Arroz de Tamboril

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Another easy one pot dish. Tamboril is monkfish (Dutch: zeeduivel), which has a firm texture needed for a recipe like this. I used my earthenware pot on an open fire.

Add olive oil, chopped onion and (green or red) pepper to a pot (optional: celery stick) fry. Add garlic, bayleaf, and add diced tomatoes once the onion is soft. Stir in Portugese carolino rice, coat the rice with the oil and add a glass of white wine. Finally pour in a generous amount of fish stock (1 - 1,5 liter).

Simmer for 30 minutes. Add the monkfish and fresh prawns, adjust for water, and simmer for another 7 minutes or so.

When ready you can stir in some butter, add black pepper and salt to taste. One thing I noticed is that the rice will soak up a lot of moisture after the cooking proces. Serve with lemon and fresh cilantro.

Fondue savoyarde

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Since I spent a long weekend in Chambéry (Savoie) for work I wanted to make fondue savoyarde at home. Instead of a fondue from the Savoie I used cheese from no less than three Alpine countries.

The types of cheese used vary between all the online recipes. Comté seems to be a requirement. I wanted to buy Beaumont but the cheese shop in Amsterdam didn’t have it, so I went with Swiss Gruyère instead. Beaufort de Savoie would also be an option, next to the Gruyère, but the production is limited. In the end I walked out with the following combination:

220 gram Swiss Gruyère.
220 gram French Comté Juraflore, 18 mois.
100 gram Fontina d’Aosta D.O.P., a rather soft cheese from Italy.

I used 3 small sherry glasses of white wine, but this was almost too much. I had to use potato flower to thicken the sauce. The wine was a dry Gelber Muskateller from the German Pfalz (Herxheim am Berg). A very mineral wine. Winzergenossenschaft eG Herxheim am Berg

Otherwise, a cheese fondue is very easy to make. The cheese has to be at room temperature before you add it to the hot wine, if not the cheese may curdle. A glass of Kirsch at the end and some black pepper is the finishing touch.

Note: it is important to use medium heat. If the temperature is too high, the cheese might become lumpy.

Padang and Papua cuisine

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I went to Festival Indonesia Timur and had Papua food for the first time. Since my father has lived in Sorong, in what is now Western New Guinea, I was always curious about the food. My father never ate local food, or he doesn't remember. What he remembers is that the Papua called him “white cockroach” and the Indonesians “blue monkeys”. Yet, in his free time he went into the Papua villages equipped with a stainless steel box containing medical scalpels. He was inspired by Albert Schweitzer, trying to perform minor medical procedures. My father was not a doctor but later in life he was licensed to be the first medical responder on board Shell tankers after completing an internship in a hospital.

Sagu cakes

For carbohydrates the Papua were depended on sago instead of rice. Sago is the starch extracted from the core tissue of Metroxylon sagu, the true sago palm. One palm can provide up to 300 kilogram of starch, but the extraction proces is laborious. You have to split the stem lengthwise.

A Sago palm is "harvested" so that the starch can be used for Sago production, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Photo credit: I, Toksave

You can make papeda from the starch, a congee, but also make solid cakes, called sagu. The fried cakes tasted a little sweet, so I guess the palm starch was mixed with a sweetener. Otherwise the meal consisted of stewed cassave leaf and stewed chicken. I would have ordered babi but I was with a friend who cannot eat pork, so I went with ayam instead.

Masakan Padang

There were also plenty of Padang food stalls. Masakan Padang is the food of West Sumatra and it is distinct from the usual Javanese food you will eat in The Netherlands. I am not an expert on Masakan Padang, but it seems they use more spices. It was amazingly tasteful.

Nasi Padang

I wanted to eat more but there is only so much you can eat in half a day. Below is a popular snack made from fishcake, cabbage, tofu, potato and peanut sauce. The name gives away its origins 燒賣; siomay. This Chinese snack has been incorporated into Indonesian food culture.

Siomay

Chinese cabbage stir fry

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There are two easy stir fry recipes I fall back on when pressed for time. Both contain Chinese cabbage as the center piece.

Chinese cabbage and dried prawns 包心菜炒蝦皮

Soak fermented dried prawns in warm water. Reserve the water.
In the meanwhile slice fresh ginger and spring onion. Separate the white from the green. Cut the cabbage in small pieces.

