Spring Rolls and Kimbap

Spring Rolls And Kimbap

Do you like Asian food, and what kind of a food is your favorite? Before I moved to the United States, I thought nobody knew about my country’s food. However, I was so wrong. After I had been here for five months, and when I could speak English to people here, I figured out that many Americans and other foreigners also know Pho and spring rolls, which are two popular dishes from my country. And I also found out one dish from Korea can even compare to the spring rolls. That is Kimbap. Spring rolls and Kimbap are two popular dishes from Asia. Even though these are two kinds of dishes, they have some aspects which are familiar, but some are different. I promise that no one, who after trying Kimbap and spring roll, will say, “ no, I do not like them.”

First, I want to describe what Kimbap and spring roll are, so you will know what I am writing about. Most people who have traveled to Korea are addicted to K-pop, or Korea drama, and they will know what Kimbap is. By watching Korean movies or listening to Korean music, people will see that the characters always eat one dish, or they will see how after school, teenage girls will stop at some fast food stores, which are next to the school, and eat things which are wrapped in a green paper and have a lot of color inside, like yellow, orange, green, and white. That is Kimbap. Can you image how it looks in your mind now? And people who have traveled to Sai Gon in South Viet Nam, have to know what spring rolls are. It is one of the dishes which cannot be absent from Vietnamese traditional food. Like Korean Kimbap, spring rolls are also the best dish for teen-ages to eat after school. I can remember a time when I was in Viet Nam. Every afternoon after class, when my friend asked me, “ Where do you want to go today, Nica?” The spring roll house was always the number one answer in my mind. By the way, the Vietnamese name for spring rolls is Goi Cuon.

The similarities between Kimbap and Goi Cuon are the following these are made from fresh materials, mostly contain vegetables, are rolled like a cylinder, and these are nonfat foods. Kimbap is made with yellow radishes, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, and rice for customers who are vegetarians. And the chef will add crab meat, egg, and ham to serve non-vegetarians. Then the chef will wrap those materials in seaweed. Spring rolls are also made with almost the same materials, but different kinds of vegetables. The kinds of vegetables Vietnamese use to make spring rolls are lettuce, basil, and Vietnamese perilla. Beside that, people who are non-vegetarians like to add pork belly, fried eggs, and baby shrimp in too. Instead of using rice like in the core of Kimbap, Vietnamese chefs use other kinds of ingredients, which are also made from rice, but in a different form. That is the Vietnamese rice noodle. After that, everything will be rolled in rice paper. A reason why people like these dishes is because people can eat spring rolls in to ways. What I wrote earlier is for people who like meat, and the other way is for vegetarians. Instead of pork, baby shrimp, egg, or crabmeat, we can use fake meat, vegetables, or a tofu for the core. Thus, both of them are healthy foods for everybody and ladies who are on a diet. Furthermore, they are two popular dishes for teen-ages. If you go to Korea and Vietnam, you will easily see these foods on the streets, or in any snack store. These are so cheap, so most consumers are students.

However, kimbaps and spring rolls also have some different aspects. First, Kimbap is from Korea, which some people call Kimchi country, and spring rolls are from Vietnam, where Pho comes from. More than that, Kimbap is wrapped in seaweed, and spring rolls are wrapped in rice paper. The seaweed is made by a plant under the sea. After picking it, it will be washed, cut, and pressed it into paper, then dried. In comparison, rice paper comes from a hot pot of rice flour and water, and it is steamed on a flat cloth. Then it is dried under the hot sun for at least 2 hours.  Rice paper has a round shape like a moon, but the seaweed has a rectangular shape . Because they come from two different locations, one from under water, and one from land, each has a different taste. Seaweed has the smell of salt, and the ocean, but it has a bland taste. Rice paper has no smell, but it has a slightly salty taste. The best way to eat seaweed is with hot steamed rice. The rice will make the seaweed softer, and you can smell the strong aroma of the seaweed. The best way to enjoy rice paper is to dip it in hot water, and eat it with hot steamed rice or with Vietnamese noodles, these ingredients will make the rice paper soft and tender. You only can smell what the food is by eating it because no word can describe how the food tastes. You should try it by using your nose to smell it and your mouth to taste it. Moreover, these food also have a different color. Seaweed is a green color of the plant, and rice paper is the white color of rice. Beside that, those dishes are served with the special sauces. The sauce to go with Kimbap is soy sauce or a sticky rice cake – dukbokki sauce. Spring rolls come with a soy bean sauce, small fibers of carrots, white radishes, and crushed fried peanuts. If you like it spicy, you can add some chili pepper in too.
 

Foods always have magic. We can create a new dish from the original one. Kimbap and spring rolls are great examples. They come from different countries, but they are the same kind of food. If you are a gourmet, you love to travel and try new foods. You will easily compare all of the foods in the world. When you read a comparison article or essay about foods, the food critic just writes about his/her opinion. Do not follow his/her advice. Instead, you should try both dishes because the food critic might be wrong. What he/she likes may not exactly be what you like. This is just a subjective idea. Thus, articles comparing foods are very useful for people who love to eat, but do not want to order a dish that they cannot eat. I hope after you read my comparison essay between Kimbap and spring roll, you will know more about them, and give your love to Asian food.

Do You Kow How to Make Banh Tet ?

                Do You Know How to Make Banh Tet ?

