Viet World Kitchen

Finding Dan Dan Noodles’ BF: Ya Cai Preserved Mustard Greens

Sometimes things are right under your nose and you don’t know it. For the dan dan noodle recipe that I wrote about in the Wall Street Journal last week, I needed a specific seasoning ingredient – Chinese preserved mustard greens, called ya cai (“yaah tsai”). I went to my Chinese market and perused the dried vegetable and canned vegetable section. Nothing. I’d read about the ingredient in cookbooks but none of them told me how to find the stuff – where it may be located or how it’s packaged.

Then, while I was in the refrigerated section looking at tofu (what else) and noodles (for the recipe), I turned around and saw a bunch of boxes filled with index-card size packages of something. Remembering that my friend Victor Fong told me how his family often ate some super salty Chinese pickle with their rice, and that the salty pickle was sold in small packs, I took a look. Lo and behold, there were boxes of ya cai – the good kind made in Yibin in Sichuan province. I’d read in Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop that the ya cai from that city was famous and prized.

November 2011 Finds: Chinese Food Week, Online Asian Markets, Art & Humor

November began with Eater.com’s first ever Chinese Food Week, which included stories, insider’s favorite restaurants, and other foodie perspectives. Five American cities were featured. This content is good to keep in your back pocket:

San Francisco | New York | Los Angeles | Chicago | Washington DC

In contrast to that Chinese food lovefest was Bonnie Tsui’s article in the Atlantic, "The End of Chinatown." Yes, economics and migration shifts are some of the reasons behind the decline of traditional Chinatowns in America. Chinatowns are moving outside of the urban core to the suburbs. My strategy: Follow the Asian markets!

Chinese Food Week and Tsui’s piece made me think of Andrew Coe’s Chop Suey and Grace Young’s write up on the history of chop suey in Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge. Chinese-American food and history buffs should check out those books!

Online Asian Markets

If you can't explore nearby brick-and-mortar Asian markets, do it virtually. Some interesting ones I stumbled upon: (If you have experience with these or  others, do share!)

• An online Vietnamese market based in the heart of Little Saigon in Westminster, California. Among the goodies at Vietnamesesupermarket.com are pho kits.
• For lots of standard Japanese ingredients, Asianfoodgrocer.com, based in San Francisco, may do the trick.
• I have no idea where Asiansupermarket365.com operates from but they have a decent looking inventory.
• iShopIndian.com is well organized. There’s even a Chinese-Indian section and newsletter.

Food Art & Humor

Wondering about the photo at the top of this post? It is the clever work of Chinese artist Liu Bolin.  I discovered his pieces in a  slideshow on a Wall Street Journal site. Bolin gets painted up to melt into his surroundings. Aside from the slideshow, see his vanishing acts at the Eli Klein gallery.

Food, labor, and art converge in Sharon Lockhart’s compelling “Lunch Break” exhibit, currently at San Francisco’s Modern Museum of Art. Her photos and film record the daily life of workers at a historic Maine shipbuilding yard.  I was flattered and honored when the exhibit’s Lunch Break Times newspaper and blog invited me to contribute the banh mi recipe from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Banh mi is working class fare that requires lots of work yet is often priced so low.

Michael Pollan’s appearance on The Colbert Report is funny and makes you think about not eating at your desk. Watch it here.

Yes, there are health food markets in East Los Angeles. Per Javier Cabral’s charming Spanglish-laden post on Zocalopublicsquare.org, there are folks in East LA who love la soya!

If you celebrated Thanksgiving, hope you had a good one.

Related post: October 2011 Finds: Young ginger, pho novel, Sriracha film project

Tackling Sriracha Myths, Truths and Confusion

A couple of incidents last week led me to realize that there may be much misunderstanding about Sriracha chile sauce. The first occurred on the October 2011 Food Finds post. Upon checking out Jess Dang’s pitch for a Sriracha documentary film project, @Chrisjone commented that Jess had incorrectly described Sri Racha as an island. It’s a town with seaport. There’s an island nearby. I notified Jess of the error and she promptly corrected it.

