HCMC offers such a fantastic array of cheap and delicious food, that like many expats who live here I don’t cook that often. Eating out here is always enjoyable and offers the most accessible way for a foreigner to experience the culture. And, you have to be shopping at the local market, rather than expat grocery and produce shops, to make it economical to cook. Local markets can be fun and colourful, but also hot and tiresome, which makes it easy to fall out of the habit of going and drift back to the air conditioned and expensive foreign supermarkets. Especially during the hot season we’ve been experiencing.
However, I’ve been watching Luke Nguyen’s wonderful cooking show about Vietnam recently (thanks Kerry and Peter!) and have been inspired to get back to the market and start chopping. Above is my version of a recipe from the show, Ga Ham Kieu Tuoi, Chicken cooked with fresh pepper. What intrigued me about the dish is that you cook the chicken in the juice from young coconuts, which is one of my favourite drinks here, but I’ve never cooked with it. Mr Nguyen cooked this amongst the pepper plantations on Phu Quoc Island. I’m not sure if the green pepper I bought at the market was the much revered Phu Quoc pepper. However I do know I had coconut juice from Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta, a region famous for all things coconut.
The recipe worked well, though I don’t think I added enough pepper. It really does need a lot to balance the sweetness of the coconut juice. Anyway, it still tasted pretty good, and it’s great to have the ingredients, some of which would require some shopping around in Australia, so readily available. Looking forward to more inspiration from this very entertaining and mouth-watering show.
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