Viet World Kitchen

Homegrown Hmong Cucumbers

One the biggest rewards of having this site is helping people connect culinary dots. Weeks ago, I posted a recipe for a Hmong cucumber and mint cooler. Mark Delman, an avid gardener in the Bay Area, emailed about cultivating his own from seed. He asked to re-post my recipe for the drink.

I wanted a post-harvest follow-up and Mark sent it on Monday. Hmong cucumber are large and Mark's was more of a melon than normal cucumber. It was quite handsome.

If you are interested in growing your own Hmong cucumbers, you'll find some great information (seed sources, history, etc.) in Mark's post at PlanterTomato.com.

Love it when people experiment in the kitchen and garden.

Kohlrabi Stir-fried with Garlic and Egg Recipe (Su Hao Xao Toi)

Many thanks to those of you who contributed ideas on how to cook kohlrabi Asian style. Your thoughts fed my imagination over the weekend. I’d come home from a grueling week-long business trip out of town and was spent. Plus, I pulled my Achilles tendon on Thursday. Hobbling was the best I could do.

The nearly empty fridge had a bag of farmer’s root vegetables – carrots, watermelon radishes, and kohlrabi – half a red onion and some eggs. Recalling your comments and a conversation with my mother about kohlrabi, I whipped up this simple stir-fry to go with a bowl of rice and a watermelon radish salad.

The hardest part of it was peeling away all the tough kohlrabi skin. Trimming the root and stem ends first makes using the vegetable peeler to remove the skin easier. After an initial pass of the peeler, I did it again. Kohlrabi shines brighter once its thick exterior is gone.

Then it was simply a matter of cutting up the kohlrabi into thick julienne, about 1/4-inch wide. You can add carrot to this stir-fry too but that would rob kohlrabi of its stardom. Next time, I may throw a teaspoon or so of finely chopped dried shrimp into the skillet with the garlic and red onion.

Feeling much better after the meal, I hobbled with a much lighter step.

Serves 2 or 3

2 kohlrabi, each about the size of a large orange
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small red onion, sliced vertically into thin wedges
Salt

1. Peel the kohlrabi and cut into thick julienne. Set aside.

2. Beat the eggs with the fish sauce and black pepper. Set aside.

3. Heat the canola oil in skillet over medium high heat. Add the garlic and onion and cook for about 1 minute until just softened.

4. Add the kohlrabi and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened. It should weep some liquid. However, feel free to splash in water and/or lower the heat if the skillet looks dry.

Give the egg one last gentle beat then pour over the kohlrabi. Stir to combine and cook for another 30 seconds, until the egg has set. Remove from the heat, season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a plate and serve with rice.

Related post:  Asian Ideas for Kohlrabi? (includes tips on selecting good ones!)

Asian Ideas for Kohlrabi?

Resembling a buoy with tentacles and sporting an odd sounding name, kohlrabi is not a sexy vegetable. However, it comes around this season to many farmers’ markets. I paid more attention to it recently after receiving this message:

Dear Andrea,

I'm a huge fan of your books and website, and have loved trying to create Vietnamese food at home. I've recently run across a quandary and am hoping you could help. We've joined a local CSA here at Cal Poly Univ, where we just moved from Honolulu, and we keep getting Kohlrabi bulbs in our weekly produce.

I am pretty sure we have eaten this in Hanoi/Vietnam, but I cannot remember what/how exactly, I also can't remember the term in Vietnamese. I'm having trouble eating it raw, so today I am making it into a pickle, following your easy carrot and daikon pickle recipe (that is FABULOUS thank you!), and hopefully that will work. But I was wondering if you could tell me in which recipes this vegetable appears in Vietnamese cooking. At first, I thought maybe it is the funny crisp green thing sliced into kidney shapes and put in dipping sauce for bun cha and other dishes, but then I think maybe that's green papaya. Could it be used in a green papaya type salad?