The second incident was related to the 2011 CHOW 13 Award listing of influential food people. Coming in at lucky number 8 was David Tran of Huy Fong Foods, the maker of the Rooster brand of Sriracha. I’m quoted as saying that many people don’t know whether or not the Rooster brand’s version of Sriracha is Thai or Vietnamese. It’s kinda messed up and mixed up, I told writer John Birdsall.

Case in point, I’m often asked about Sriracha even though it’s not a traditional Viet staple. In The Sriracha Cookbook, Randy Clemens's introduction describes the hot sauce as an beloved condiment at Asian markets, upscale restaurants, and even Wal-Mart. Clemens follows up with the Thai backstory in a separate chapter but he opens up the book by framing the "Rooster sauce" as a “mainstay in many home kitchens and innumerable college dorm rooms.” This coming Sunday, Sriracha will be part of a Simpson's foodie episode!

After reading the CHOW entry on Tran, Pim Techamuanvivit texted me, “Sriracha sauce is definitely Thai.” Of course, Pim and I know that because we’ve talked a lot about the hot sauce. I’ve had her over for a Sriracha taste-off between Vietnamese, Viet-American, and Thai brands.  But not everyone is as lucky as I am to have a Bangkok-born friend who’s also a persnickety food expert.

That said, I’m throwing out some points here about Sriracha for your consideration and comments:

Navigating Food Safety in Chinese Ingredients

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story on the astounding food safety problems in the People’s Republic of China. From pork that glows in the dark and glazes that render pork to look like beef to fake eggs that cost less to produce than letting a chicken hatch one naturally, the piece by Barbara Demick revealed the growing pains of a fast-paced socialist-capitalist economy. Rampant corruption, fear, and outlaw behavior combine for a situation that not only compromises public safety but also poses a major threat to political instability.

I traveled to China last September to conduct research for the Asian Tofu book and met many honest people who were as concerned about food safety as any of us are abroad. They unfortunately live in a situation where they constantly have to worry about fake products. It is one thing to by a cheap knockoff Louis Vuitton handbag, but it’s another thing to digest food made with synthetic materials that are not designed for human consumption. My heart goes out to the Chinese people who face that level of uncertainty on a daily basis.

Reader responses

As of today, there were about 60 comments in response to Demick’s story. Some self-identified Asian Americans expressed shame but in the main, most people communicated anger and frustration. There were vitriolic comments that reflected misconceptions about Asian foods and cultures. The doozies included:

Tasting Texas Part 2: Houston’s Big Little Saigon

By the time we arrived in Houston, my husband Rory and I were hankering for Viet food. I had been traveling for a week and hadn’t had a drop of fish sauce or bowl of rice. After all the amazing barbecue and Mexican food, we were looking forward to a change of cuisine. Plus, Houston’s Vietnamese community is one of the nation’s largest,  the biggest in the American South.

I was looking forward to driving up and down Bellaire Boulevard, the H-Town equivalent to Bolsa Avenue in Westminster, California. While there are a few Vietnamese restaurants in the main downtown area where we were staying, the concentration of the Viet shops and services were located in the southwestern part of the city, in what’s referred to as Chinatown. Most of the activity is centered on Bellaire, the main drag. (The former Chinatown was located in the main downtown area but increases in real estate prices drove Asian businesses further out.)

We regrettably only had one-and-a-half days in Houston, and our exploration was limited to Friday afternoon. What struck me as really neat was that at one end of Bellaire, there seemed to be more Chinese businesses with a few Viet ones but as you drove toward Alief, it was reversed. Business signs mostly had Vietnamese and English with just a tiny sprinkling of Chinese characters.

There were a number of handsome, modern shopping centers as well as near-vacant shopping centers from decades ago. With palm trees lining some areas, it reminded me lots of Little Saigon in Southern California. I felt quite at home, but experienced some unexpected things.