Bro-Ghetti

When I first lived in Saigon, I stayed at my uncle’s house for 6 months.  Since his was a full household, everyone was always in an out of the kitchen.  It wasn’t til I moved out  a year ago with my friend, Lillian, that now I had the space to cook (the time and inclination…that’s a different story).

We live in a steakhouse, which seems to be an auspicious location for a food blog. When I was living in Tra Vinh at university housing, our kitchen was combined with our bathroom. There were no counters, so you just do an Asian squat and put your cutting board on the floor…the same one you shower on.  Instead of washing dishes in a sink, you wash them in a giant bowl on the floor that you fill with water from a spout.  I came to associate cooking with sore calves.

This set up is not uncommon at all in Vietnam.  The lack of counters and using the floor, I mean. I haven’t really seen too many other kitchen/bathroom combos.

All in all, it’s nice to have a bigger kitchen space…with no toilets in sight, with counters and a sink big enough to wash dishes in.

Though there are plentiful bakeries, selling baguettes and fresh pastries like pate chaud, and banh mi vendors on most street corners, baking at home isn’t that common either.  Homes typically don’t come with ovens. After some not so subtle hinting, I got a big toaster oven from my cousins as a housewarming gift.

The fridge came with the apartment. With the fridge, came this ice cave. After 8 months of neither of us doing anything, Lillian finally chipped away at it. Within 3 weeks it was back in full force.

Now that the setting has been…er..set, on to the food. For my inaugural foray into the kitchen (not counting instant ramen), I chose “Bro-Ghetti”, which the Ghettalian  rendition of spaghetti.

The meat sauce is basically MEAT with a bit of tomato.  It’s pretty tasty though. I went a bit crazy with the sauce below, because I had so much! The next day I bought baguettes and made sloppy joes with the rest of the sauce.

I’d like to say this dish went smoothly.  However, one thing I didn’t take into account is that I didn’t have a can opener for the canned tomatoes.  Making due with a knife and an ill-advised use of a chopstick, I ended up with the following results:

And a chopstick casualty: