Viet World Kitchen

Five Refreshing Vietnamese Salads

We are having a wonderful warm spell in Northern California. It's flip-flops and t-shirt sans jacket weather. People are firing up their grills in the neighborhood. Whenever we’re out for a walk to the grocery store, we sniff the cooking food smells and try to identify what people are making. Steak? Salmon? Burgers? Or some long-smoked meats? The live fire cooking stirs my senses and I conjure up imaginary menus. What would I serve with what they’re cooking?

I always plan meals to include the various food groups, but with a healthy emphasis on vegetables. And with all the grilling going on right now, my thoughts lean toward Vietnamese salads. They’re flexible dishes that may be a served on their own or be a friendly side offering to go with a hunk of grilled something. There are many salad and side recipes in books I’ve written, but to add to your collection, I reached back into the VWK archives to select some refreshing ones:

Spicy Basil Chicken and Tofu Recipe

The Hmong farmers have returned to our weekly farmer’s market with a wealth of Asian produce. Last Saturday, they had gorgeous Thai basil and I swooped down upon a couple of bunches. Basil discolors quickly, its shelf life under refrigeration is just a few days. I wasn’t about to let it go to waste and thought of Thai chicken and basil, a simple stir-fry.

The thing is, I didn’t want to make the dish with all chicken so I worked in some tofu. I substituted 10 ounces (300 grams) of extra-firm tofu for 8 ounces (240 grams) of the chicken in the original recipe, which called for a pound. That’s one of several strategy for using tofu for low-meat dishes.

The keys to this dish include (1) washing and drying the basil leaves (keep them whole) and (2) seasoning and panfrying the tofu.

To seal in the moisture in the chicken, I lightly coat it with cornstarch and soy sauce; it’s typically added to the wok as is, only to be embellished by flavors during the cooking process. Dark soy sauce adds color but the black soy sauce is semi sweet. With so little used, I suppose you could use kecap manis, if you want. 

 You can make this dish with mint or Italian basil but for the real deal, Thai basil’s warm spice note is magnificent. If flowers are present on the sprigs, use them!

Spring Asparagus and Shrimp Stir-Fry

Many people assume that Vietnamese food is highly influenced by French traditions. While that is true to a certain extent, the Chinese also influenced Viet foodways big time. Vietnam was a colony of China for nearly 1,000 years! Plus, there are legions of Vietnamese-Chinese people who’ve helped to shape Vietnamese food for generations. (Interactions via trade routes and with Vietnam’s neighbors factor into the mix too.)

My friends, Sophie and Eric Banh (below), the brother-and-sister team behind Monsoon and Ba Bar restaurants in Seattle could be the poster children for how Vietnamese food has blended with Chinese traditions. The Banhs grew up in Cho Lon in Saigon and speak Vietnamese and Chinese (as well as English!). They immigrated to Canada and found their way to relatively warmer climes in Washington State. Their flagship restaurants, Monsoon Capitol Hill and Monsoon East, help to define modern Vietnamese food in the Pacific Northwest.

Roasted Kabocha and Vegetable Dumplings Recipe

I’ve had pumpkin dumplings in Monterey Park and Beijing, their pretty tangerine-colored filling of grated winter (hard) squash were unpleasantly bland and sometimes undercooked. It’s an Asian dumpling that I’ve let simmer on the back burner for a while and didn’t tackle till this week, when faced with leftover roasted kabocha squash. My husband Rory said, “Let’s make Italian raviolis with the kabocha.”

I responded with this dumpling filled with roasted squash, earthy shiitake and parsnip, and upbeat celery. The seasonings involve fried shallot, lots of ginger and enough garlic for pungent depth. I wanted the ingredients to support and elevate the natural sweetness of the kabocha. I’d planned on adding soy sauce but in the end, there was so much great flavor from the vegetables that the only seasoning I added was salt. 

In other words, gluten-free dumpling eaters, this filling is for you too! No need to get the wheat-free tamari out. See the link at the end of this post for gluten-free dumpling dough options. 

Okara “Potato” Salad with Fried Shallots Recipe

Yesterday a friend came over and we made tofu together. When I wrung out the soy milk and showed Charlotte the okara (lees), she asked me how to use it. There are savory and sweet uses, I responded, but most often times, a tofu maker has so much that he/she sends the stuff off to a nearby farm for feed livestock. For us home cooks who are into making tofu, we can freeze our small quantities of lees for a while or dig them into the soil as an enrichment. In Asian Tofu, I frame okara as a “tofu byproduct bonus.”

I treat okara like wet wheat germ in baking, bread crumbs for croquettes or soy panko, and well, in this recipe, it is turned into a potato-like salad. Soy disguised as potato? I didn’t come up with the idea on my own. I had it as an appetizer/snack at Ramen Halu in San Jose. It was so good that I dragged my husband back for the okara salad, despite the fact that I’m not keen on the ramen itself.

Rory reacted like I did, that the stuff was like potato salad but without the potatoes. There was mayonnaise, mostly likely Japanese Kewpie which has a touch of MSG, fried shallots and a few cut vegetables and raw onion. The shallots, the same as Vietnamese crispy caramelized hanh phi, functioned like vegetarian bacon bits. That’s to say, they made the okara salad super tasty.

With the leftover okara from yesterday’s tofu, I came up with this recipe today. I figure that the ramen shop was riffing on a traditional Japanese unohana preparation (see the Savory Soy Milk Lees with Vegetables recipe in Asian Tofu, page 142). Unohana is delicious, homey, old-fashioned Japanese fare. It’s a good nibble with sake and beer or if you’re like me, I just eat it as a light meal. It’s filling because of all the soybean protein involved.