Wholesome Food in Hanoi

Hanoi is a killer.

The street food is delicious and the people are good but it is hard to take the speed, the noise, the MSG, and the smog of a Hanoi life for very long.

I travel by bicycle or motorbike, from a good job with a local NGO to meditation or yoga class but still feel strung out and depressed after a week or two in this city. I find that all my senses are filled with heavy-metal dust. - I need a lot of support and Lac Long Quan is one place where I go to get it.

On the west shore of West Lake there is a small bulk producer of macrobiotics. - They have saved my life in this smoggy fast-paced action-packed city.

Macrobiotic is about a person's whole environment, from food to social interactions to the climate and geography. It views sickness as the natural attempt of the body to return to a more harmonious balance with the dark and light aspects of life - it is really about diet and lifestyle.

Here is a poem by Matsuo Basho, translated by Robert Hass

A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.

How to Make Kao Fu (kǎo fū, 烤麩)

Here on the lush, banana, bamboo and barge filled banks of the Red River in Hanoi organic and alternative health food is rare. Our friend and local grocer orders bulk, gardens organically, prepares it all in her kitchen and living room and sends out boxes to us. She makes everything there in the house and is always trying to diversify. She acts as our health expert and nutritionist and says that seitan and tofu is not enough for us anymore, we need to go a step further into kǎo fū (烤麩). The best I could do for her was a google search which yielded nothing. The alternative macrobiotic health food movement of Hanoi needed a recipe for Kao Fu and it took many days to get it.

So here is the result of the search. A good simple recipe for Kao Fu. (Translation from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZfgXOcBdLM&feature=related)

Melt dry yeast in water at 37°C for 10 minutes. 

Mix flour and yeast solution together with a small spoon of salt...

No unit is given for the flour, just make a big dough (best to use high protein content wheat flour, so that you can get more gluten)

Allow dough to grow 1.5 times into a large net-kind structure. 

Wash the dough until it looks like long-chewed gum - at a certain point volume will not be lost through washing, at this point you've got wheat gluten.

cut into cubes

steam or fry.