Viet World Kitchen

Low-Cal Hmong Spicy Eggplant Recipe

I love eggplant but don’t always want all the calories that go with eating it. It’s a vegetable that’s often times cooked into rich foods, fried in oil or simmered in rich sauces. Even when I grill whole ones, either for Vietnamese eggplant with scallions or Indian bhaigan bharta, there’s some oil involved to enhance the vegetables plush qualities.

Giving into all the fatty eggplant pleasures -- deep-fried eggplant tempura, stir-fried eggplant in garlic sauce, baked eggplant parmesan -- seems inevitable. A low-calorie eggplant dish? Nah!

Never would have I thought of boiling eggplant. That sounded nasty when a Hmong farmer suggested it to me. It’s a common way for us to prepare eggplant, John Xiong assured me. He harvested some Chinese eggplant from his Fresno field and we went back to his home to prepare this dish, among others that hot afternoon in 2006.

The Hmong eggplant mash (called lws kubtshis tuav, don’t ask me for a pronunciation!) was enlightening. John and his wife, Bee, boiled their eggplants whole so they would not get water logged. When soft, they peeled them, then mixed the flesh into a fiery chile, scallion, and cilantro mixture that had just been pounded in their mortar.

The result was full of heat and herbal pungency. It was great scooped from the mortar onto balls of steamed sticky rice, but John said that it was rather lean. If you want to take it another step, he revealed, cooking it with some oil and add extra scallion. He did and it was richer tasting.

Grilled Okra Recipe

If people dislike okra, it's usually because of its mucilaginous (read: slimy) nature.  I know okra as a bright addition to tart-sweet Vietnamese seafood soups and an earthy fried Indian side dish. In those Asian preparations, okra doesn’t reveal its gummy nature. Rather, you savor its ridged skin and little round seeds. You marvel at its lovely spoke structure and graceful appearance.

Okra is native to Africa but traveled to India at some very early point in time; no one is sure when that happened. In the 19th century, okra found itself in Southeast Asia and it moved on to China after that.

The pod has a mild flavor and plays well with other ingredients. It’s also a relatively expensive vegetable most of the year. For those reasons, it rarely has a starring role and is often cooked with other ingredients.

Summer is okra season as the warmer months coax their tropical nature and foster growth. The quality of the pods during summer is spectacular. Last week, at the India Cash and Carry market in San Jose, CA, a group of women huddled around a particularly fresh box of unblemished okra, picking their purchase one pod at a time. My husband noticed the group and jumped right in. He ended up with 1 1/2 pounds of gorgeous okra.

Easy Asparagus with Soy Sauce and Sesame Recipe

If you're concerned about timing issues when it comes to cooking or if you just want to quickly put something healthy and good on the table, this simple recipe is for you. I purchased and prepped way too much food for our Tet feast on Tuesday night, and among the leftovers was a pound of asparagus. Not knowing what to do, I parboiled them in lots of salted water and kept them refrigerated. Why? Because prepping asparagus up to that point allows you to do whatever you want to them at the last moment. For example, you can add them to an omelet, toss them in a salad, stir-fry them with a little oyster sauce or coat the green spears in a little rich and savory-sweet dressing. 

For lunch today, I took the last approach for this recipe, which is from Shandong province in northern China. The dressing is seriously fast and easy. I have no qualms about admitting that I borrowed this idea from The Seventh Daughter, an engaging and informative cookbook by legendary San Francisco restaurateur Cecilia Chiang of the Mandarin.

Honey Baked Ham with Red Wine and Orange Rind Recipe

I’ve been nibbling away on my mom’s leftover holiday ham for over a week now. We had slices of the savory sweet ham on Christmas Eve, then she packed  it up for each of us kids to take home with us. There was so much leftover – Mom baked 20 pounds of ham – that she carefully used her scale to portion the ham out and then froze lots too. I’m sure we’ll be eating her ham futures during 2010. (The photo above is of her finished products, before slicing.)

But that’s okay because I love ham -- pork is the go-to meat in the Vietnamese kitchen. If it’s not grilled like the Vietnamese restaurant-style lemongrass pork steaks I mentioned last week, then it’s simmered in caramel sauce, or made into cold cuts for stuffing into banh mi. But then there’s the ham – which is nothing but a fore or hind leg of a pig. My family has had a love affair with with American-style baked ham ever since we were first gifted our first Honey Baked ham for Christmas.

Secret to injecting flavor into honey baked ham

That went on for a few Christmases and then one day, my mom decided to make her own. She wanted to figure out how to imbue the ham with flavor. My father, ever the tinkerer, suggested that we inject the ham with honey as that’s what Honey Baked Ham must do.

Slanted Door’s Hue Rice Dumplings Recipe (Banh Xep Chay)

I have wanted to make Slanted Door's Hue rice dumplings (banh xep chay) at home ever since I tasted them last years. My schedule has been extremely busy but oddly enough, last Tuesday when Asian Dumplings launched, I had a break in the action. To celebrate the book's released, I pulled a few cookbooks from my library and headed into the kitchen. An afternoon of concentration and solitude and a few rounds of dumplings later, I came up with a rather nice recipe to recreate the experience of biting into the chewy, tender and rich tasting dumplings from Charles Phan's Slanted Door restaurant.

