Viet World Kitchen

Viet Scrambled Eggs with Fish Sauce Recipe

It was not so much nostalgia as a yearning for something deliciously Vietnamese that led me to whip up these scrambled eggs today. My mom taught me how to make scrambled eggs – after she let me prepare rice for the family. We’d have the eggs for lunch with bread. At the time, I didn’t realize how genius it was.

There were just a handful of ingredients involved: shallot or yellow onion, tomato, eggs, fish sauce, and black pepper. If things got fancy, green onion was added for color. Making the Viet scrambled eggs got me thinking about the brilliance of simple cooking.

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!

Step-by-Step Chinese Roast Duck Recipe & Tips

To kick off 2013 last week I roasted a duck. It was a festive way to celebrate New Year but also an excuse to practice my whole duck cooking and use the new stove’s oven. I’ve experimented with deep-fried Sichuan duck and roast Peking duck. Vietnamese people often roast duck with red fermented tofu  (vit nuong chao) so I decided to combine various methods and best-practices into one. It was a delicious duck that we ate over the course of two dinners. 

Instead of a normal recipe format, I’m going to do walk you through the process so you can apply them later on. Hey, Lunar New Year isn’t far away. A roast duck could be part of your menu for launching the Year of the Snake!

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.

Fried Ginger Chicken Recipe per Japanese Farm Food

This year has been fabulous for Asian cookbooks. I am not just talking about Asian Tofu! It’s in fine company with an outstanding group of 2013 publications. While I’ve checked out Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl’s Vietnamese Street Food and Charles Phan’s Vietnamese Home Cooking, I hadn’t had the chance to dive into the non-Vietnamese ones, until now. This fall, I was out of town for five weeks total. Phew, I’m back home working on the banh mi cookbook. In between, I’m trying out recipes from autumn Asian cookbook releases that caught my eye.

The first one is Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s Japanese Farm Food, a work that takes a non-fussy, matter-of-fact approach to Japanese cooking. Nancy lives in Japan, where she teaches home cooking and is married to an organic farmer. Their life is filled with straightforward food, much of which is detailed in the cookbook. It’s a highly personal work, not meant to be strict and authoritative, but casual and inviting. You can tell that Nancy put a lot of love into her book. Some recipes require a trip to a Japanese market but others, like this fried ginger chicken recipe (tori no kara age) are a doable with supermarket ingredients. Plug in where you want and can. Sometimes the instruction are opaque and a little finesse is required. For example, when the oil temperature for frying the chicken wasn't specified, I clipped on a thermometer. The recipe had charming cues but I wanted a little more accuracy.

I chose this recipe because frankly, I never get enough kara age when I order it at Japanese restaurants. My husband and I politely divide up however much there is on the plate. Making it at home was a fine workaround. We both got our fill.