Viet World Kitchen

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!

Matar Soy Paneer Recipe (Peas and Tofu in Spicy Sweet Sauce)

I love the classic northern Indian dish of peas and cheese but I seldom order it at a restaurant. I can’t eat a lot of fresh dairy and frankly, it is often lackluster, especially at inexpensive lunch buffets where there’s more sauce than sweet peas and rich fried cheese.

My solution is to make it at home with soy paneer (tofu). The little fried cubes of tofu soak up the spicy sweet sauce very well. This week, I discovered a frozen bag of San Marzano tomato puree from last summer and a partially used bag of frozen peas. Those finds made for the perfect excuse to prepare a batch of matar (mutter) soy paneer.

We had it for lunch with another frozen discovery – papery thin Middle Eastern flatbread. (Yes, I'm trying to clean out the freezer's 2012 inventory.) Wheat tortillas reheated over an open flame would have been my other choice; it’s a decent shortcut for chapati.

Soy Chicharron Recipe

I didn’t come up with this idea. It belongs to Seattle-based radio show host Dick Stein. When we met up in September to tape an interview for KPLU, Dick said that after reading and cooking from Asian Tofu, he was inspired to buy dried tofu skin and deep fry it. The result was soy chicharron, Dick said.  

You can do all kinds of amazing things with tofu skin, which despite its name is really the film that forms on hot soymilk. The Japanese call it yuba and the Chinese know it as doufu pi or fu pi (tofu skin); in Vietnamese, tofu skin is called dau hu ky. You have likely had it at dim sum or on a Viet ride plate as a dumpling wrapper to encase a paste of shrimp; the recipe for those fried shrimp tofu skin rolls (xia fu pi juan) is on page 182 in Asian Tofu.

There are many kinds of tofu skin and basically, they differ in how dried they are. If you’re interested in extra details, I posted a tofu skin primer earlier this year and tofu guru William Shurtleff just published an online history of yuba. 

Dick’s tofu skin chicharrones used sheets of dried tofu skin – sold at Chinese and Vietnamese markets near the dried mushrooms. Get a flat package that contains the yellow pieces of tofu skin. Then get ready to fry up the skin into sparkly pieces.

Okara “Potato” Salad with Fried Shallots Recipe

Yesterday a friend came over and we made tofu together. When I wrung out the soy milk and showed Charlotte the okara (lees), she asked me how to use it. There are savory and sweet uses, I responded, but most often times, a tofu maker has so much that he/she sends the stuff off to a nearby farm for feed livestock. For us home cooks who are into making tofu, we can freeze our small quantities of lees for a while or dig them into the soil as an enrichment. In Asian Tofu, I frame okara as a “tofu byproduct bonus.”

I treat okara like wet wheat germ in baking, bread crumbs for croquettes or soy panko, and well, in this recipe, it is turned into a potato-like salad. Soy disguised as potato? I didn’t come up with the idea on my own. I had it as an appetizer/snack at Ramen Halu in San Jose. It was so good that I dragged my husband back for the okara salad, despite the fact that I’m not keen on the ramen itself.

Rory reacted like I did, that the stuff was like potato salad but without the potatoes. There was mayonnaise, mostly likely Japanese Kewpie which has a touch of MSG, fried shallots and a few cut vegetables and raw onion. The shallots, the same as Vietnamese crispy caramelized hanh phi, functioned like vegetarian bacon bits. That’s to say, they made the okara salad super tasty.

With the leftover okara from yesterday’s tofu, I came up with this recipe today. I figure that the ramen shop was riffing on a traditional Japanese unohana preparation (see the Savory Soy Milk Lees with Vegetables recipe in Asian Tofu, page 142). Unohana is delicious, homey, old-fashioned Japanese fare. It’s a good nibble with sake and beer or if you’re like me, I just eat it as a light meal. It’s filling because of all the soybean protein involved.  

Homemade Condensed Milk Recipe (+ vegan options)

There are many foods that I take for granted -- until I make them myself. The process of doing so helps me to understand and appreciate those foods more. Pho noodle soup, banh cuon, soup dumplings, tofu, and butter are among them. Last week I added condensed milk (sua dac, literally thick milk in Vietnamese) to the list.

I saw a recipe for “milk jam” in Bon Appetit magazine and thought, man, that sounds like DIY condensed milk. Then I read the recipe headnote (introduction) and indeed, the BA editors said that you could sub condensed milk for the milk jam, which was mixed with creme fraiche for a dessert topping at Oxheart restaurant in Houston.  

The recipe was ridiculously simple, and got me thinking about making condensed milk from soy milk as well as regular cow’s milk. So I gave it a try.