Hanoi, my city, is experiencing the best time of autumn now. Persimmon is also a sign of Hanoi’s autumn, along with green sticky rice – as I mentioned in the previous posts, big chrysanthemum, and the smell of "milk flower" trees (hoa sua) filled up the streets at night.
Persimmons are in season now. There are many different kinds of persimmons, some are crunchy, some are tender and juicy. Some are green, some are greeny yellow, some are red. Some are really big, some are so tiny. For me, what I like the best is the green tiny crunchy ones, however, nowadays they are getting more scarce when the big kinds become more popular.
I thought what if I use the persimmons to make into some dishes as I’ve never eaten such a food. After searching on the Internet and I found that persimmons certainly can be made into good foods. So I imagined how to combine some ingredients including persimmon to make a simple salad. Finally, I came up with this salad. I told my mom what I was gonna do, and she suggested that I use green apple in the salad to balance the taste and add good flavor to the salad. Thanks for that, the salad I created this time was really perfect. It made me surprised for the first time I tried to come up with a totally new dish.
These persimmons I used were crunchy and gently sweet, though they are not the ones I like most.
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This was my first experience with tabasco pepper sauce. I found the name in one of my cookbooks, then after searching for information about this sauce, I was curious about how the taste is like. I hesitated to make this corn cakes just because I wondered whether it is available at supermarkets. One day I found it at one giant supermarket and I was glad to make these corn hush puppies.
It was very interesting to eat those small stuffs. They were a little bit spicy but the spicy taste was special due to tabasco sauce. Sweet corn kernels, after being quickly fried, were sitll very juicy and sweet. We almost ate these corn cakes for dinner without having anything else and still felt satisfied with the meal.
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I still have some bread left, so I cooked this soup to finish it since I didn’t want to keep it longer on my dinning table. It is very simple and quick to make this soup – the soup with Asian flavor by using soy sauce to season.
Moreover, crab sticks are quite popularly used in Asian dishes. Though i do know that crab stick contains just a small percentage of crab meat and crab flavor, I could not afford to buy crab meat to use. So, if possible, you may use crab meat for more authentic and deeper flavor.
I was thinking, while eating the soup and the bread, which was actually the Cuban bread I made days ago, about the combination of the East and the West flavor in one meal like this. Very interesting.
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I made some bread, which is enough for four breakfast until I can finish them all. So, not wanting to let the bread stay for too long or the taste and texture will be worse, I made this soup to serve with the bread.
Having bread for main meals like lunch or dinner is not a typical habit of Vietnamese people in particular and of Asian people in general. Bread is often meant for breakfast. However, changing the ordinary habit of preparing and enjoying a meal gives me more inspiration in the kitchen.
Today I made this soup, which is quite simple in cooking method yet provides many nutrients. I like the soup since it uses both meat and vegetable, so I feel that the meal is balanced. For me, it is hard to finish a meal with only meat.
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