Suddenly came across this purple sweet potato at supermaket, I decided to buy some immediately. I read about his kind of sweet potato before and I have been so curious about its color and wonder how its taste is like. 

I also wanted to try using those I bought with some recipes I had read before, starting with this chiffon cake. I like chiffon cake for its light texture, and eating them is like eating a piece of "cloud". And with making chiffon, I can do at once when I feel like making it without worrying about scaling the butter and let it soften to room temperature, as like making other cakes. 

I had nothing to complain about this cake. It is like and spongy as usual. It is full of sweet potato taste and smell. And the color of the cake really makes me adorable. Looking at this piece of cake made my mind peaceful. The dark purple color of the sweet potato, after being blended with egg whites and flour, turned into this gentle magenta, or pink,  I don’t know what to call it, but I like this color. 

This cake is another interesting experience with making chiffon cake to me. A good experience with purple sweet potato too. 

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I like fresh mushrooms, and king oyster mushroom is one of my best favorites. These mushrooms are not so expensive but they are also not considered cheap as compared with other kinds of fresh mushroom (and with my family’s budget). Sometimes the supermarket offers an acceptable price, I often buy these mushrooms and will cook the most delicious dishes with them. 

This stir-fried mushroom with sesame in particular is very flavorful and fragrant. The texture of the mushrooms is just great with their distinctive flavor. Furthermore, the sesame oil and sesame seeds make them so aromatic, which reminds me of other Korean foods that often use sesame oil and seeds in cooking. Olive oil is advised, however I think other cooking oil is also fine. My favorite soy sauce is Kikkoman, I always have one bottle of this soy sauce brand in my kitchen. At the supermarket, this soy sauce might be more expensive than the other brands, but one bottle can be used for a long time and in lots of dishes. In return, the foods smell and taste better with this soy sauce. In the long time I think it is quite economic. For the spices, herbs and sauce, I am often willing to pay more for better quality. 

Having this mushroom dish made us totally satisfied while thinking about the good health benefits that this mushroom can bring to us. 

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This is a totally new experience to me. I’ve never known about a dish called "medley" before. It is just that when I searched for a recipe to use up the sweetcorn I stocked in my fridge last week, I came across this recipes from my "Taste of Home" magazine collection. "Corn medley" is the name to this dish. Realizing that it is very simple to cook this medley, so I decided to make the dish without much understanding about the word "medley" and why the dish is called that way. 

The medley offerred me a new experience of taste and flavor. Eating them alone is satisfying enough. But now I still have no idea what kind of dishes they can pair with to serve together. Since when we ate them with rice (yes, Asian people eat steamed rice almost everyday), they didn’t seem to go so well together. So we finished the corn medley alone and of course, served rice with a meat dish. 

Anyway, now I knew another recipe to cook sweetcorns. I also had a mere idea about what a medley dish is like when I realized that there are some more medley recipes in my cookbooks. The dominant texture of the dish is the juiciness and crisp-tenderness of the sweetcorns, combining with the softness of green pepper and tomatoes. The flavor is strengthened with ground cumin. The medley is a little sweet as the corns themselves are already sweet and sugar is also used in cooking. 

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Hey, this is the first "salsa" I’ve ever made. It is similar to a salad, but this is the one with the actual "salsa" in its name that I made. I didn’t often eat salad with fruits, except for green mango or green papaya which has pure sour taste or plain taste and offers mostly the texture to the salad. This salsa has a distinctive sweet and sour taste of the mango plus its fragrance. 

When I read the recipe in my book and saw the picture, the mango is yellow-orange like this. There is no remark about which kind of mango should be used. So I just used the kind I often buy to make this salsa. 

The first impression of this salsa is its refreshing effect. As the salsa is chilled in the fridge until it is cold enough to serve, at the very first bite, I could feel the heat in my body reduced, especially on these hot days. Both the mango and tomato flesh are still firm yet juicy. Coriander leaves add more flavor to the salsa. 

It is a new and interesting taste to me. It is advised to serve this salsa with tortilla chips. But no way I could buy or make them. So I had the idea of baking some wonton cups, at least I had something crispy to enjoy the salsa too. 

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I cooked pasta again. Pasta now is often in my cooking list of the week. I never thought  I would be in love so much with pasta like this before. Just by a proper way of cooking pasta with basic principles about the nature of pasta in mind, we can always make a good pasta dish. 

Once I hosted a year-end party with around 20 friends at my home, most of whom are Vietnamese students studying in Singapore. That time I treated them with only pasta, pizza and wine. I made three kinds of pasta and three kinds of pizza. They were all finished much faster than I could imagine, which caused me think whether I had prepared enough or not

That’s one  good memory about pasta since I started to venture into this interesting section of food. I’m often eager at trying new pasta dish and revisit the most amazing recipes when I want to treat my family and friends. This pasta with asparagus and peas is also very easy to eat, very refreshing with the crunchy texture of the asparagus. Some cream is used helping to combine all the ingredients harmoniously. Pasta with veggies is never out of fashion for me. 

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It’s so interesting to eat this dessert after a delicious meal, especially on cool days. I like spices when they combine with other ingredients in both savory and sweet foods. 

Banana is also a kind of inexpensive tropical fruit. Besides eating them "raw" as a fruit for dessert, I have only tried making flambe with bananas or used them in cakes. From one of my books on desserts, I found this recipe which is very practical. So I hesitated no more to make this dessert. I was impressed by the deep flavor of the spices in each very tender banana piece. The rum and pineapple juice once again enhance the flavor of the bananas. In this single dish, the combination of different fragrant ingredients make the dessert so special and great in the taste.

But I think this dessert is more suitable to serve on cool or cold days, which is only possible when I return to my home in Hanoi. In Hanoi winter, I definitely make this dessert for my family to try. 

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Glutinous rice is used very popularly in Vietnamese cooking. In festive events, dishes made from glutinous rice are indispensable. There are a large variety of glutinous rice dishes in Vietnam, most of them are inexpensive. Glutinous rice foods are all-time favorite choice for breakfast as well.  Adults and children all like them a lot. Having just a small bowl of glutious rice for early breakfast can keep your stomach full and your mind awake until noon without feeling any fatigue. 

This is just one of many kinds of glutinuous rice dishes made with dried pork sausage – or lap cheong in Cantonese. Lap cheong is a Chinese specialty, but now it is used in quite a number of Vietnamese food. In Vietnam, there are some varieties of this sole dish. This time I made the simplest one of all. 

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I like making pancakes and I often look for new pancake recipes to try. Normally I only have time to make fresh pancakes at weekends. The other days I often have bread, muffins or cakes for breakfasts, which I would make on the day before. Having fresh pancakes for breakfast is so so good and I feel that my weekend begins more meaningfully. 

These sweetcorn pancakes are easy and fast to make. They can be served good with sausages. And so we had a very nice breakfast. 

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