Food, Friends, Fun - Friday in Hanoi

What do you do in Hanoi when you have a day off? If you're lucky enough to know some students who love to cook...you eat!

On Friday at 11:30am, Ny, Jumjim, and Tony arrived with the fixins' for a traditional meal from Laos, their home. Ny is the master chef who did the kitchen work. Jumjim and Tony are his friends who prepared the veggies for the salad and helped in the kitchen, where Susan watched closely for a lesson in Asian cooking.

We ate around 2pm, after watching these young people work their culinary magic. Our small, limited kitchen makes everything take longer. First they washed and prepped the salad ingredients, which they purchased fresh in the market on our street. Check out the colorful array...yes, red peppers are red hot! And Laotian food calls for lots of 'em.

Ny used these peppers in an ethnic pork, liver and fresh mint salad pronounced, "larp". It's so tasty. He also used "a few" peppers (so he said) to prepare a fish sauce which he spooned over two large fish he fried in oil. The sauce was made of crushed peppers, salt, sugar, garlic, lemon juice, and water.

While he was doing his thing in the galley, J and T were preparing a cold salad made from shredded papaya and "the dressing"- (more peppers!) When it was ready to eat the kitchen crew posed by the dining table with our lovely hostess.

It was such a joy to eat and talk with these new friends, all around 20 yrs old. They're in their 2nd yr. at the DAV and miss their homes as we do ours.

On this day, Susan fixed a cucumber, tomato, red onion and olive marinated salad which we all enjoyed too. It was their first time to eat black olives, and they love 'em. After lunch we shared a few chocolate covered cherries from our neighbor's farm in Suttons Bay...the smiles on their faces told us they loved those too!

A picture is said to be worth 1,000 words. So gaze on this feast. The 2 dishes in the rear are the fish plates, "palart pik" and the salad up front is the "larp". Notice the wonderful creativity in their presentation, even rosettes of peeled tomato skin by each fish! Awesome!

We so enjoyed their company that we invited them to come again in 2 weeks, when Susan will whip up something Italian!