Viet World Kitchen

Roasted Pork Belly Banh Mi Sandwich Recipe

My parents are both in their 70s and despite their concerns over maintaining a healthy diet and low cholesterol, they manage to splurge every once in a while on fatty pleasures such as crispy roast pork. We typically get it from a Chinese barbecue shop and tell the butcher we want a lean cut. I realize that that is somewhat of an oxymoron when it comes to roast pork but perhaps going lean lessens the guilt a bit. When we buy the pork from a Chinese barbecue shop located in a Vietnamese community, the shop usually sells a few accompaniments for the rich indulgences, such as fine rice noodles (banh hoi) and freshly baked baguette.

I’ve written about eating rich grilled foods with banh hoi rice noodles but a roast pork banh mi – well that is something rather visceral in the Vietnamese culinary consciousness. The primary reason is that it is fast. Get the pork cut up from the barbecue shop, grab a baguette, slit the bread open and stuff it with the warm, crisp, juicy pork. That’s instant gratification. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve brought roast pork (thit heo quay) home to my parents and my mom drags out the baguette. We sit around the table and eat our sandwiches and my parents grin from ear to ear, as if they are kids again in Vietnam – refreshed in body and spirit. What a pleasure to witness and share.

Yesterday, after having picked weeds for hours in the front yard, I needed a rewarding pick-up. I decided to make a pork belly banh mi from last week’s leftovers. My roasted pork belly was obviously not freshly roasted so I had to revive it somehow.

How to Wrap Banh Chung (Tet Sticky Rice Cakes)

Today I made my annual batch of banh chung (baan choong), a traditional must-have for the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration. I made five of them instead of my usual foursome since I over bought the pork that goes into the cakes. In the above photo, the ancient looking packages are of the foil-wrapped cakes freshly fetched from their 7-hour boiling. Inside, there are bamboo leaves and banana leaves that surround sticky rice, buttery mung beans, and rich pork seasoned by fish sauce, salt and pepper. With only a handful of ingredients, they come together deliciously. (For background information of banh chung and its cylindrical sister banh tet, see this post.)

Even though you can buy banh chung at Vietnamese and Chinese markets, the cakes are at their absolute best when made at home and eaten warm. I got my banh chung recipe from my mother, who got it from a friend, Mr. Lung. In the 1970s, Mr. Lung had written a lengthy article on banh chung and included detailed recipe instructions for the cakes. When Mr. Lung escaped from Vietnam, he brought the article with him and shared it with my mother and other friends so that they can recreate these savory cakes abroad.

Because a number of people have expressed interest in making their own banh chung this year, I decided to post these images on how to wrap banh chung. (They’re also available in a downloadable PDF document too.) These images are a companion to the banh chung recipe in my cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. See the “World of Banh” chapter, pages 261-264. I hope these images encourage and guide you toward successful banh chung making!

How to wrap banh chung with a wooden mold

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More on Tet:

Cultural information

• 2010 Tet Food, Festivals and Fun: General information for this year
• The Year of the Tiger: Tiger birth years, traits, and famous tigers/tigresses
• Simple Ways to Celebrate Tet: Easy, no-sweat things to do for Tet, such as a downloadable Tet couplet for your door,  pointers on how to wish people “Happy New Year” in Vietnamese, Cantonese and Mandarin, and how to attract good luck for the New Year (xong dat)
• How to find a Tet Festival: Tips for locating these events, which hare typically advertised only in the Vietnamese community!
• Traditional Tet Flowers and Blossoms: My father used to cut blooming branches from trees he found in the neighborhood. You can clip like him, or buy, like me. This post tells you what to look for.

Food

• Special Foods for Tet Celebrations: What is typically eaten during this holiday? Great for menu planning.
• Banh Chung and Banh Tet: What are they and how do you eat these sticky rice cakes
• Chicken and Bamboo Shoot Noodle Soup Recipe (Bun Mang Ga)
• Banh Chung Tet Sticky Rice Cake Recipe
• Candied Lotus Seeds Recipe

Easy Grilled Pizza with Trader Joe’s Dough

 

This summer, I’ve reviewed, dissed, and re-purposed Asian-inspired prepared food products from frozen dumplings and Chinese barbecued pork to rice paper rolls. Last weekend, I decided to take a non-Asian Trader Joe’s product to make a Vietnamese-style dish. Trader Joe’s excels at western flavors and products, and I’ve been using the Trader Joe’s pizza dough for several years whenever I want a quick pie. It’s not the best pizza dough you can make but it’s darn good for a convenience food. And for less than $1, you get a pound of great dough. Plus, you can keep it refrigerated for a couple days.

I typically cook pizza in a hot oven, stretching it into super thin crust pizzas and baking it on a stone preheated for 30 minutes to 450F. But it was warm last weekend and I didn’t want to heat up the house. Rory wanted pizza and he suggested that we try grilling it as prescribed in the August issue of Sunset magazine. I checked out the article and noticed that Sunset’s grilled pizza technique came from Jamie Purviance, a seasoned cookbook writer and author of the excellent Weber’s Way to Grill. We followed Jamie’s technique, and working together, in less than 45 minutes, we make 4 amazing grilled pizzas, topped with goodies from our garden and leftovers in the fridge. That’s as fast as going to a pizza joint or calling out for a pizza.

