Cool Cumber and Easy Spring, Part 1 of 2

“Hi, guys. Today we are making two dishes, simple and nutritious. The first one is what we call ‘Cool Cumber,’ with cucumber, rice, and tofu. And the second one, we make easy spring rolls, so we call it ‘Easy Spring.’ Alright, I’m going to show you how.

So for the soup, we need half of this cucumber, 100 grams of silky soft tofu, and two handfuls of rice. We also need fermented soy beans. We call it ‘chao’ in Aulacese (Vietnamese), so it’s soy bean cubes, fermented. Optionally, we can have chili sauce, and we have Maggi or soy sauce. We have pepper, salt, and a little bit of palm sugar, even in a small can like this. Or you can have fruity syrup also. A little bit of vegetable broth powder, if you have it. If you don’t, this should be enough already.

For the Easy Spring, we need ready-made spring roll pastry. You can buy them in the supermarket or Chinese shop, or you can use the rice paper, it’s easier to find. And we have ready-made chili sauce and some oil to fry, vegetable oil.”

“Normally, I eat cucumber together with the skin, but for this, we want a smooth ‘cool cumber,’ so we skin it off so that it doesn’t have any chewy requirements. We want this soup to be very smooth, like the summer breeze. This soup is very simple, but for summer, it’s very refreshing and has a cool effect, no? That’s why I call it ‘Cool Cumber.’

Cucumber is a fantastic fruit. It can be eaten raw as salad, it can be cooked, it can be marinated, it can be fermented, all kinds of things. And it can be used in cosmetics. You know that already. When your eyes are tired, try two slices of cucumber and dab them on until you feel cooled off. And a cucumber, when it’s already in the fridge, it’s even more cool for your eyes. You can put them all over your face as a beauty treatment. You know that already.

Another thing I want to tell you. If you are in a hotel, and you don’t even have salt to wash your vegetables, and you always have some vinegar solution with you – meaning half vinegar, half water – you spray it on your vegetables or fruit, leave it for a few minutes, or you can wash it right away, then it’s as clean. You rub it, OK, like that, and then you rinse it under water, and it should be fine.”

“Sometimes the simple things are the most tasty things and satisfying. You have to taste it to make it exactly to your liking, the taste. Then, even if you don’t eat a lot, you feel satisfied. If we cook not according to our liking, sometimes we eat a lot, but we never feel that we have eaten anything.”