Heat oil in a wok. Throw in the white part of the spring onion and ginger. Add the shrimp. Fry for a minute or so. Add the cabbage and shrimp water. Wok until the cabbage is tender. Add the green part of the spring onion, adjust for salt and ready.

Szechuan spicy cabbage stir fry 手撕包菜

Whisk together 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp Chinese vinegar, 1 tsp sugar and salt. Set aside.

Heat oil in a wok and add dried chili peppers and szechuan peppercorns. Add chopped garlic. Add cabbage cut in bite sizes and the soy-vinegar mixture. Wok on high heat. You can add freshly fried peanuts to this dish.

Baingan bharta

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Baingan ka bharta (mashed eggplant) is the Hindi name but in India this dish has many different names depending on the local language. This dish is as simple as the name suggests. Grill the eggplant over an open fire. A gas stove will work.

Then heat mustard oil and infuse the oil with hing, then add finely cut onion, the ubiquitous ginger-garlic paste, tomato and fresh chilli pepper. Other spices that can be mustard seeds, cumin seeds, turmeric, red chilli powder, salt. Adding yoghurt is an option. Add fresh cilantro at the end.

It is mostly served with a variation on the roti. For a more complete dish add (precooked) potatoes. If you serve baingan bharta with a dahl you almost got yourself a thali.

Ingredients for the most basic version:

1 eggplant
1 tomato finely chopped
1 green chili finely chopped
1 onion finely chopped
1 inch ginger grated
¼ tsp asafoetida (hing)
2 tbsp mustard oil
Roti or chapati for serving

Swahili Prawns

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In the early 1990s I travelled to Kenya and ended up in Malindi. For centuries the coastal city, like Mombasa, was the melting pot of Bantu speaking Africans and Arab, Persian and Indian traders. The language which emerged, Kiswahili, is a Bantu language influenced by Arabic. Portugese explorer Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498 in Malindi on his first voyage to India, opening a direct link between Europe and Asia by sea. This event ushered in centuries of mercantilism and colonial expansion. Of course, I stumbled upon the Hemingway Bar in Malindi.

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. ”
— The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Ernest and Mary Hemingway on safari in Kenya, 1953-54. Photo: Public domain in the US. Photographer: unattributed.

In 1933 writer Ernest Hemingway visited Malindi for two days of deep-sea fishing. He stayed at the Blue Marlin Hotel. I am not sure if that hotel still existed in 1991, butI do remember visiting the Hemingway Bar, somewhere on the beach front. An English guy I met went fishing for his birthday and came back with a shark. I got very ill that night - high fever - and vaguely remember an Australian guy carrying me to the bus I had to take to Nairobi to catch my plane back to Amsterdam. Not sure how I made it back to Amsterdam.

At that moment in life I wasn’t particularly good at cooking, and at my Malindi hostel I remember an Asian guy buying fresh prawns at the market and whipping up a quick prawn curry in the little kitchen the hostel provided. I was amazed and envied his skill. Now decades later, I tried to find a similar recipe using ingredients typical of the Swahili coast.

Mchuzi wa kamba wa nazi

Heat oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and gently fry one chopped onion, 3 cloves garlic and 2 cm of chopped ginger for 1 minute. Add 2 table spoons tamarind juice, about 200 ml coconut milk and 3 finely chopped tomatoes. Simmer the mixture for 2-3 minutes. For color you can add turmeric . Add large prawns (shelled or whole), season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and stir in the juice of 2 limes and chopped coriander.

Meanwhile, to cook the coconut rice, heat the oil in a saucepan and gently fry a chopped onion until softened, but not brown. Add the 150 gram rice and stir, then pour in 300 ml coconut cream and add enough water to just cover the rice. Cook for 15-20 minutes until the rice is soft and has absorbed all the liquid. Fold in chopped coriander and serve immediately with the Swahili Prawns.

GỎI ĐU ĐỦ BA KHÍA

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Without thinking too long about it I bought a jar of frozen salted crab I thought I needed for my Thai Som Tam salad. When I inspected the jar more closely at home - it was wrapped in plastic so I could hardly read the label - it actually contains salted Vietnamese BA KHÍA, which are freshwater crabs from the Mekong delta. So, now I will use it for Vietnamese GỎI ĐU ĐỦ BA KHÍA, which translates to Ba khía papaya salad.

Fo the salad you will need to julienne 300 gram green unripe papaya.

