Fried Stuffed Squid

Greg:

Some of you may recall that we attended a cooking school in Chiang Mai in Thailand. It's a popular activity that is well established in that city. In Hoi An, Vietnam, cooking schools abound, but they are really just an additional service offered by many of the restaurants. We chose to attend cooking school at one of our favourite restaurants in Hoi An, Cafe 43.

"Fresh Beer" or Bia Hoi is a cheap draught beer that is dispensed using a simple hand pump. For those brewers out there, this means that rather than using co2 to push out the beverage, air fills the headspace and oxidation ensures. Needless to say, the beer must be fresh for it to be any good. At 3000 dong ($1=20,000 dong) it is an outstanding deal.

But I digress. At cooking school, Cynthia, Max and I chose three dishes: Fried Stuffed Squid, Fresh Salad Rolls with Shrimp, and Chicken with Chili and Lemon Grass. Mmmm.

Here's how to make Fried Stuffed Squid.

Ingredients

• 1 squid
• 1/2 carrot, peeled, julienned and diced
• 1/2 white onion, thinly sliced and diced
• 1 bunch of spring onion
• 100 gm minced pork
• 1 tsp garlic, chopped and crushed in mortar and pestil
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar

Steps

1. Mix pork, garlic, pepper, salt and sugar in a bowl.
2. Using 2 Tbl veg oil in hot pan, add pork mixture. Cook for a minute with high heat.
3. Add onion, carrot and stir constantly until meat is cooked and onion is carmelized.
4. Add green onion and sauté for 3 min.

Now the fun part. Stuff the mixture into the squid. Pack it down! And use toothpicks to close the end.

Hold on tight, squid is extremely slippery!

Using 2 Tbl veg oil in a hot pan, add squid and cook over medium heat until nice and golden brown on all sides.

Serve on a bed of lettuce. Before serving, make perpendicular cuts into squid using scissors.

Dipping sauce (not optional): mix together 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper and juice of two small limes.

Delicious!



Now, once we return to Winnipeg, the tough part will be finding good squid.

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Merry Christmas from Vietnam!

Christmas away is bittersweet: not having to deal with the frenzy of Christmas shopping and schedule craziness but also missing the chance to mark the season with family and friends.

Here in Vietnam we've been surprised at how much Christmas bling there is-- no escaping the BoneyM Christmas diddies around here I tell you.

Wishing a warm seasons greetings from Vietnam with a short photo journal.

Christmas in Vietnam.

Our family Christmas dinner.

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Cambodia: Dec 16 - 19

Cynthia:

Throughout our travels we've seen temples and pagodas and shrines. But now we've experienced the mother of all religious buildings in Asia and indeed the largest religious structure in the world: Angkor Wat.

We only scheduled 3 full days to spend in the area of Angkor Wat and in retrospect I could have easily spent more time exploring the multitude of thousand year old ruins from the Khmer dynasty. Our time in Cambodia was also memorable in that we met up with some dear friends and co-supper club members, Jeff and Katrina with their sons Simon and Adam, who were embarking on a two week tour of Cambodia and southern Vietnam. Because of a flight delay on their journey to Asia, our plans for two days together was reduced to one. Kudos to all of them for withstanding our eager company-starved chattering as they fought off their jet lag.

Photo journal:

Day 1: Spent the afternoon and evening on a noisy "long tail" boat touring a muddy river and a local village on the water. The houses and community buildings are all on stilts to accommodate the high water of the rainy season. Midway through the tour we transferred to a shallow canoe type boat and two local women paddled us through a watery mangrove forest. The tour ended at the lake where the sunset over the water. For an informative summary of the fascinating Tonle lake, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonlé_Sap.

Our boat before it got stuck.

The boats spray a lot of water from the shallow river. We got wet once from another boat's spray.

You can tell its dry season.  It's hard to imagine the water level getting that high!

The village children learn to swim and maneuver boats at a very young age.

This girl was upset with some nearby boys.

Paddling through the mangrove forest.

This girl was in the stern for our paddle through the mangroves.

Sunset over Tonle lake near Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Day 2: tour of the crumbling ruins of Beng Malea, an ancient Khmer Palace. Unfortunately we weren't able to get a guide and there was next to no signage which left us with many questions about these ruins that were slowly being invaded by wandering tree roots. It was an incredible sight and the boys loved clambering all over the rubble under a shady leafy canopy.

Greg took this shot of another tourist posing.

I love the way the tree roots follow the grooves of this frame.

A local scarf seller.

Day 3: our day with Katrina, Jeff and their boys was nicely pre-arranged starting with a 4:50 am pick-up by guided tour bus. (I must confess, I don't think our family would have had the gumption to roll out of bed so early had it not been on our friends schedule!) We made it to the magnificent Angkor Wat (with about 500 other tourists) in time to see the sunrise. It was really breathtaking. The rest of the day was spent touring Angkor Wat and several other temples in the area.

The picture we got up at 4:40 am to capture.

We weren't the only ones.

Four boys gazing at ancient Angkor Wat.

A demon holding the head of a giant snake.

We thoroughly enjoyed spending a day with Jeff, Katrina, Simon and Adam.

One of the many large trees growing about the adjacent ruins of Ta Prohm.

We also visited the very inspiring and moving Cambodian Landmine Museum and Relief Centre. I won't go into detail about the history of and ongoing battle against Landmines in Cambodia but suggest you visit www.cambodialandminemuseum.org for the incredible story of the heroic child soldier turned Landmine clearer who founded the museum and the relief centre. In lieu of Christmas presents to each other and to our families this year, Greg and I made a donation to this worthy cause.

Exhibit of of a rudimentary prosthetic leg.

We're now in Hoi An, a lovely old touristy town on the central coast of Vietnam. We plan to spend Christmas here, enjoying the beach, the historic buildings, great food and 15 cent local beer! That said, we find ourselves missing our families and friends back home and have already talked about the grand potluck supper party we want to hold when we get back. We miss you dear readers and we wish you all a new year filled with peace and joy and a very Merry Christmas!

With love,

Cynthia, Greg, Max & Thomas

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A brief stop in Kuala Lumpur

Greg here.

Often simply referred to as KL, Malaysia's capital and largest city serves as a hub for air transport for the region and offered us a chance to enjoy some of the perks of a modern city.

While in KL we booked tickets for Siem Reap and Vietnam and obtained visas at the Vietnam embassy. On the more fun side, we checked out some of the malls. We were surprised by size of some of the malls and by the extravagance of their Christmas displays.

Despite the fact we didn't have much of a shopping agenda, we enjoyed the spectacle around us managed to take in two movies (Skyfall and The Hobbit) and an indoor amusement park.

Max and Thomas taking in the view of KL from the Mederka tower.

This man repaired Max's sandals,

Our favourite food stall in Little India, close to our hotel.

Last, before our departure we ventured just out of KL to see the Batu Caves. These impressive caves etched out of limestone cliffs house a major Hindu religious site as well as a thriving monkey population.

Hard to capture on "film"; the caves were inspiring.

Thomas staring down a gang of Macaus, aka "cheeky monkeys".

This monkey literally chased Thomas threateningly until Thomas tossed his cone to the ground. ( Cynthia hates these monkeys.)

From KL we flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Tune in next week to find out who we bumped into!

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