mao cai

So last Tuesday, I prepared this nice sandwich for lunch.  I put salami on a 6-inch baguette, toasted it and dumped brie cheese, mixed greens, tomato and avocado on it.  I also made a decent-tasting honey-mustard dressing to top it off.  It was good!  I was looking forward to having it for lunch.

So lunchtime came and we went to PGP.  My colleague went to one of the stalls to buy food while I went to find a seat.  It took her some time to come back and since I was already hungry, I had a bite or two of my sandwich.

When she came back, this is what she has.  A steaming bowl of noodles! (She said that they dont call it noodles. Ok, my bad.)  She let me try it and it was good!  A bit spicy but good! So, I kept my sandwich for afternoon snack and had this bowl of noodles too :)

mao cai at PGP canteen

Mai cai is a mixture of noodles, tofu, beancurd skin, bean sprouts, potato, seaweed, lotus root, cauliflower and food-whose-names-I-havent-heard-of, in soup.  The taste is a bit spicy and sour, if you put vinegar, which how my colleague does it.  At first, I think the combination of varying taste from the different ingredients makes it a bit confusing but after a few minutes of gulping the soup down, you can appreciate the cacophony of taste in your tongue.