It's posted on Asian Dumpling Tips so you'll have to visit the sister site to get the recipe! Enjoy.

Slanted Door's Hue Rice Dumplings Recipe (banh xep chay)

Fiery Hmong Chile, Cilantro, and Tomato Salsa Recipe

“Whatever I eat, I have to have a little chile with it,” the Hmong farmer’s son told me last Saturday at my local farmer’s market. “Especially with grilled meat, a little chile is so nice.” His sisters standing nearby all nodded in agreement.

I was picking through their pile of hot Thai chiles looking for nice red ones when we started the conversation. Summer is the peak season for Southeast Asian produce and Hmong farmers from California’s Central Valley flush our markets with super fresh leafy greens, all kinds of eggplant, several types of basil, lemongrass, and lots of chiles. I grow my own chiles but they aren’t ripe yet so I lay in a supply grown by the Hmong farmers. (Chiles freeze well so go crazy!)

“What do you do with the chiles?” I asked, thinking of a little something I could serve with our July 4 surf-and-turf grilled dinner. He obliged by describing this recipe, which is essentially like Hmong kua txob tuav xyaw dos (chile mashed with scallion). I know a tad about Hmong cooking this because I researched and wrote a 2007 Saveur article on Hmong farmers and Hmong home cooking. Don’t even try to figure out how to pronounce the Hmong name! Find a Hmong-speaking person to ask.

This is a relish – often described as a salsa by Hmong Americans – and you can serve it along with grilled pork, beef, chicken, shrimp, etc. I particularly like it with Vietnamese grilled lemongrass pork (thit heo nuong xa). If you like, dip a little sticky rice into this fiery masth, or stir it into food. You can just pound the chiles, salt, scallion and cilantro together if you don’t have tomato around. It’s quick and simple everyday Hmong condiment that’s dynamite. Feel free to vary the amount of chiles according to your tolerance for heat.

Makes about 1 cup

18 small or 9 medium Thai chiles, stemmed and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons fish sauce
1/2 cup chopped scallion, green part only
1/2 lightly packed cup chopped cilantro
1 cup quartered ripe cherry tomato
Lime juice

1. Put the chiles, salt, and fish sauce into a mortar. With a circular motion of the pestle, crush the ingredients against the sides of the mortar into a rough mixture.

2. Add the scallion and cilantro, and switch to an up and down pounding motion with the pestle to combine the flavors well and reduce the mixture to a damp, rough mixture. Add the cherry tomatoes and lightly pound to combine. Taste and add lime juice as needed for a tart bite. Transfer to a small dish and serve.

Daikon and Carrot Pickle Recipe (Do Chua)

“Dilly the Pickle” emailed last week to announce that the 2009 International Pickle Week goes from May 15 to 25 (pickleweek.com). That' s more like 11/2 weeks, but I didn't care because I’m a sucker for cute cartoon icons and pickles of any kind, so I looked in the fridge for my go-to Vietnamese pickle – do chua made of tangy sweet daikon and carrot. This ubiquitous Vietnamese pickle is what’s stuffed into banh mi sandwiches, served alongside morsels such as grilled beef in wild betel leaf (thit bo la lot), and added to salads.

Sadly, my jar of daikon and carrot pickle was mostly brine and a few floating white and orange sticks of vegetables. Oye, what kind of respectable Vietnamese cook was I? It’s not so much that it is national pickle week, but rather that pickles play an important role at the Vietnamese table. They provide textural and flavor contrasts to food. For example, the flavor of rich foods gets cut (mitigated) by a tart-sweet pickle. At Tet Lunar New Year celebrations, you always see several kinds of pickles on the menu as that’s a holiday where lots of fatty dishes are served. In banh mi sandwiches, the daikon and carrot offer a crunch that pairs well with the baguette and the tartness offsets the savory rich meats and mayonnaise. But Vietnamese cooks, like their Asian brethren, prefer to make what I call fast pickles.  

Grilled Shrimp on Sugarcane (Chao Tom) Recipe

These fragrant grilled savory-sweet morsels are a classic Vietnamese appetizer/party food. Perfect for noshing with friends along with a cold beer or dry white wine. For chao tom, a garlicky shrimp paste is wrapped around a stick of sugarcane, briefly steamed to set the paste and shape, and then grilled to finish. Pieces of the shrimp are typically wrapped in lettuce with herbs and dipped in some nuoc cham dipping sauce. The delicate flavors of chao tom (how to pronounce chao tom) are a wonderful mouthful. And, the sugarcane stick functions both as a great skewer that doesn’t easily burn up and after the shrimp has been removed from the sugarcane, you can chew on the sugarcane for a chase of refreshing sweet sugarcane juice. How fun is that?

Chao tom is a central Vietnamese specialty (there are many kinds of chao from that region but this one is most popular in Vietnam) and you may have encountered it on restaurant menus. I’ve wanted to make it for months but couldn’t find readily available fresh sugarcane. Since it would be months before the Hmong farmers would be offering fresh sugarcane at our Saturday farmer’s market, I had to find alternatives.