Then make the dressing by mixing:

30 gram tôm khô ngâm mềm (dried fermented shrimp, soaked in water).
20 gram đường vàng (sugar).
10 gram tỏi (garlic).
10 gram ờt (red fresh chili).
30 ml nước mắm (fish sauce).

Add 50 ml lime juice and pound in a mortar.

Add the papaya shreds. Then add the following ingredients:

Halved cherry tomatoes and string beans
30 gram Rau răm (Vietnamese coriander).
30 gram Đậu Phộng (peanuts freshly fried, crushed).
30 gram Ngò Gai.
50 gram Mắm ba khía (the freshwater crabs with the liquid from the jar).

Mix well and pound everything in the mortar for another couple of minutes.

Bún đậu mắm tôm

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This dish is typical of northern Vietnam. It is a cold platter of cooked rice vermicelli, fried tofu, cha com, assorted meats, cucumber and fresh leaf vegetables like perilla. The fermented shrimp dipping sauce is essential. It can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I had it in the evening in a small Hà Nội restaurant alongside a cold beer. I’m sure it was not the best Bún đậu mắm tôm in Hà Nội but sometimes you’re just hungry and have to walk into the nearest restaurant.

How to make the dipping sauce. Mix the following ingredients:

2 tbsp fermented shrimp paste.
2 tbsp sugar.
2 tbsp lime juice.
1 tbsp chili, sliced.
2 tbsp hot oil.
Optional: MSG, king of flavour.

Vermicelli & tofu
After cooking the rice vermicelli and cooling, they will be a sticky mess. For this dish you simply cut the vermicelli in bite sized chunks. The tofu is fried in the same bite sized pieces.

Meat
The meat can be pork leg or pork belly. Cook the pork as one big piece with some salt and when done, cool it in ice water. Cut into bite sized slices.
You can also add sliced Vietnamese pork sausage, but this will be hard to find outside Vietnam.

Cha com
To make these green sticky rice patties is more time consuming. You need young green rice, which is the first problem. I’ve never seen green com in The Netherlands so I have to skip this. The ingredients of cha com are:

• 50 g pork minced
• 100 g pork paste
• 50 g green sticky rice
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 1/2 egg beaten
• 2/3 tbsp stock powder
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tbsp garlic minced

Above the shrimp paste for the dipping sauce. In the background my Thai catapult for killing small birds.

Bún chả Hà Nội

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If you break down Bún chả you simply have to get the meat patties right and the dipping sauce. The pickled carrots and kohlrabi/unripe papaya are essential as well, but easy to make.

Side pickle

First make the side pickle:
100g carrot, 1/2 tsp salt
100g kohlrabi (or unripe papaya), 1/2 tsp salt.

Mix above ingredients and let the salt draw out the moisture of the vegetables. Drain and wash the vegetables thoroughly.

Mix with 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp vinegar and 4 tbsp water. Chill for a couple of hours.

Below the different elements you will need the assemble this dish:

Chả

Chả are meat patties and these are made from 100 percent pork. I asked my butcher to mince some pork shoulder. Mix the meat with the following ingredients:

1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp minced shallot
2 tbsp caramel sauce called Nước Màu (see below).
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Barbecue the meat patties.

How to make Nước Màu: dissolve 1/2 cup sugar (100g) on low heat. When caramelised add 1/2 cup hot water and mix until the sauce is a clear liquid.

The dipping sauce

To make the dipping sauce you mix 300ml water, 2,5 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp fish sauce, 2/3 tbsp vinegar or lime juice. All according to taste. The dipping sauce is served warm, not hot or cold.

To serve you add the barbecued pork patties to a bowl, add some of the pickled vegetables and pour over the dipping sauce. Add minced garlic and sliced fresh chili. Serve the noodles on a separate dish and dip the noodles in the dipping sauce.

Below two photographs I made in Hanoi and it should look like this.

I also marinated and barbecued some sliced pork belly. You can serve this as well.

Gỏi đu đủ kiểu Thái

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Thai papaya salad. Shred the unripe papaya in long thins strips and put these in cold water for 15 minutes. Then all you need to memorise is the dressing:

4 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp fermented fish sauce
3 tbsp lime juice
1 tps chilli powder
1 tbsp chilli paste

Fresh:
Garlic
Cilantro
Shallot
Red Chilli.

Above quantity for 2-3 people, I divided everything in two for one person. Save some dressing as a dipping sauce for other side dishes, like boiled meat.

