Viet World Kitchen

Deviled Sriracha Crab Rangoon Recipe

If you don’t want to deep fry crab Rangoon, how about baking them up in little wonton skin cups? The result is a mini deviled snack. I made these up for a cocktail party that we attended over the weekend. They crabby cups disappeared in a flash. People said they were particularly good with gin and tonics.

If you have Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, the deviled crab (cua farci, page 44) is fabulous as a filling too. The filling below is a tweaked rendition of what's used for Sriracha and crab Rangoon wontons. The water chestnut and shrimp contribute texture. Use the classic Trader Vic’s crab Rangoon filling, if you like.

Deviled foods are typically seasoned with hot spices and often presented stuffed into something (think of deviled eggs). When crab is involved, the mixture is baked with a bread crumb topping for a delicate crusty finish. In this case, the Sriracha crab mixture is stuffed into wonton skin cups. You’ll need 1 or 2 mini-cupcake or muffin pans to make these.

Crunchy Shrimp Balls Recipe (aka Chef's Special Balls)

The first time I ordered these deep-fried shrimp balls at a dim sum restaurant, they carried the honoric title of “chef’s special balls.” Yes, I just used the word balls twice in one sentence. My husband and I giggled at the English name as we ordered the crisp little wonders, coated with crunchy ribbons of noodles. Those balls were the size of golf balls and a little awkward to manage with chopsticks. I’m sure you’re smirking or laughing aloud by now. Nevertheless, they offered a nice contrast of textures and shrimp flavor. (If you've had this little wonder, what were they called in English and/or Chinese?)

It was probably the name but I’ve didn’t make chef’s special balls at home until earlier this week. Bee Yinn Low’s new Easy Chinese Recipes cookbook inspired me to do so with a recipe for “crunchy shrimp balls” which gave them a little more gravitas and got me over my giggles. (I contributed a cover blurb to the book so suffice it to say, I’ve been pondering these crunchy morsels since I reviewed the galleys months ago.) Bee is the brains behind the super popular Rasa Malaysia blog, a newish mom, and now a cookbook author.

Spicy Sardine Corn Empanadas Recipe

One of the best food finds on my recent trip to Texas was an amazing little fried empanada made from a corn-based dough. I couldn’t get the chewy-crisp dough out of my mind. I’d eaten enough of them to figure that Mexican corn masa was the dough. Ever since then, I'd been wondering how the gluten-free dough would work with a Southeast Asian dumpling filling. (I'd had a minor catastrophe with gluten-free potstickers a while back so it's something that I obsess about.)

We had an invitation to a friend’s house for dinner last night and I used that as an excuse to for a cross-cultural dumpling experiment. I felt brazen by Rebecca Caro, who recently made the empanada recipe from Asian Dumplings for her Latin food site, From Argentina with Love; she's also doing a giveaway of the book right now so enter if you don't own a copy!

Hey, if I suggest using a Mexican tortilla press as a shortcut for Asian dumpling dough, why not use the press on actual Mexican dough? In my cupboard, I had a small can of sardines in tomato sauce leftover from making a homemade version a while back. I decided to use the sardines for the spicy sardine puff (karipap sardin) filling in Asian Dumplings, page 129.

If you’re unfamiliar with that lovely filling, I assure you that it is NOT fishy whatsoever. There’s lime juice, ketchup, shallot and egg to soften the fishiness. I made the filling the night before so that I focus on the dough and shallow-frying the dumplings right before we had to go to Diane’s house.

Diane didn’t know what I was bringing but she had chilled a bottle of champagne. If you’re into wine and food pairing, bubbles are awesome with fried food! When I unveiled the empanadas to Diane, she promptly popped the cork and poured.

I explained that it was a Oaxacan empanada dough that encased a Southeast Asian canned sardine filling. Diane was born and raised in Fresno, California, but she’d been around enough to have an open mind and palate. She ate one and smiled approvingly.

As we were getting to ready to sit down for dinner, four empanadas remained on the plate. I asked Diane if I should put them away for her, and she surprised me with this reaction: “Don’t bother. I can eat those last four myself!” I suppose that signaled the success of my dumpling experiment.

Sardines in Spicy Tomato Sauce Recipe

Canned sardines are the Southeast Asian equivalent of canned tuna. It’s a great convenience food that many people enjoy, even crave! I keep at least one can of Ligo sardines in tomato sauce to eat with rice or toast, or to make the filling for sardine puffs (karipap sardin). I also stuff the sardines in banh mi.

Ligo is one of the prevailing brand sold at Asian markets. The cans are the size of small tomato paste cans. There's enough for a generous single portion, making it perfect for lunch. Here is what it looks like:

But I never thought of making my own until the other day, when I was staring down at freshly caught sardines at the market. I live on the Monterey Bay in California and periodically local markets such as Staff of Life health food store and Whole Foods carry them. Sardines were over-fished in the bay (remember Cannery Row?) but that doesn’t mean that they are no longer around.

Stir-Fried Clams with Spicy Bean Sauce Recipe

In the early 1990s, I received a fellowship to study at Chinese University in Hong Kong. That year of study helped me polish my language skill but more importantly, I got to eat my way through Hong Kong. My friends and I would go to the Kowloon night market and browse the stalls of overly padded bras and cheap knock-off goods before we settled on a few evening street snacks.

My all time favorite Hong Kong night market dish was clams in bean sauce. The small clams were as big as a quarter and thin shelled so there was a ton of them piled high on a plate. Hot from the wok, each order was unceremoniously plopped down on a flimsy table. My friends and I sat on stools and ate the clams with bamboo skewers, slurping all the sauce we could, scorching our tongues as we worked our way to the bottom of the plate. It cost roughly $2 an order. Seriously.

I’ve been looking for a good recipe for that dish since then. Most U.S. Chinese restaurants offer clams in black bean sauce but frankly, the pungency of fermented black beans overwhelms the delicate clams. I did not realize the error of my ways until I tried Grace Young’s stir-fried clams with spicy bean sauce recipe from Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge.

It’s not fermented black beans that I was looking for, but rather ground bean sauce. Ground bean sauce is sold in jars at Chinese market, and though it is definitely salty, it is not as forceful and earthy as fermented black beans. Ground bean sauce plays well with other ingredients, falling into the background to add savory depth.

Regular whole salted soybeans, also sold at Chinese markets, function in the same way, though they are not as nuanced as ground bean sauce. I used salted soybeans as the jar was what I had in my pantry.

The result was terrific, full of ginger, garlic, a touch of fresh chile heat. The clams stood up well to the flavors and retained their individual characteristics. I was frankly, happy as a clam. The salty, spicy, savory sauce was great on rice too, just like Grace described in the recipe introduction.