I had this delicious salad for late breakfast in Hue, Vietnam. Obviously, I love salads. You could have it for lunch or dinner as well, of course. It's the perfect way to use up some leftover beef if you don't want to start from scratch. You could even, in a pinch, use thickly sliced roast beef from a deli. Turn the page for the easy recipe...
Showing posts with label Hue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hue. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
THOUGHTS ON MOSAICS
I once had a picnic lunch in Julius Caesar's living room. It was back in the day, when Rome's Forum was still a weedy field and nobody was rushing about seeing their day's quota of ruins. There were no fences and no crowds, only me and two cats and a few odds and ends: salami, buffalo mozzarella, some big dark olives, bread and some wine. It was a fall day, sunny and just cool enough. I sat on a large piece of rubble (marble, carved, 1st C BCE), laid out my feast on another stone, and fed both myself and the cats. A little sign, discrete, almost an afterthought, informed me that the mosaics under my feet were part of Caesar's floor. For the life of me I can't remember what the pattern was, only that the background of 1/2" marble tessera was white, and some dark swirls - leaves? fish? - peeked from under the dirt and weeds.
Think of mosaics and that's likely what you'll think of: small squares of colored stone carefully laid, enduring for millennia in some cases. Tunisia and western Turkey, for example, are practically paved with mosaics. Find the Bardo Museum (Tunis) site for some killer examples. Mosaics also come in tiny, detailed form, some of the stones 1/16", which allows amazing detail.
I am in Hue, Vietnam, and went this morning (on a motorbike, picture that) to see the Imperial tombs outside the city. Most of them date to the mid-19th century, and - compared to most funerary complexes - are pretty modest. Part of their beauty is their settings, which are rolling parkland and forests, with long expanses of lotus-strewn lakes. The Minh Mang complex is particularly lovely, with a series of rising and falling pavilions amidst the trees.
And then we have the tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh, (1916 - 1925, essentially a French puppet), sited on a hillside overlooking rolling hills and rice paddies. The guidebook says mosaics line the mausoleum at the top of the hill, so I climbed the 127 steps and went into the hall where the Emperor is buried. The room, centered by the gaudiest tomb ever built, is thirty by thirty, with twenty foot ceilings. There is not a square inch that does not have high relief glass and pottery figures in it: the Four Seasons, Eight Precious Objects (?), and Eight Fairies (those I wanted to see), dragons and phoenixes, clouds and peonies and plants, birds and flowers. It is in absolutely awful taste and it hangs together beautifully. There are times when nothing succeeds like incredible excess. This is one of those times.
Photos coming, when I can get to a computer that isn't blocked.
Think of mosaics and that's likely what you'll think of: small squares of colored stone carefully laid, enduring for millennia in some cases. Tunisia and western Turkey, for example, are practically paved with mosaics. Find the Bardo Museum (Tunis) site for some killer examples. Mosaics also come in tiny, detailed form, some of the stones 1/16", which allows amazing detail.
I am in Hue, Vietnam, and went this morning (on a motorbike, picture that) to see the Imperial tombs outside the city. Most of them date to the mid-19th century, and - compared to most funerary complexes - are pretty modest. Part of their beauty is their settings, which are rolling parkland and forests, with long expanses of lotus-strewn lakes. The Minh Mang complex is particularly lovely, with a series of rising and falling pavilions amidst the trees.
And then we have the tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh, (1916 - 1925, essentially a French puppet), sited on a hillside overlooking rolling hills and rice paddies. The guidebook says mosaics line the mausoleum at the top of the hill, so I climbed the 127 steps and went into the hall where the Emperor is buried. The room, centered by the gaudiest tomb ever built, is thirty by thirty, with twenty foot ceilings. There is not a square inch that does not have high relief glass and pottery figures in it: the Four Seasons, Eight Precious Objects (?), and Eight Fairies (those I wanted to see), dragons and phoenixes, clouds and peonies and plants, birds and flowers. It is in absolutely awful taste and it hangs together beautifully. There are times when nothing succeeds like incredible excess. This is one of those times.
Photos coming, when I can get to a computer that isn't blocked.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
COMING SOON!
If your idea of soon is 90 days, we're on the same page. Ninety days from now I'll be on the western edge of the Ring of Fire: Indonesia, Malaysia, perhaps Borneo, little-visited places like that. My first stop will be the spider-shaped island of Sulawesi, whose central core is five active volcanoes. Unlike previous trips (Italy in the fall of 2011, for examaple, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), I will be keeping you up to date on food, sights, food, sounds, food, smells (especially food), and how difficult it is to get to Torajaland. Among other places.
Other places? Singapore! Home of the famous hawker food stalls and of a cuture that lives to eat (my kind of culture). Much has been written about these open-air stalls, but not by me. It's the only reason I'm going there: the food. As Singapore re-invents itself every five years or so, there's not much history there except in the food. An amalgam of Nonya, Chinese, Indian, and every other cuisine of the immigrants who bilt this economic powerhouse.
Then off to Viet Nam, where in the north the incredible karst formations jut out of the placid waters of HaLong Bay (no doubt you've seen photos, they're on the wall of every Vietnamese restaurant in the country) and, in the central coast region, the ancient Imperial city of Hue (on the Perfume River, just gives me chills to think of it) will whisk us into the distant past.
And finally north and east to Japan, where I'll spend a lot of time in ancient Kyoto, and especially at a sushi bar I've heard of there.
Get ready for a lot of up-close-and-personal: sights, historic and modern; food, from street stalls to sit-down-with-tablecloths; natural beauty (under the water as well as above); indigenous cutltures and their arts and crafts. And who knows what else?
Stay tuned! Meanwhile, there's a new story about a day on the Italian trip you might get a chuckle out of.
Thanks for reading.
Other places? Singapore! Home of the famous hawker food stalls and of a cuture that lives to eat (my kind of culture). Much has been written about these open-air stalls, but not by me. It's the only reason I'm going there: the food. As Singapore re-invents itself every five years or so, there's not much history there except in the food. An amalgam of Nonya, Chinese, Indian, and every other cuisine of the immigrants who bilt this economic powerhouse.
Then off to Viet Nam, where in the north the incredible karst formations jut out of the placid waters of HaLong Bay (no doubt you've seen photos, they're on the wall of every Vietnamese restaurant in the country) and, in the central coast region, the ancient Imperial city of Hue (on the Perfume River, just gives me chills to think of it) will whisk us into the distant past.
And finally north and east to Japan, where I'll spend a lot of time in ancient Kyoto, and especially at a sushi bar I've heard of there.
Get ready for a lot of up-close-and-personal: sights, historic and modern; food, from street stalls to sit-down-with-tablecloths; natural beauty (under the water as well as above); indigenous cutltures and their arts and crafts. And who knows what else?
Stay tuned! Meanwhile, there's a new story about a day on the Italian trip you might get a chuckle out of.
Thanks for reading.
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