First mix the sugar with lime until dissolved. Ten add the rest. I didn’t have Thai or Laos fermented fish sauce but I did have pickled krill Hanoi style. Krill are tiny shrimp. This has about the same intoxicating smell as fermented fish sauce, so it as a great substitute. The pickled krill is more concentrated and I used less than 5 table spoons. For the chili paste I used Thai chili paste with soya bean oil, which worked just fine. You can be flexible in making the dressing as long as you know the taste of the substitutes. “Normal” fish sauce is no substitute for fermented fish sauce!

For the papaya salade you will need some steamed shrimp and/or octopus, freshly fried peanuts, and before serving you mix in fresh shallot, cilantro, lemons grass (soft part) and more red chili, sliced. Serve with sticky rice. The dressing can also be used as a dipping sauce for anything you like.

Non-Thai substitute: pickled krill Hanoi style.

Sauce for ayam setan panggang

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This is a recipe for a simple satay sauce based on kecap manis. You simply fry some shallot, garlic and rawit chili pepper in hot oil until fragrant.

Then you grind the shallot, garlic and pepper to a paste and mix it with kecap manis, some petis udang and salt.

The sauce is great for fried chicken but can also be used for satay. It is also popular as a sauce for fried tofu as a simple vegan dish. Add lontong rice, some bean sprouts (boil for 30 seconds), pickled cucumber and fried shallot for a complete meal.

Recipe for ayam setan panggang

Make a spice mix from 10 rawit, 5 lombok, 1 tea spoon white pepper, 1 tablespoon tamarinde juice, 1 tablespoon gula jawa (=sugar), 5 garlic and 1 tomato.

I ended up using more rawit and lombok than shown in the photo. You can use a kitchen blender. Fry the spice mixture in hot oil for 3 minutes. For the whole proces I used a wok on my Thai wood stove. I used the hot coal to fry the chicken.

Add chicken pieces and fry for another 3 minutes.

Now you will add about 300 ml water, a piece of ginger and lemon grass. Reduce until the water has evaporated. Add another 300 ml of water and reduce again.

Now the chicken is ready to be grilled.

Moong dal tadka

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You can never go wrong with an Indian dal. This recipe is for moong dal tadka, made with mung beans. The mung beans are not used whole but without the outer skin and split. Mung bean sprouts are well known in The Netherlands as taugé, which is a Malay language word. In Bahasa Indonesia the proper word is kecambah.

Moong dal tadka means the mung beans are cooked with the aromatics: onion, tomato, ginger, turmeric and red chili powder.

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported(CC BY-SA 3.0): Earth100

The below quantities are for one person, or two persons if the Moong dal tadka is a side dish.

1/2 cup moong dal (very well rinsed)
1,5 cups water
1 onion finely chopped
1 tomato finely chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, finely chopped
1/3 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon chili powder.

Pressure cook the above ingredients for about 10 minutes and let the pressure fall naturally. After cooking add water to gain the correct consistency for a dal. Add salt to taste.

The next step is to make the tempering.

Add 2 to 3 tablespoons ghee in a tadka pan. Add 1 teaspoon cumin seeds and 1 teaspoon mustard seeds. Wait until they ‘pop’. Add 4 to 5 crushed garlic cloves and 1 to 2 slit green chilies. Turn off the heat and add 1/2 teaspoon garam masala, 1/4 teaspoon red chili powder and 1 pinch asafoetida (hing).

Pour the tempering over the dal. That’s it!

Either serve with rice or roti/chapati. I usually make rogni roti. ‘Rogni’ is the Persian word for clarified butter (ghee). This dal is northern Indian so chapati is more appropriate.

225 gram chapati flower (atta)
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons milk
50 gram melted ghee.

Mix well. This quantity will make 6 chapati.

Vietnamese soup stock

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I used six chicken backs and two pieces of pork hock. After washing the bones and meat, I boiled both separately for about 10 minutes. Then I drained the bones and put them in a clean pressure pot and covered the bones with fresh water. I boiled the stock with the lid open for about 45 minutes and removed the pork hock (the meat should be soft by then). Then I boiled the chicken bones in the pot under pressure for about 1,5 hours (3 to 4 hours without a pressure pot). After opening the lid I further boiled the stock to reduce the liquid and brought the stock to taste with salt, some sugar and fish sauce.

