This is the fifth and final installment of my monthly column in Chengdoo Citylife Magazine, 'Your Chuancai Cupboard'. This month: Vinegar.

Vinegar, 醋， is among the most important condiments in Chinese cooking. One of the so-called ‘Seven Essentials’ of the traditional Chinese kitchen (along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce and tea), vinegar’s importance in Chinese culture even extends to the language – in Mandarin, ‘to eat vinegar’， 吃醋， means to be jealous of somebody or something.

Vinegar is said to have been invented in China during the Xia Dynasty in around 2000 BC, and has been commercially produced from as early as the 1st century AD. It is particularly prized for its sourness (one of the four essential tastes, along with salty, sweet and bitter), and it is also widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for the treatment of all manner of ailments, from high blood pressure to athlete’s foot; TCM practitioners use vinegar to promote warm (yang) energy, and it is said to be particularly effectively when eaten in autumn.

Though commonly referred to as rice vinegar, Chinese vinegars are in fact usually made from a combination of ingredients that often includes rice (both white and black), but may also utilize wheat, millet, and sorghum. The color of Chinese vinegars ranges widely, from clear to inky black, and so too does the taste, from strongly acidic to smoky and mild.

Sichuan is one of China’s four most famous producers of vinegar; the other three are Zhejiang, Shanxi, and Fujian. Sichuan’s capital of vinegar production is Langzhong, in the northeast of the province, where, unique among Chinese vinegars, bran is the primary ingredient.

Baoning vinegar is the most famous and widely used brand made in Langzhong, but others do exist – I particularly like that made by the Langzhou 朗州 company, which is sweeter than the Baoning variety. At the Langzhou Vinegar Company, the traditional method of production is still in use, and goes as follows.

First, rice and dried corn kernels are steamed, and then are added to a mixture of bran and over 60 traditional Chinese medicines and herbs. This mixture is then left to ferment in sealed containers for up to 60 days, then is mixed with spring water and seeped for 2 to 3 days. Finally, the liquid is strained, boiled, bottled and is thus ready for use.

Though not as commonly used in Sichuan’s cuisine as in other parts of China, vinegar is nonetheless an indispensable part of the Sichuanese kitchen. Black vinegar is more commonly used than white vinegar, but the latter does feature particularly in cold dishes. Black vinegar can be bought at dried good stalls at markets, while supermarkets usually stock a wide variety of many different types. Outside of China, Chinkiang vinegar, widely available in Oriental supermarkets, is an acceptable substitute.

Perhaps the most famous Sichuanese dish that uses vinegar is the ridiculously easy Tiger-Skin Peppers， 虎皮请教， pictured above. Below is a recipe I’ve adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery; the size of green pepper you use for this dish can vary – if you like it spicy, go for the long, thin ones; if not, go for a larger variety.

Tiger-Skin Peppers 虎皮请教

4 green peppers (capsicum)
Cooking oil
1-2 tablespoons black vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Salt to taste

1. If using large green peppers, quarter and discard the seeds and stems. If using the small kind, just squash slightly with the side of your cleaver. Mix the sugar and salt into the vinegar until they are completely dissolved.
2. Heat about 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok until smoking, and then add the peppers. Stir-fry over a medium heat for 5-6 minutes, or until the peppers are tender and their skins blistered and streaky.
3. Finally, remove the peppers to a serving dish, drizzle with the vinegar mixture and serve.

As I’ve already written about, cafe culture in Vietnam is huge – both of the no-frills, cheap and cheerful kind, and the more fancy, European-influenced variety. I love both; the former for a quick caffeine fix, and latter for when I want to lounge the afternoon away. I drank at innumerable cafes while I was in Vietnam (oh the hardships of the life of a food writer!), but these two were my favourites.

The runner-up, featured in the two photos above, is Le Fenetre Soleil in Saigon. Hidden away on the second floor of a perfectly ordinary corner building, and accessed by a disconcertingly dingy stairway, Le Fenetre Soleil was a breath of fresh air in hot, sweaty Saigon. With its plush, romantic decor, this cafe made me feel like I’d stepped back into a more sophisticated time – though that impression was somewhat spoiled by the rather exorbitant prices, meaning I had to make my delicious dragon fruit smoothie last.

Money was not an issue, however, at my most favourite classy cafe in Vietnam, Nola in Hanoi. Almost as cheap as the places out on the street, Nola, like Le Fenetre Soleil, is a bit difficult to find, down a narrow alley off May Ma in the Old Quarter, but it more than repays the effort.

Cooly Bohemian, Nola is the kind of cafe I’d like to open one day – full of gorgeous, retro knick-knacks and off-beat, quirky touches (like a canopy of umbrellas on the roof terrace, for example).

I came back to Nola so many times I think the staff must have thought I lived in Hanoi – which, with such delights as Nola to tempt me, I’m quite tempted to do one day.

Le Fenetre Soleil
2/F, 135 Le Thanh Ton Street, District 1, Saigon.

Nola
89 Ma May, Hanoi.

Isn't this cute?!

As I was cycling along a tiny road in Ben Tre Province a few weeks ago, I came sight after sight to make a foodie's heart sing. This was the first: a whole family, packing up longans grown probably just down the road.

The longans arrived in large baskets, still on the stalk and accompanied by abundant leaves.

Each little round longan would then be plucked free, and packed like a jigsaw puzzle into large white crates.