           

            Banh Tet is a special Vietnamese dish  to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which called Tet. According to tradition, everybody gathers at the house of the oldest person in the family on the last day of the old year to clean up the house and get ready for the first day of the New Year together. Of course, people will make Banh Tet on that day. Because of tradition, on New Year's Eve, everybody in the family will also pray to the Vietnamese deity to bless the land, house, and the family, and people offer a plate with five kinds of fruit and Banh Tet. Those are things which cannot be absent in the first three days of the New Year. Usually, people will make Banh Tet at home, so every family member will sit together, talk about their past year, and wait until it is ready. The eldest person will teach the youngest family member how to make Banh Tet. In this way, everybody in the family will know how to make it. Banh Tet will be easy to make for people who know how to make it, but it will be much challenge for those who cannot cook. There are three parts to cook Banh Tet: prepare the materials, fold the Banh Tet, and cook it. If you miss any of these steps, your Banh Tet will not come out delicious. Thus, you also need to be patient.   

            The first part is to prepare the materials. Banh Tet is made with sticky rice, mung beans and  pork, wrapped in a banana leaf and tied by a cord. Thus, what you need to get ready is the banana leaf, sticky rice, meat, mung beans, and the cord. In Vietnam, my family always used a banana leaf from my back yard, so we could save some money. If you do not have a banana leaf at home, you can buy one at a market. When you use a home grown banana leaf, you need to spend a lot of time cleaning and drying it. If you buy the banana leaf, you just need to clean it a little bit. I will give you a tip about how to know which is a good banana leaf. The tip is to choose a big and dark green leaf, so when you fold your Banh Tet, you will have more room for everything that goes inside. A second thing that is also important ingredients to make your Banh Tet good or not, which is the core. For those who are vegetarian, you can skip this step, and to who like meat, you have to remember to use a special cut of pork to make this dish, which is the belly. After you have washed it, cut it the same length of the Banh Tet you want to make. Next, put as much salt, sugar, and onion as you wish, and mix it with the pork belly. Do not put in too much salt or sugar, and then let it sit there as long as you can. I recommend you let it sit overnight. The third thing needed is the sticky rice. You soak it in water at least overnight. To make the coloring for it, you need the green color of a polium sauropi or a pandan, which are vegetables. You can buy one of them at the Asian market. You need to wash it good, pound it, and then wring it to get the green color from it. The sticky rice that has sat in water over night should be dry. And you should blend it together with the green color you just made. For the mung beans, you can choose a kind without a skin. After washing them, put them in a pot with a little bit of water. Boil them until the mung beans turn tender. Then, you need to cool them down on a large plate. Then, knead them into a cylinder, and put the pork you already made inside it. Finally, you finished the first part. I know it took a long time to prepare everything, but think about when it is done. You will feel happy and want to try what you have put a lot of work into. So be patient!

   

              Before you start the next part, which is folding the Banh Tet, you need to ready the water that you will use to boil the Banh Tet later. Normally, people cook it only once, so use the biggest pot you have. Fill the pot with water to three fourths full, and turn the heat to low. In Viet Nam, when making Banh Tet, almost everyone uses wood to cook because it is cheap and traditional. By the time you finish folding your Banh Tet, your water will be ready. Before you start folding, you should know that you need to be really meticulous, and your Banh Tet will be pretty or not depends on how meticulous you are. First you need to choose a comfortable position because this step also takes a long time. Where you want to do the folding, spread out a big blanket. You need this because you do not want to mess up your pretty house. Then, put the core, sticky rice, banana leaves that you had made on the blanket, and let's start. In a banana leaf, put 1 cup of sticky rice. Put a cylinder of mung bean and pork on top of the sticky rice and fold the rest of the banana leaf into a cylinder. To finish this step, you have to follow every step I mentioned earlier. If not, your Banh Tet will not be Banh Tet. Use a cord to tie what you just folded, and use your strength to tie it as tightly as you can. This step is really important. If the cord is not tight enough, your Banh Tet will fall apart.

           The last part is the easiest, but you also need to be careful. When you see the water is boiling, carefully put each Banh Tet, one by one, inside the pot. Otherwise, the boiling water could burn you. If you are cooking two kinds of Banh Tet, vegetarian and non-vegetarian, you need two pots to cook them separately. After you put them inside, close the lid, and keep the heat on medium. While waiting for it to be ready, you can do something instead like clean your house, or cook another thing for the New Year. However, you have to go check it every ten minutes. Make sure the heat is still on. If you use an electronic cooker, you do not have to check the heat, but you need to refill the pot with water when you see it is dry. Usually, it takes nine to twelve hours to cook. Thus, patience is an important thing for a chef to have to make this dish. With my experience, if you put your Banh Tet in a pot at 10 in the morning, by 9 at night, it will be ready to take out. When you take them out, take them out one by one, and put them in cool water for a few minutes to cool them down. This way, your Banh Tet will be soft and tender.

            Even though I am not in Vietnam anymore, and my family and I cannot follow every Tet tradition, but we always try to cook Banh Tet at home to keep some air of Tet here. As an elder Vietnamese said, “ It's not important where you are now, just know that you are Vietnamese. You need Banh Tet, leopard flower, and a plate with five kinds of fruit on your table for Lunar New Year.” We made fake leopard flowers, have some fruits, and Banh Tet. We just wait for the count down in Viet Nam. At one o'clock A.M, we say “ Happy Lunar New Year”. I hope that you can make a delicious Banh Tet the way I have showed you. Good luck and Happy Lunar New Year!