Anyway I've searched your website, your books, and the internet at large and the mystery remains. Please help me figure out if there is a good way to use kohlrabi,,, maybe in some Vietnamese style food. And what the heck is this called in Vietnamese? (I think su hao is the squash that looks like a sock puppet, but somewhere online that came up as a translation for kohlrabi...err)

Kohlrabi is indeed called “su hao” in Vietnamese. It is a prized vegetable because of its crunch and sweetness. Some liken it to the broccoli stems and a sweet turnip, though it is technically related to cabbage.

It is a root vegetable and you can eat the tender leaves too, which tastes like collard greens. I add the leaves from the ones photographed above to a simple everyday Vietnamese canh soup with some pork and onion.

In Vietnam, people eat it raw, pickle it, drop it into soup (particularly with fish maw), and stir-fry it too. My mom’s eyes practically glazed over with delight when I mentioned su hao.

The key to buying kohlrabi is to pick one that’s not woody. Tom Coke, a local farmer in Santa Cruz County, told me to look for smooth skinned, firm ones that are consistently round. “Once they get elongated, they tend to be woody.”

Kohlrabi is rather pricey because only one grows per plant. But one medium one is enough for 2 people. It’s dense flesh!

What do you do with kohlrabi? I know it’s enjoyed in other parts of Asia. What is it called elsewhere?

Related Post: Kohlrabi Stir-fried with Garlic and Egg Recipe (Su Hao Xao Toi)

Hmong Cucumber Mint Cooler

If you are keen on Asian produce at the farmers’ markets, you’re likely buying from Hmong farmers.  They are amazing cultivators of the land and have transported their agricultural skills from Southeast Asia to America. In California, our Hmong farmers raise crops inland where it’s super hot and more suitable for Asian crops such as eggplant, long beans, and chiles.

I learn a lot from talking to the Hmong farmers who come to our Saturday morning farmers’ market at Cabrillo College. They are a young couple named Tra Her and Kou Moua who together make KT Farms. Tra is a school teacher who on the weekends works multiple markets with her husband Kou. Other family members show up at the Friday afternoon market in nearby Watsonville.

I’ve been buying from KT Farms since they first came to our market about 6 years ago. I want to support their business and selfishly insure a supply of super fresh Asian produce.

Hmong farmers grow all kinds of Asian vegetables and herbs. You may not know what to do with some of the stuff so ask questions!

Richard Molinar and Michael Yang at the UC Coop Extension office in Fresno put together a nice online guide to Asian vegetables. It’s super helpful to farmers and customers alike.

Last weekend at the market, I spied a big pill-shaped melon (it looked like a gigantic oblong lemon cucumber) that Tra had cut open to show customers. She is a school teacher and knows how important show-and-tell is.

• 
• 

John Xiong, a Fresno Hmong farmer whom I wrote about for a 2007 Saveur magazine story, once gave me a refreshing drink made from a fruit that he called a cucumber. I’d forgotten what it looked like so I asked Tra if what she had was a Hmong cucumber for making the drink.

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.

Why Phu Quoc Fish Sauce Tastes Good

Vietnamese food is nothing without the imprint of fish sauce (nuoc mam). The best Vietnamese fish sauce is delicately flavored and full of  umami goodness. Believe it or not, good fish sauce can be enjoyed straight. Seriously.

You can make fish sauce from various kind of aquatic animals (shrimp, mackerel, or squid, for example). However, the best Vietnamese fish sauce comes from the island of Phu Quoc, where the waters are full of a particular kind of anchovy called ca com. I was there in 2007 and visited a number of the fish sauce factories.

At first, I didn't think that Phu Quoc fish sauce could be great. But I was wrong. I visited the source, spoke to the artisanal producers, and then tasted it. Yowza, it was good.

It's hard to get nuoc mam from Phu Quoc abroad, though the Viet Huong (3 Crabs) brand combines Phu Quoc fish sauce with Thai fish sauce. Viet Huong has a whole line of fish sauce that you should check out.

But for 100% Phu Quoc fish sauce, you have to look outside of the United States. Find Knorr brand of fish sauce in Canada and Asia. Or, try to smuggle fish sauce into the States like Bobby Chinn did for me.

