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.

Spiced Siamese Peanuts Recipe

I love the sweet-salty-and-slightly briny peanuts served at Hawker Fare in Oakland, California. Whenever I go to James Syhabout’s casual rice bowl-and-snacks cafe, I start off with an order of the peanuts (called “Siamese Peanuts” on the menu) to nibble on. A squirt of lime juice brightens up the funk of the shrimp paste that lends the roasted peanuts their umami depth. It also brings out the chile and fennel undertones.

The other dishes usually arrive before I finish the peanuts so I end up mixing some into my rice. These peanuts are at home as a nosh with beer or as a side dish. You could certainly make a light meal out of the peanuts, rice, and a green vegetable. 

Yesterday, I was jonesing a cocktail hour snack and thought of Hawker Fare’s Siamese peanuts. Not living near the restaurant, I took matters into my own hands and made my own, coming up with this recipe after a couple of tries.

Red Wine and Beef Stew in Claypot (A Franco-Viet Experiment)

Because of France’s occupation of Vietnam from 1883 to 1954, many people assume that Viet cooking is heavily influenced by French foodways. While there are a handful of old French cookbooks written in Vietnamese, pure French cooking was mostly for those who could afford the ingredients. 

As cultural survivalists, Vietnamese cooks wove French elements into their traditions, just like they did with other cultures that they came in contact with over the ages. That’s why Vietnamese food can confound as much as it delights. Beefy classics such as pho noodle soup and beef stew with tomato, lemongrass, and star anise are prime examples of fusion Vietnamese fare. There are so many Eastern and Western elements in those dishes that it's hard to simply call them Viet-Franco food.

On the other hand, Viet cooks can be inventive in replicating foreign culinary concepts, such as a beouf Bourguinon. That’s what I pondered as I set about making a red wine and beef stew, an cool weather dish that seemed fitting with the season. I typically rely on Julia Child’s master Zinfandel of Beef recipe from The Way to Cook when making a beef stew. This time around, I combined JC’s techniques with some borrowed from Jennifer McLagan’s new book, Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. While there are a number of Asian-inspired recipes, most of McLagan’s recipes are western in nature. The point of the book is to encourage cooks to look beyond the usual “middle cuts,” such as beef and pork tenderloin, to discover the delicious appeal of ears, tongues, feet, and tails.

Asian cooks don’t have much issue with this concept as evidenced by the tripe and chicken feet at dim sum! Nevertheless it's good to be reminded of their exceptional flavor and textures. Asian markets have a wealth of odd bits but how often do we buy them nowadays? Not as much as our parents and grandparents used to as they practiced a head-to-tail approach to eating.

McLagan’s classic beef stew recipe was unfussy, called for igniting the red wine (pyrotechnic cooking always intrigues me), and baking the stew. She used rounds of beef shank. I had this frozen chuck roast from my annual share of a grass-fed cow:

As I was reviewing the recipes by Child and McLagan, I thought: How would I make this dish if I lived in Vietnam during the French colonial period? What if I had to cook for or with a French person during that era?

North Indian Egg Curry Recipe (Anda Masala)

It was about ten years ago when I first tasted an Indian curry made with hard-boiled eggs. It was at a dinner hosted by an Indian-American friend who’d planned a menu of her family favorites.  Her mom was in town and among the dishes that Aradhna prepared was an egg curry. The soft-chewy texture of the whites and richness of yolk was unexpected and captivating.

Up to that point, my curry experiences were with meats, seafood, and/or vegetables. Boiled eggs? It never occurred to me until that day to use eggs as the protein element in a curry. On the other hand, how could I have been blind for so long? Viet cooks simmer boiled eggs in caramel sauce. Chinese cooks simmer eggs in tea. Why not simmer the eggs in a thick sauce? Duh!

I’ve occasionally thought about the dish since then but didn’t go looking for the recipe. It’s not the first curry that comes to mind when I think of an Indian dish to prepare. However, this past weekend, while reading Julie Sahni’s Savoring India, a cookbook that’s rich in history, culture, and photography, I came across this recipe for “eggs braised in fragrant gravy.” Sahni’s recipe for anda masala comes from Uttar Pradesh in northern India.

I had some great local eggs and tomato from the farmers’ market so I was game. Plus, the recipe was very simple. Despite its ease, the dish involved classic Indian approaches to layering flavors that involves frying up cumin seeds during the initial tadka process, cooking down the onion until it starts to caramelize, adding the spices and simmering with the wet ingredients (tomato and water, in this case).

The result was fabulous and achievable with little stress. If you’re a vegetarian or new at Indian cooking, this is a good recipe to try.

Stir-Fried Pork with Black Beans and Green Beans Recipe

Having worked on this tofu book for about a year and a half, I’ve found myself eating a mostly low-meat diet. For that reason, there are often bits of meat sitting in the fridge that I have to use up. This week, there was about 12 ounces of pork shoulder steak lingering. Looking for an easy, Chinese-y way to use it up, I made this stir-fry, based on a Hunan recipe from Fuschia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. She described “Farmhouse Stir-Fried Pork with Green Peppers” (Nong Jia Chao Rou) as a popular peasant dish but I found that the flavors were fit for a king.

I had no sweet Italian peppers, as called for in the recipe, so I substituted tender Romano beans from the farmers’ market. A Fresno chile lent color and a tiny bit of heat. Balancing texture, color, and flavor is key to stir-frying just like it is with any cooking.

The most remarkable aspect of this stir-fry was the seasoning of the pork. With just a bit of light and dark soy sauce and Shaoxing rice wine, the pork took on a wonderful velvety, deeply savory quality. Rory remarked that it was bordering being lamblike. The key was using a fat (well marbled) piece of pork shoulder. You know I love grilled pork shoulder steaks. Next time you’re at a market buy an extra one for this stir-fry.  We gobbled it up with rice.

I suppose that if you don’t want to eat pork, chicken thigh would be work as a substitute. Instead of the green beans, try Anaheim or Pasilla chiles, if you like. Lovely sweet Italian peppers should be coming into season in a few weeks. I typically get mine from Hmong farmers.