The stock was meant for bún riêu, crab noodle soup, but I didn’t have most of the needed ingredients. I just improvised and used the plucked pork meat from the hock, fish balls, fried tofu, paksoi and egg noodles instead of rice noodles. The broth itself was amazing. Next time I will have to find crab meat, soy bean oil, minced pork meat and rice noodles. The recipe also calls for pig’s blood but this will be very difficult to buy in The Netherlands.

A very French dejeuner

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The last time I was in Meursault for work was in December 2019. It was impossible to image that just two months later the world would be effectively closed for years to come. In 2019 Meursault was cloaked in a heavy fog. Now I finally got to see the village and its surroundings.

On the first day I had lunch in Le Bouchon. Address: 1 Pl. de L Hôtel de ville, 21190 Meursault, France. I ordered the salade de gésier, oeufs pochés sauce meurette and a glass of white wine.

I can’t remember if I ever had gésier before. In English this is called the gizzard, which its part of the giblets, a culinary term for the edible offal of a fowl, typically including the heart, gizzard, liver, and other organs. I loved it. The poached eggs were also perfect.

The sauce meurette can easily be made at home. The ingredients vary but the list below is a good starting point.

60 g de beurre mou, coupé en dès, 1 échalote, 50 g de lardons, 25 cl de vin rouge, 1 feuille de laurier sauce, 2 cuillerées à soupe de vinaigre de vin, 4 gros oeufs extra frais.

Pour la sauce meurette :
1. Pelez et ciselez finement l’échalote.
2. Dans une casserole en inox, faites chauffer la moitié du beurre. Ajoutez l’échalote ciselée, les lardons et laissez cuire 2-3 min jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient légèrement dorés.
3. Ajoutez la feuille de laurier et le vin. Portez à ébullition puis baissez le feu et laissez cuire 10 à 15 min sur feu moyen, jusqu’à ce que le vin réduise de 2/3.
4. Hors du feu, incorporez le beurre restant.

Pour la cuisson des oeufs pochés :
1. Remplissez une petite casserole d’eau et portez-la à ébullition. Ajoutez le vinaigre et baissez un peu le feu pour que l’eau frémisse.
2. Cassez un oeuf dans une louche et plongez-la délicatement dans l’eau frémissante en faisant attention de ne pas casser l’oeuf.
3. Laissez cuire 3 min puis égouttez l’oeuf poché sur une feuille de papier absorbant.
4. Faites de même avec les autres oeufs. Retirez les longs filaments avec une paire de ciseaux si besoin.
5. Servez les oeufs sauce meurette sans attendre, nappés de sauce meurette et décorés d’un brin de persil.

Dîner de gala au Château de Meursault

On Saturday there was a dîner de gala in the castle. Like always each course was accompanied with the Ban bourguignon and some great wines:

Meursault ‘les Meix Chavaux’ 2019, Domaine Gilles Lafouge.

Meursault rouge 2020, Domaine Boyer-Martenot.

Beaune 2020, Domaine du Château de Meursault..

Oeuf en meurette de vin blanc, ligne croustillant et chips de lard.

Chausson de pintade aux champignons, légume de moment et risotto de pomme de terre.

Fromage avec éclat vigneron (Comté, Epoisses, Brittle-Savarin).

Paring Chardonnay with cheese

One of the French rules is to pair a wine with a cheese from the same region. In Meursault I bought one bottle of Chardonnay from Beaune to bring home. In the Amsterdam cheese shop they had only one cheese from Bourgogne: a Charolais fermier goat cheese. This cheese is from Saône-et-Loire, so not exactly from the same department as Beaune, Côte-d'Or, but close enough.

https://kaaswiki.abrahamkef.nl/artikel/charolais-fermier/

Ba chỉ rang sả (lemongrass pork belly)

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In Vietnam I had several dishes, which combine lemongrass with pork. It is a lovely combination.

For 500 gram pork belly you need about:

5 garlic cloves, minced
3 shallots, minced
1 - 2 tablespoon fish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
5-6 lemongrass stalks

Marinate the meat with the finely chopped garlic, shallot, black pepper, fish sauce and sugar.

Fry the meat for 15 minutes. Add the thinly sliced lemongrass and fry until done.

Below a different version with fresh lemongrass and an assortiment of meats.

