Viet World Kitchen

Can REAL Asian Food be Mainstreamed?

Acclaimed cookbook author and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman recently invited me to contribute to his new site, MarkBittman.com. It's intended to be a "slog", e.g. a salon and food blog. The content is being crafted by Bittman and a team of ardent food people. There's home cooking, ingredient discussions, and information on food politics and trends. The site is not for dogma but rather for conversation, much like what we do here. And, there's some good cooking too!

I'll be posting content to the site on a regular basis -- broad topics or cooking stuff I find here and there - supplemental to what I have on Viet World Kitchen. My first post focuses on whether or not authentic Asian flavors can be produced on a mass level for mainstream America. What does it take?

We've discussed the meanings of authentic Asian food and modern and pan-Asian cooking. I recently went to a new restaurant this spring in Los Angeles that made me consider the opportunities for getting solidly tasty, honest Asian fare outside of ethnic enclaves.

What restaurant was it? RockSugar. For details, read the post on MarkBittman.com:

• Can Real Asian Food be Mainstreamed?

Gifts in the Mail: Handmade Knife from Vietnam

It is one thing to open up an Amazon package of something I ordered for myself, but it’s another to get surprise mail like the envelope above. Historian and novelist Dana Sachs sent it to me, prefacing on Facebook that she had a gift to add to my kitchen. I had no clue what to expect. Then the  manila envelope arrived.

It looked plain and unassuming. Being flat, it couldn’t contain artisanal palm sugar or homegrown chiles, a couple of past food gifts that I’ve received in the mail.

But it must have had something to do with Vietnam because that is Dana’s area of specialty. (Her new book, The Lives We Were Given, details the fall of Saigon through the journey of thousands of babies airlifted from Vietnam in April 1975.) On the back of the envelope, Dana cautiously warned me to open it carefully, lest I cut myself. Did she send me one of the 'killer' dao bao shredder/peeler knives?

Turns out that she sent me a handmade knife from Hanoi. She carefully wrapped the blade in paper and affixed this post-it note:

These are my favorite knives in the world. Don’t put it in the dishwasher. Also, they rust, so just wash it off. But they never get dull.

I slipped off the newspaper sleeve and found a hand-forged blade. My gawd. I’d never seen such a rustic knife. But I could not use it – yet.

Wok Stickers: Original Pot Sticker Experiment

My recent focus on stir-frying and woks got me thinking about how Chinese pot stickers may have first been cooked. As the dumpling legend goes, pot stickers date back to the Song Dynasty (960 – 1280 A.D.). They were initially regular shuǐjiǎo boiled dumplings cooked in a wok (guō) – the multipurpose Chinese cooking vessel. The chef cooking them forgot about his dumplings. After the water had boiled away, the dumplings stuck (tiē). He didn’t know what to do so he pried them from the wok and served them.

His guests loved the contrasts between rich filling, tender skin, and crusty bottom. Thus the pot sticker was born. The Mandarin name for pot sticker is guōtiē, which literally means wok sticker.

I was a brazen dumpling maker last week. After improvising a filling from leftover steak and bok choy, I prepared my basic dumpling dough and shaped a batch of dumplings. Instead of pan-frying them in a nonstick skillet as usual, I decided to use the wok. It was sitting out from all the stir-frying I’d been doing from Grace Young’s great new book.

Wok Sticker Trials
The experiment helped me understand why pot stickers are cooked they way they are today. The photo at the top of this post is of my wok stickers. You can see the flecks of wok patina that got caught onto the dumpling wrapper. I didn’t foresee that unintended consequence from using my well-seasoned wok. The dumplings stuck and I had to use a water and wooden spatula to detach them from the wok bottom. It was a slight struggle.

Asian Dumplings on the Fly: How to Create Your Own Fillings

If you’ve worked your way through a few recipes in the Asian Dumplings cookbook, you may want to break out on your own. You have a lot of dumpling leeway in the filling, which are mostly interchangeable in the cookbook recipe chapters. Read the recipe introductions and think of a mix-and-match ensemble wardrobe. (How many ways can you wear a business suit?) Once you understand the foundational filling flavor profile and texture, try winging one. Below are few pointers on how I did that today.

My fridge was overloaded with odds and ends of ingredients that I had prepped, cooked, or over purchased. There was leftover grilled steak, a partial bunch of bok choi, finely chopped wood ear mushroom from recipe development, and too much scallion, which I bought on impulse at our farmer’s market yesterday.

Key size, moisture, and ingredients. After making a steak sandwich for my husband’s lunch, a few slices remained. I wondered if I could chop them up fine and put them into a dumpling filling. I went at the beef with my knife until it was reduced to bits. You want things small for dumpling fillings. When improvising an Asian dumpling filling, do it with cooked meat as you can safely adjust the flavors by taste.

Stir-Fried Chicken with Black Bean Sauce Recipe

Most Chinese restaurant renditions of stir-fried dishes with black bean sauce are one note affairs. Then tend toward being salty and not much else. They are rarely well-balanced preparations because the fermented black beans standout too prominently. When you make such dishes at home, you are in command of the seasonings and can add nuance. You can tweak the flavors to coax out the tangy, winy qualities of the black beans.

Someone asked recently if buying black bean sauce in the jar is okay. My response was: it is NOT okay.

Prepared “black bean sauce” is like jarred or canned spaghetti sauce. All you need to make a great Chinese-style black bean sauce are fermented black beans (which are actually salted black soybeans). Similarly, all you need for a terrific spaghetti sauce is a stash of good tomatoes! Why let someone else mix up the sauce for you?

Where do you buy fermented black beans? Head to a Chinese market. The beans are sold in little plastic bags or in cylindrical paper cartons with some preserved ginger thrown in. I prefer the paper carton, though you have to buy a large amount. Once home, put the black beans in a jar and refrigerate.

Fermented black beans are also sold online, should you not live near a Chinese market. As long as you have the black beans, this dish comes together quickly.

Should you rinse fermented black beans before using them? It’s up to you. For delicate applications as in this stir-fry recipe, rinse them to remove some of the saltiness. For punchy preparations, such as those in the Sichuan repertoire, leave the salted fermented black beans in their lusty, earthy primal state.