The family thought it completely hilarious that I wanted to take photographs of their work, and laughed even harder when I started to photograph the baby - but who, honestly, couldn't resist such a sight?

More from that amazing bike ride coming soon...

For some travellers to Vietnam, it’s all about the pho. I, however, am not one of them. Though this justifiably famous rice noodle dish is of course perfectly nice on occasion, especially for breakfast, I often find it bland and mushy, and, consequently, am not its greatest fan.

Not so it’s less famous, but for me far more delicious rice noodle sister, bun. Round, rather than flat, and of a texture with a little more bite than pho, bun is used in all manner of noodle soup dishes and a whole bunch of dry ones too; and, unlike its firmly Northern relative, is eaten up and down the length of Vietnam, with infinite varieties along the way. I ate bun countless times in Vietnam; here are a few of the most memorable.

I guess you could say the love affair began in Hanoi, where I fell head over heels for the city’s famous bun cha: patties and slices of barbequed, marinated pork, served in a light broth (sometimes with vegetable slices), accompanied by fresh herbs and of course, bun.

But it was the dish in the opening photo which really opened my eyes to the possibilities of bun. This is bun oc, snail and rice noodle soup. I’d been eyeing this dish up for a while before I had the opportunity to try it, which turned out to be on the afternoon of my 25th birthday, as I was wandering around the Old Quarter. On a bustling shopping street full of people making purchases for Tet, I saw this rather taciturn lady

ladling out a soup whose aroma made me instantly ravenous. I settled down on a teeny stool and waited with happy expectation – but, quell horreur! It turned out she’s just run out of snails!

Though disappointed, I decided that the broth smelled good enough to eat just on its own, and my goodness was I right: richly savoury, with a salty seafood-essence nicely balanced by tomato and the fresh herbs, it was probably the most flavoursome broth I ate in the whole of my stay in Vietnam – and seeing that I was enjoying it so much, the lady sweetly fished out a few stray snails from the bottom of the broth pot for me. They were, needless to say, amazing, but alas, far too few.

My next favourite on the bun trail was in the lovely, modest town of Quy Nhon, which, when I was there, was in full Tet swing, meaning that many eating establishments were closed. This one though,

a little streetside stall near the beachfront, wasn’t, and very lucky for me too, because the bun here (dish name unknown) was fantastic. Packed full of goodies – I wrote down ‘two kinds of sausage, barbequed meat, cucumber, shredded carrot and daikon, herbs, crispy things, peanuts, hard-boiled egg, various sauces’, but I’m pretty sure there was more – this was a bun that punched above its weight, and kept me coming back time and time again.

Finally, we come to the last, and best, stop on the bun tour – Hoi An in central Vietnam, where I ate extraordinarily well. This bun was at a stall just 5 minutes away from my hotel, which again, was so good that I had to keep on going back. The dish was bun thi nuong (grilled pork with cold rice noodles), and though I didn’t get to eat many other versions, I’d confidently say this would beat any competition hands down.

Isn’t that a mouth-watering sight? On top are deep-fried shallots and crushed peanuts; then a luscious mix of various sauces; then the meat (in this case pork); then the noodles and finally hidden away out of sight, fresh herbs and beansprouts. I’m still fantasizing about this one.

As I wrote some months ago, one of the things I was looking forward to most about Vietnam was the chance to eat lots and lots of durian. I imagined that the spikey fruit would be everywhere once I'd crossed the border from China, and thought also that they'd be so cheap that I would feast on them every day.

Crushingly, as I quickly discovered, this was not the case. In Hanoi, vendors sold sickly-looking durian for almost as expensive as in China, and everyone I questioned on the subject told me I'd have to wait till I got down south to indulge my durian fantasies.

Luckily, they were all right. On my very first day in Saigon, I saw more durian being sold than I had in the entire rest of my time in Vietnam, and it was in Saigon that I found the bounty pictured above. As well as looking fantastic they were cheap too (30,000 dong - around $1.50 - per kilo), and so I bought a lovely little one-person sized specimen and retreated in glee to the shady environs of the botanical gardens.

From Saigon, I went to Ben Tre, a region of the Mekong Delta famous for its fruit. One of the main reasons I went there was to see durian trees, and though I wasn't successful in this mission (frustratingly, only because of time constraints), I did get to eat another two in the space of 24 hours. This was the first:

eaten on a boat as the sun set gloriously over the Mekong; and the second, the very next morning, from a roadside vendor as I waited for my bus back to Saigon, which, incredibly for a 1kg fruit, yielded 11 portions of fruit (usually you only get 5 or 6 in a durian of that size).

It's often noted that durian tends to inspire a love or hate reaction. But what is not so often related is how those that fall into the former camp tend to feel themselves part of a sort of exclusive club, one whose pleasures only its members fully understand.

That's how it feels to me anyway, and especially in Vietnam. Everytime I ate durian or talked about it with a fellow lover, their whole face would light up like a christmas tree. I saw it in Dai, my guide in Ben Tre, who told me about the different types of durian, the best season to eat them, and where they grow. I saw it too in the eyes of the old woman who walked past me as I ate durian in a Saigon park, who doubled back to ask me 'it good?' with a beaming smile. And I know also that it shows on my own face, as when the vendor in Ben Tre cracked open the amazingly bountiful durian and laughed hysterically at my reaction.

It might be a while before I get to eat as much durian as I've eaten in the last week - but I have these memories to sustain me till then.