it or not, earthenware gives a flavor to the dish. My mom used to kho pork and eggs with fresh coconut water (according to Tran Van Chi, and many Southern ladies, kho with coconut milk – the juice from the dried shredded coconut meat, is untraditional, […]
Continue reading Food of childhood – memories revived by Tran Van Chi
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