Viet World Kitchen

Cornmeal Crusted Pork Chops Recipe: Fast Flavor in a Thin Cut

I go grocery shopping practically every day. It’s part of my routine and my work. While it’s a luxury to buy and cook fresh ingredients daily, it can sometimes be a chore that I have to surmount.

Yesterday was a case in point. I’d been working on a seafood recipe for days and had to go back to the supermarket yet again for more fish. We’d eaten enough of the seafood recipe trials to be seafood-ed out so I couldn’t put my husband through it again. I had to go two more rounds with my seafood recipe last night but I wanted to dine on something else.

What could be a quick and satisfying solution? Pork. Not a roast but a pork chop, thinly sliced to the thickness of my pinkie finger. I love that cut of pork chop because you get lots of porky flavor and can cook it relatively quickly without drying. And the seasonings shine because there’s more to go around in every bite. And did I mention how much I love to gnaw on the bones too? They’re just the right manageable size.

Soy-Glazed Black Pepper Chicken Recipe (The Hakka Cookbook)

One of the most interesting Asian cookbooks released this year had no color photographs. Yes, no food porn was in The Hakka Cookbook by Linda Lau Anusasananan. In an era where readers love to cook with their eyes, it was a gutsy move on UC Press to publish a cookbook only graced by simple watercolors. Without photos to distract, you have to read and flip each page (imagine that!), following the author’s journey through a cuisine and culture.

The Hakka Cookbook may seem like it’s for Chinese food geeks -- there are maps, Chinese characters and Romanized pinyin Mandarin. The book begs you to spend time with it. Once that you start looking at it, you’ll be stuck in your chair for at least a good hour. You’ll pick out familiar dishes seen on Chinese restaurant menus.

Burmese Pork Belly, Pickled Mustard Greens and Tofu Recipe

Something magical happens when you combine thinly sliced pieces of pork belly with an assertive pickled vegetable and tofu. I didn’t realize that kind of synergy till I made Korean tofu stir-fried with kimchi and pork belly (dubu kimchi). It’s a drinking classic, I was told by my friend Linda Lim, a Korea- born  woman whose petite size belies her enormous ability to eat and drink.

I made dubu kimchi repeatedly to get the recipe down for the tofu book, and in the process learned to understand how the three ingredients worked. The pork belly lent its wonderful richness to soften the blow of the harsh kimchi, which had to be the stinky, mature kind for the dish to shine. The tofu played an intermediary role to soak up the meat’s richness and the umami funk of the pickled cabbage.

That said, I couldn’t resist making this stir-fry from Naomi Duguid’s sensational Burma: Rivers of Flavor, released just this fall. With her former husband, she wrote landmark works such as Beyond the Great Wall, and Hot, Sour, Salty Sweet. This is her solo performance and it’s compelling, well sized for cooking and reading. Unlike her previous large scale productions, Burma is a book meant for using in the kitchen or holding on the sofa, not displaying on the coffee table.

Naomi has been traveling to Burma for decades, observing, tasting, and noting a great deal of detail about the country, which stands at a true culinary crossroads of South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia. All this means that if you’re adept at cooking foods from Asia and venturing to Asian markets, you’ll find Burma to be a splendid book to cook from. If you’re not adept at those cuisines, then Naomi gives you a pass and says it’s okay to just be an armchair cook and eater. In any event, you’ll relish the heartfelt writing and immense research in Burma.

Chinese Fermented Black Bean Magic (plus recipes)

While I’ve cooked with Chinese fermented black beans for years, I didn’t realized how versatile they were until I had about 2 pounds of them on hand, leftover from working on the Asian Market Shopper mobile app and the Asian Tofu cookbook.

The little beans are not the same as what you cook up for a pot of cuban black beans! In fact, they are slightly moist and soft, a preserved seasoning ingredient used in many southern Chinese (Cantonese) kitchens. Expect salty, pungent, and winy qualities from the beans.

Wanting to use them up, I started cooking with them, mining my Chinese cookbook collection for recipes and ideas. When I was through, I had enough information about fermented black beans (dou chi in Mandarin, dul see in Cantonese, dau/tau xi in Vietnamese) and a small collection of delectable recipes.

Food editor Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times agreed to an article on the beans. We polished it in March and it was published over the weekend under the title, “Chinese fermented black beans a versatile staple.”

Four recipes were included in the story:

Leftover Bonanza: Beef with Miso, Mustard, and Wine Sauce

 

This is what we just had for dinner. It’s not a great photo but tells the story of how last Sunday’s tri-tip and potatoes got turned into something “new.” My husband and I don’t eat a ton of meat so what we cook actually gets used up in many other meals during the course of a week.

Tonight it was a matter of eating up the roast, which we’d simply rubbed with lots of kosher salt, pepper, and dried summer savory, seared it stove top and popped it in the oven at 425 for 15 minutes per pound for medium or medium-rare (aim for 125-135F and rest for 10 minutes). You can also rub soy sauce or fish sauce on the roast along with pepper and garlic to marvelous effect. As we were getting things ready for dinner, Rory said, “I wish there was some gravy.”

That’s how this little impromptu sauce started. I remembered a conversation I’d had with chef Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg about the virtues of combining miso and mustard – something he’d picked up from a renowned chef in Kyoto. Years ago, I made a simple red wine sauce with lots of shallot and whole grain mustard from a Martha Stewart recipe. There was a tub of dashi stock in the fridge to serve as my stealth umami infusion. With all of that in mind, I made a quick savory-sweet-tart sauce for the beef. As with past posts on repurposing leftovers, this one is also about how I cook on the fly.