Jjigae (찌개) refers to any Korean stew-like dish. Kimchi jjigae (김치 찌개) is hence a stew comprising mainly kimchi as well as other ingredients like beancurd, meat and mushrooms. Given that kimchi is a type of pickled vegetable that opens up one’s appetite, this stew is therefore easy to digest, what with its accompanying ingredients and soup base that are mostly mild and light tasting as well.
My original intention was to make sauna hard-boiled eggs – those that often appear in Korean shows. The typical drama plot would feature homeless husbands (or wives) staying overnight at a sauna with a towel tied over their hair to form two cutie side buns. They would be seen sipping off a cup of beverage with a straw and munching on hard-boiled sauna eggs. We have always wanted to find out how these eggs taste like.
So much for my adventures in Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. Now it is time to turn the attention to my culinary experiences in Vietnam!
This has got to be one of my favourite dishes that I got to taste in Vietnam. All thanks to that fateful night in Hanoi when both of us went back late to the hotel after a day trip out. We were searching tiredly for food along the roadside stalls. A nearby hawker who was preparing this food caught my attention. I decided that was going to be my dinner – whatever that was.
The red flag flapping in the wind outside the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
The never-ending queue of visitors waiting to enter the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
We left Ho Chi Minh and flew to Hanoi with a totally different goal in mind. While Ho Chi Minh taught us about life in a whirlwind, Hanoi unveiled to us her cultural grace and tightly-knitted bond with nature. Weather-wise, it was as if we had stepped out of a sauna bath into a cool and cloudy paradise up in the north. Although it drizzled for a couple of days, on most other days the clouds remained non-threatening and the weather was chill.
A traffic warden controlling the busy traffic
The Ho Chi Minh Youth Union in the city center
Vietnam – or more accurately ‘Viet Nam’ – refers to ‘the people’ (Viet) of the South (Nam). There are altogether 54 different ethnicities living in the country, making it a culturally diverse land to explore and a marveling place for the sights and taste buds. Other than that, the persistent sounds from the hawkers, motorbikes, car horns and idle banters of the chatty security guards and shophouse owners were never-ending and almost always closing in on us from all directions. This was perhaps the first country I travelled to where I had to get a room in the hotel which faced away from the streets – just so I could get a wink at night.
We were in a land that never stops working. I could always hear things happening before I see them, well, not in a scary way of course.