I saw a different version in which you braise the pork belly in a little water with soy sauce. If the meat is half done add sliced onion, lemon grass, seasoning powder, a little sugar, oyster sauce, dried chili and kaffir leaves.

Cơm bình dân

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Cơm bình dân translates as “rice for the common man”. You will find it as street food, in small restaurants or at bus stops when traveling long distance. It is cheap and served fast. I wish we could have cơm bình dân in The Netherlands instead of the ubiquitous snackbar where you will not find a vegetable of any kind.

Below rice and three dishes served on one plate at the busstop halfway Hà Giang and Hà Nội.

Fried shrimp, pork and preserved vegetables, some tofu with pork and a small bowl of soup.

Bún chả

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Bún chả is served as lunch in Hanoi. The dish consists of grilled pork balls, or patties, served with rice noodles and a dipping sauce. In the south of Vietnam there is a similar dish called bún thịt nướng, which is served with grilled pork on top the rice noodles.

The grilled pork was already served in the dipping sauce with some carrot and sliced green papaya. The dipping sauce is made from diluted fish sauce with sugar, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, crushed garlic and chilli.

You add the rice noodles to the bowl and add fresh chillis and crushed garlic according to taste. Of course there is plenty of fresh kinh giới served on the table.

As a side dish I ordered fried springs rolls, which are called nem rán in Hanoi. In the South of Vietnam they are called chả giò.

Most bún chả restaurants grill the pork on the street, which is great advertising.

One night in Saigon

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This was my first evening in Ho Chi Minh City. The owners of Dai Tin invited me for dinner. I was so busy deconstructing the food, and downing many cans of Saigon beer, I forgot to note down the name of the restaurant. I even forgot to take photos of everybody invited to this dinner!

First plate contained thinly sliced boiled pork with many fresh leaf vegetables, pine apple, star fruit and cóc. For sure there is húng guế (Thai basil) on the plate.

You either dip a piece of meat in the dipping sauce and eat it like it is, or take a thin sheet of rice paper called bánh tráng and make a wrap with some of the leaves and meat. You dip the rolled wrap into the dipping sauce.

The key to a Vietnamese table are nước chấm, dipping sauces. You are free to mix your own dipping sauce according to your preferences with what is available on the table. You can squeeze lime in a dipping sauce or add fresh chilli. Dipping sauces can be based on fish sauce, soy sauce, fermented shrimp sauce, fermented soy beans (tương) or simply salt, black pepper mixed with lime juice for a more neutral taste. The basic ingredients can be mixed with (rice) vinegar and sugar.

Second dish was a bowl of fried shrimp, vegetables and fruit. The shrimp are so small you eat them whole. A large rice cracker with black sesame seeds was served, which you can use as a scoop for the shrimp mixture. The rice cracker is called Bánh tráng mè or Bánh đa vừng in North Vietnam.

I think this egg was either a goose or a duck egg. Served in fish sauce. You break up the egg and add some Vietnamese luffa or sponge gourd. Mix and eat. Lovely.

Next up was fried fish. These fish are typically dried for just one day, so that they retain some moist, and then deep fried. Again served with fresh leaves. I think I recognise Xà Lách (Vietnamese Lettuce). For the fish a soy based dipping sauce is appropriate.

This vegetable stir-fry was the prelude to the final dish. The stir-fry contained the heart and offal meat of the helmeted guineafowl. This bird is native to Africa.

The final dish was the shredded helmeted guineafowl. The rich dipping sauce contained BBQued garlic and pepper corns. By then I was sure I had 20 cans of beer, poured over a large block of ice.

Amsoi

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Amsoi is the Surinamese, and partly Chinese, name for a variant of Brassica juncea. Soi is Chinese for ‘vegetable’. This plant is also known as brown mustard, Chinese mustard, Indian mustard, leaf mustard, Oriental mustard and vegetable mustard, and is a species of mustard plant. The taste is slightly pungent and reminds of mustard. The leaves are rich in vitamins A, C, and especially rich in vitamin K.

In The Netherlands you can buy amsoi, which will be a bit different from the plant you would buy on a Chinese, Korean or Indian market. The plant is very common and is widely used in cuisine. The genus of the plant is Brassica which contains cabbages.

Below a typical use in the Surinamese kitchen from New Draver restaurant: amsoi with salted beef, chicken and rice. No need to boil the amsoi separately, you can just fry the finely cut amsoi and stew the vegetable in its own water, which will be released during the cooking process.