Potato chips are not new or something very fancy. Just that this time I made them in waffle shapes. Normally I often cut potatoes into plain sticks, sometimes I cut with a zigzag knife to make french-fries, but today I wanted to try making chips with this pattern.
It was very funny when I sliced the potatoes and these slices kept falling down from the mandoline slicer, using the fluted blade. They looked so fragile that I touched very gently. Frying them in hot oil took just a few minutes to get them golden brown and crispy. In this shape, they are not as crispy as the normal potato chips, but I think making these potato wafers to decorate other foods is not a bad idea.
Just sprinkle some salt (it’s great to have freshly crushed sea salt), we’ll have a classic but never out-of-fashioned food.
Baby clams, like other kinds of seafood such as crabs, shrimps, razor clams, etc, can be cooked with tamarind water (made from tamarind pulp stirred in water) into palatable dishes.
Tamarind pods, or pulps, are used quite popularly in many Vietnamese food. They add sour taste to sour soups, and add sweet-sour taste to stir-fried foods. Other sour fruits can be used to bring in the sourness to the food too, but tamarinds are always preferred in sweet-sour dishes.
This particular dish is easy to cook. Just a small notice that we cook the whole live baby clams, so make sure we wash them very well before cooking.
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Autumn has really come to Hanoi. If you’ve visited Hanoi during autumn time before, you might already know about one specialty of Hanoi when it enters autumn. It is the green rice flakes – or "com" as we call in Vietnamese. When you see hawkers at wet markets or walking along the ancient or small streets, you know that Hanoi and Hanoians are going to see the prettiest days of the fall.
"Com" – or green rice flakes – are made of young rice grains. These grains are harvested before they are fully matured, then gone under many processes until they become thin flakes with greeny color. Com, therefore, is regarded as a purely pastoral gift. To really appreciate this specialty, it is advised to chew a pinch of com slowly so that you can feel the stickiness of young rice grains and, at the same time, feel its sweet and fragrant taste.
Yes, you can eat "com" raw as it is. Besides, "Com" is used in many other special and seasonal dishes. And what I introduce this time, though simple, is one of the very popular ones. "Com" is no longer available when autumn ends, so it is also made into "dried Com" so that people can cook dishes with "Com" at anytime of the year. However, I always prefer fresh Com for the taste you can never describe well but eat the fresh ones at the right time, you’ll see how special it is.
So, remember, it is strongly recommended that you try some fresh Com if you happen to travel to Hanoi in autumn 
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Some deep-fried foods are always so pleasant to eat even though they are not very healthy. I am not a fan of deep-fried foods. I can eat them but not much at a time, especially when the deep-fried ingredients are fatty and meaty.
However, this time I didn’t refuse these inviting fried pumpkin cakes as I know what ingredients were used to make them. I used a lot more pumpkin than meat in these pumpkin cakes, so when I ate, I almost didn’t feel the meat at all but I merely tasted the pumpkin, which made the fried cakes not "hot" and greasy as they seemed to be. I felt the cakes very easy to eat, and surprisingly I did eat many of them.
Anyway, this is still a deep-fried dish. I dare not eat them frequently. But sometimes I feel changing the appetite a bit is quite interesting.
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I do not often cook with salted eggs, but some I’ve cooked so far all impressed me. This is to introduce a Vietnamese food made with salted eggs. Salted eggs can be found easily at Asian supermarkets, however I wonder whether they are easy to get from other Western countries.
Salted eggs are not my frequently used ingredients, so I have little information about them. Just know how to cook them in certain dishes. This dish has a mild flavor, not very salty as I didn’t use extra salt to season. The only saltiness was of the salted eggs. I could enjoy the dish just like this, but of course you can season more salt to your taste. Or you can prepare a small dish containing a little salt mixed with a few drops of lime juice to serve with the prawns.
The dish is best to serve while hot.
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In Vietnamese, this egg roll is called five-colored egg because there are actually five ingredients coming together in this roll. The egg therefore is not boring as the normal simple pan-fried egg or omelet. It not only has more texture: the crunchiness and juiciness of the pepper in three colors, the firmness of the prawns and the tenderness of the egg but also has a good presentation witg bright colors.
I myself do not often cook the dishes with egg. Since I started my baking hobby, I have consumed a large quantity of eggs each week. So I often avoid using eggs in other food. However, after quite a long time not making any dish with eggs, I really miss the taste of the simple pan-fried egg. So I made this egg roll to enjoy the fresh veggies added to it as well.
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