Coconut and Pineapple Cake Recipe

Before Rite-Aid was Rite-Aid, it was called Thrifty’s and well-known for its remarkably inexpensive and good ice cream. During the hot summers, my siblings and I would go to Thrifty’s and each get 1 or 2 scoop cones for about 25 cents a scoop. It wasn’t Baskin and Robbins/31 Flavors but it was what we could afford. And, the selection was rather decent; my favorite Thrifty's flavor was mocha almond fudge. My mother never went with us as she was too busy working, but she’d put in an order for a half gallon of coconut pineapple ice cream, her favorite. We'd serve her some nightly, after dinner, after we'd all had our fresh fruit course (a Vietnamese dining tradition).

We didn’t know American ice cream from Italian gelato to sorbet but we knew that Thrifty’s was fabulous. Ice cream in Vietnam is a pricey affair and the texture is light, similar to that of Thrifty’s, so the drugstore ice cream treats were extra familiar. Nowadays, my mom, who’s turning 76 this year (I think), doesn’t eat tons of ice cream because of health concerns. But last week, as I was making up the strawberry and cream cake, I thought of coming up with something special for my mom. I looked to my friend Nancie McDermott’s terrific book, Southern Cakes (Chronicle Books, 2007) which has a number of coconut layer cake recipes from the American south, where such cakes are king. Nancie’s work and sensibilities (she’s an expert on Thai cooking, having been a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand) informed and inspired this coconut and pineapple cake recipe. Thanks, Nancie!

Mom’s birthday is in July and I’ll likely gift her this spectacular pineapple and coconut cake, coincidentally accented by spices used in beef pho noodle soup. Don’t worry, this isn’t a pho cake. It’s a lovely rich cake that you’ll swoon over.

Coconut Cake Recipe

In the Vietnamese repertoire, sponge cakes (banh bong lan) are the go-to cake because they require just a handful of low-cost ingredients. The delicate sponges are great for cakes such as strawberry and cream cake or a Christmas yule log cake. But when you want to pour on the love, a butter cake is the answer. It’s richer with more butter, yet light because of the fair amount of baking powder.  It’s also enriched by additional fat by way of milk, or in my case here, coconut milk, which gives the cake a tropical twist and good for the lactose intolerant. You can use this cake as a substitute for the sponge cake layers in the strawberry and cream cake. Layers of this cake are the foundation for my coconut and pineapple cake.

Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake Recipe

A few people have emailed asking about how to make an Asian bakery-style strawberry and cream layer cake. What’s the difference between Asian bakery layer cakes and western cakes? The Asian ones tend to be based on lightly sweet baked sponge cakes whereas the western ones typically involve richer and sweeter butter layer cakes. Both are good types of cakes to prepare and when they’re baking, the entire house smells of butter, eggs, and sugar. What a great air freshener.

When I make a strawberry and cream layer cake at home, I use my French-style sponge cake recipe as that’s what is typically made in the Vietnamese repertoire. You can also use layers of coconut cake  for the cake layers; it's a little easier to prepare and richer in taste. Frankly, the cakes at Asian bakeries are so light and tasteless sometimes that all I get is a spongy chew. You can do much better at home! For the filling, I prepare a strawberry and liquor mousse. The use of unflavored gelatin (agar agar doesn’t work well here so resist) prevents the strawberries from weeping their liquid into the cream. I buy 1 pint of heavy whipping cream and that’s enough for the filling and frosting. Should you like to indulge, well whip up an extra 1/2 to 1 cup of heavy cream.

Mardi Gras Crepes Suzette Recipe (Banh Kep Suzette)

I suddenly developed a hankering for crepes Suzette a few days ago and I didn’t realize why at first. It had been decades since I last made or ate any of the tender lacy pancakes redolent of butter, orange zest, and liquor. Digging through books such as Julia Child’s The Way to Cook and From Julia’s Kitchen, the Oxford Companion to Food, Auguste Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine, and Larousse Gastronomique, I soon discovered that crepes are traditionally enjoyed on Shrove Tuesday – the day before the beginning of Lent – that’s Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, which falls on February 24 28 (next week!). My craving and findings about the role of crepes in Christian religious holidays made me think that perhaps I'm a better Catholic than I thought I was.

Shrove is the term used in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Celebrants of Shrove Tuesday also know it as Pancake Day and Pancake Tuesday, as pancakes were a great way to use up rich foods in your pantry, such as eggs, milk and sugar. Since Lent is the antithesis of decadence, luscious foods such as crepes, filled or doused with butter and booze are a great way to prepare oneself for the 40 days of abstinence ahead. Note that the gras in Mardi Gras and the fat in Fat Tuesday are nods to bidding a temporary farewell to living large. (No wonder Easter is celebrated with so many sweet goodies -- cakes, candies, etc.)

Vietnamese cookbooks with sections devoted to colonial French recipes or ones dedicated to French cuisine often include recipes for crepes, which are called typically called bánh kẹp. Viet cooks are adept at making more complicated crepes such as bánh xèo sizzling crepes and filled rolls such as bánh cuốn steamed rice rolls so French crepes were not an issue.

Banh Chung Tet Sticky Rice Cake Recipe

The weekend before Tet, as I was following my own directions to make a batch of banh chung, so was Tam Ngo. She followed the recipe in my cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2006) and posted an adaptation of the recipe (actually, it's very similar to the published version) on Serious Eats, one of the best food sites and ezines. 

As a cookbook author and someone advocating for good Vietnamese home cooking, Tam's post is music to my ears! Check out her work and make a batch now or bookmark it for next year's Lunar New Year celebration. (We celebrate on the same day as Chinese New Year!)