Chinese-Vietnamese food writer Julie Wan went in search of the true Phu Quoc fish sauce for herself. She interviewed producers in Vietnam and last week, we chatted about the availability of the real deal outside of the motherland. Julie's findings came out today in a Washington Post article. Her piece offers rich details on how fish sauce is made in Phu Quoc:

• "The Best of Vietnamese Fish Sauce Comes from Phu Quoc" - by Julie Wan (Washington Post, 4/21/10)

If you're a food geek or freak like I am, you'll find Julie's story full of insights!

Related links:

• Fish Sauce Buying Guide
• Thai Megachef vs. Phu Quoc fish sauce: Which is better?
• Viet Huong (3 Crabs) Fish Sauce Tasting
  

Pea Tips Stir-fried with Garlic Recipe (Qing Chao Dou Miao)

Spring is the harbinger for many good things to eat. I plant and eagerly wait for seedlings to sprout in my garden. I shop at markets to look for the new season’s crop of Asian vegetables. One of my favorite spring-time Asian vegetables is the little pea tip. Around now is when they’re just about right for farmers to harvest.

Pea tips (aka pea sprouts, snow pea shoots) are called dou miao in Mandarin. They are full of pea goodness, the embodiment of snap peas. Look for pea tips at Chinese markets in plastic bags. You’ll pay about $3 a pound as they are time consuming to individually pick by hand. Use within several days of purchase to enjoy this vegetable delicacy at its peak.

In the above photo, note the cutie tendrils. Tender tendrils are edible whereas older ones are akin to dental floss. I pluck them all off, for good measure. The occasional white pea bud is edible. Keep them, if you like, when prepping the pea tips for cooking.

Render Instant Schmaltz for Tasty Stir-Fries

I hate to throw away fat as I’m prepping chicken. The skin, the tail, the little bits by the rear opening to the body cavity. Whenever I prep a large amount of chicken, I squirrel away the fat trimming in small sandwich bags, freezing them for batches of schmaltz (the Yiddish term for rendered chicken fat) later on. My problem is that I either (1) forget to render the schmaltz or (2) cannot find the rendered fat when I want it for cooking. And that’s usually right as I’m heating up the wok.

This evening, I deboned several chicken leg quarters for a stir-fry. I took the skin off and trimmed the fat. The flaccid spare parts sat in a heap on my cutting board.  I was contemplating whether or not it was enough to save.  And, just as I was about to scoop up that skin and fat to discard it, I remembered some great instructions from a 1968 Chinese cookbook that I’d recently read.

The cookbook was by Jim Lee, a graphics designer turned school teacher in Manhattan. He was a cranky but very thoughtful and practical writer. One of the things Lee mentioned in a recipe was to render chicken fat on the spot for stir-frying.

Now let me pause here to let you know that stir-frying with rendered chicken fat is fantastic. My mother said that in Vietnam, fat chickens were precious. Growing up, her family save every bit of fat from their chickens and rendered it for cooking. “We keep the fat in a little can,” she wistfully told me. Just like bacon grease, no?

A few years ago, Chinese food expert and restaurateur Bruce Cost revealed that chicken fat was used at his Big Bowl restaurants in Chicago. They save the fat from stock making, and it lends wonderful flavor to food.

Pork fat is nice, but chicken fat has an incomparable round richness. Duck fat is equally lovely and I saved the fat from steaming the Sichuan deep-fried ducks.

How to render chicken fat on the spot

Back to my chicken fat tonight.  I heated up my skillet to medium and put the fat in there. I went about preparing the remaining parts of the dinner ingredients while the chicken fat sputtered and hissed. Once in a while I stirred and poked at the fat to keep it moving.

When there seemed to be enough for dinner (about 2 tablespoons), I turned off the skillet and let the sizzling noises subside. Then I removed and discarded the whole pieces, saving a few cracklings to superfluously add to the food. 

The fat was already in the skillet and ready to be reheated for stir-frying the spinach and garlic. The result was fantastic. I felt no guilt for eating chicken fat because it was an ingredient that I put to use instead of discarding.  The calories are about the same as for other fats, and since chicken fat is natural stuff, I can digest it a lot easier.

Next time you trim chicken, don’t throw away that fat! Render it on the spot.
 
Do you cook with chicken fat? What do you do with it?