Viet World Kitchen

Curry Popcorn Recipe

I love little salty, spicy nibbles to go along with cocktails, wine, and conversation. Unfortunately, if I eat too many of them, I notice it eventually around my middle. Last weekend, we had our friends Sue and Jerry over for dinner. Youthful people in their early 60s and 70s, respectively, they are athletic, naturalists who enjoy a balanced lifestyle of food, drink, and exercise. Whenever we host them, I serve light as well as hearty fare. Hey, you only have so many calories to spend each day.

Sue and Jerry love popcorn and this one is a favorite of mine to make for them. It’s easy, fast and flavor packed. Despite my use of oil, it’s low-guilt food too. You can munch as much as you want along with your drinks.

Pan-Seared Egg Tofu "Scallops" with Sweet Chile Sauce Recipe

Welcome to 2012! As you may know, I’ve been preoccupied with tofu. My obsession has mostly been with the kind made from soybeans – the typical stuff eaten by countless people in Asia and beyond. But "tofu" is also a generic term used to describe a wide range of jelled and solidified foods in the Chinese repertoire. For example, some Chinese cookbooks use “almond tofu” to denote the sweet almond–flavored dessert solidified with seaweed-based agar agar. (In the Viet mindset, that’s a type of thach/jelly.) Burmese tofu, also called Shan tofu, is made like polenta with ground beans and water. Japanese sesame tofu is delicate and divine; find out more about goma dofu from Just Hungry. 

Then there’s egg tofu that comes in a tube. It looks like a tiny torpedo and feels like a filled balloon in its plastic casing. Sold at Chinese markets, egg tofu is made with eggs and soymilk, with an eggy richness that prevails. Egg tofu is popular with my Taiwanese and Hong Kong friends, who enjoy it simply fried and bathed in sauce.

Chinese Pigs in Blanket Recipe

For the cocktail party we attended last weekend, I made the deviled crab Rangoon and my husband made mini pigs in blanket. He used cocktail pups (a nitrite free mini sausage) and crescent roll dough from Trader Joe’s. I mentioned it on Facebook and a bunch of friends revealed their longing for the little guilty pleasures. Needless to say, so did the guests at the party, who ate them all up just as fast as the deviled Sriracha crab Rangoon.

We had a leftover package of crescent roll dough and I thought of wrapping the dough around cut pieces of dried Chinese lop cheung sausage for an Asian rendition. It’s not very farfetched because Cantonese bakeries sometimes have hotdogs baked in a pillowy pastry much like that of baked bao dough.

I tried it out as a quick nibble along with champagne. The little Chinese pigs in blanket were savory-sweet, a bit fatty, and just delightful. 

Deviled Sriracha Crab Rangoon Recipe

If you don’t want to deep fry crab Rangoon, how about baking them up in little wonton skin cups? The result is a mini deviled snack. I made these up for a cocktail party that we attended over the weekend. They crabby cups disappeared in a flash. People said they were particularly good with gin and tonics.

If you have Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, the deviled crab (cua farci, page 44) is fabulous as a filling too. The filling below is a tweaked rendition of what's used for Sriracha and crab Rangoon wontons. The water chestnut and shrimp contribute texture. Use the classic Trader Vic’s crab Rangoon filling, if you like.

Deviled foods are typically seasoned with hot spices and often presented stuffed into something (think of deviled eggs). When crab is involved, the mixture is baked with a bread crumb topping for a delicate crusty finish. In this case, the Sriracha crab mixture is stuffed into wonton skin cups. You’ll need 1 or 2 mini-cupcake or muffin pans to make these.

Gluten-Free Bun Trilogy: Dough, Baked Buns, Steamed Buns

It started last week with an email from a gluten-free Asian dumpling lover who asked about Indonesian buns (bao) made of rice flour dough. Then there was a tweet from @chubbybuns_shop in Boise, Idado, asking if I’d ever made gluten-free bao. I have poked and held enough loaves of gluten-free breads to know that it would be a challenge to create fluffy, chewy dough that could be baked and steamed.

Marvin of Burnt Lumpia asked if I knew how to make Filipino rice flour siopao (stuffed bao). No I didn’t but figured that the Filipinos may mix rice flour with other flours. Given the Filipino- style bao, I figured that I could come up with something. I wasn’t a fool for taking on the challenge of creating gluten-free bao dough.

I looked through several gluten-free sources and decided to base the dough recipe on a cinnamon roll dough from Cybele Pascal’s reliable Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook. I chose it because it had similar elements as my regular bao dough in Asian Dumplings: flour, fat, sugar, liquid, and leavening. It wasn’t such a big leap, going from Western cinnamon rolls to stuffed Asian buns.