Viet World Kitchen

Easy Asparagus with Soy Sauce and Sesame Recipe

If you're concerned about timing issues when it comes to cooking or if you just want to quickly put something healthy and good on the table, this simple recipe is for you. I purchased and prepped way too much food for our Tet feast on Tuesday night, and among the leftovers was a pound of asparagus. Not knowing what to do, I parboiled them in lots of salted water and kept them refrigerated. Why? Because prepping asparagus up to that point allows you to do whatever you want to them at the last moment. For example, you can add them to an omelet, toss them in a salad, stir-fry them with a little oyster sauce or coat the green spears in a little rich and savory-sweet dressing. 

For lunch today, I took the last approach for this recipe, which is from Shandong province in northern China. The dressing is seriously fast and easy. I have no qualms about admitting that I borrowed this idea from The Seventh Daughter, an engaging and informative cookbook by legendary San Francisco restaurateur Cecilia Chiang of the Mandarin.

How to Cook Dried Bamboo Shoot (Mang Kho)

Several people have emailed asking about how to cook dried bamboo shoot. I looked up the familiar Asian ingredient in all my books but for some reason, dried bamboo shoot is seldom mentioned in Asian cookbooks. It is a terrific and standard ingredient sold at Chinese and Vietnamese markets. Dried bamboo shoot is shelved at Asian grocery stores alongside other dried foodstuffs, such as dried mushroom, seaweed, turnip, squid, beans, etc. In Vietnam, the shoots are simmered along with pork, duck, or chicken for a classic rice noodle soup called bun mang. Such preparations are traditionally saved for special occasions, such as the Lunar New Year – Tet Nguyen Dan. Since Tet is coming up (in 2010, it falls on Valentine's Day!), I cooked up a bunch of dried bamboo shoot today in preparation for the holiday cooking ahead.

What is the difference between fresh and dried bamboo shoot? Fresh has a crispness whereas dried has a meaty quality. Both have that musty bamboo funk but since bamboo shoot has to be cooked for a long time, the funk disappears. Bamboo shoot is called mang (“mahng”) in Vietnamese and dried bamboo shoot is mang kho (“mahng koh”). Dried bamboo shoots are not hard, but rather leathery. Once reconstituted and boiled until chewy-tender, dried bamboo shoots have a chewy-tenderness and pleasant sweetness that’s not found in fresh or canned bamboo. Whenever I cook dried bamboo shoot, I marvel at how it transforms its cooking broth into a perfumy brew. If you’ve had Japanese ramen noodle soup, chances are that you’ve had dried bamboo shoot (called menma) as a topping. 

Corn and Coconut Sweet Soup Recipe (Che Bap)

 

Even though corn is native to the Americas, cooks in Asia love to cook with corn. In my Vietnamese kitchen, I celebrate the summer bounty of sweet corn by stir-frying corn with chiles and dried shrimp, frying up batches of corn and coconut fritters and simmering pots of this creamy, risotto like sweet soup. Called chè (“cheh”), sweet soups can be hot, warm, or cold. They are sold as street food, served at restaurants, and made at home. In Vietnamese communities abroad, there are even cafeteria-like chè bars where you can point to various cooked ingredients and the clerk will combine them in a cup for you to eat in or takeaway. Look for chè at Vietnamese banh mi sandwich shops too; they’re typically sold in plastic see-through cups.

Vietnamese sweet soups are beloved snacks that aren’t cloyingly sweet. Last week on Twitter, Leah Crow (@cabeah) asked me to for this sweet soup, which she’d just enjoyed at a Vietnamese restaurant. I tweeted back a 140-character recipe but didn’t feel like the tweet was enough. With leftover ears of corn from Labor weekend, I made a batch of che bap (“cheh bahp”) and jotted down the recipe for Leah and you to use.

Slanted Door’s Hue Rice Dumplings Recipe (Banh Xep Chay)

I have wanted to make Slanted Door's Hue rice dumplings (banh xep chay) at home ever since I tasted them last years. My schedule has been extremely busy but oddly enough, last Tuesday when Asian Dumplings launched, I had a break in the action. To celebrate the book's released, I pulled a few cookbooks from my library and headed into the kitchen. An afternoon of concentration and solitude and a few rounds of dumplings later, I came up with a rather nice recipe to recreate the experience of biting into the chewy, tender and rich tasting dumplings from Charles Phan's Slanted Door restaurant.

It's posted on Asian Dumpling Tips so you'll have to visit the sister site to get the recipe! Enjoy.

Slanted Door's Hue Rice Dumplings Recipe (banh xep chay)

Sriracha Chile Sauce Recipe (Tuong Ot Sriracha)

Once I’d tasted a number of Sriracha chile sauces from Thailand, the U.S., and Vietnam, I wondered if I could make my own. Why make it yourself when Sriracha costs less than $3 a bottle? I wanted to understand how the flavor of Sriracha came together. Additionally, I wondered if I could use readily available ingredients to make an excellent homemade version of the hot sauce? Huy Fong’s Rooster brand of Sriracha employs American ingredients so why can’t I?

My aim was to come close to replicating the nuanced and well-balanced Thai Shark brand of Sriracha, which my friends and I all gravitated toward liking during the Sriracha taste off. The ingredients listed on the Shark bottle were pretty straightforward: chiles, vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt. (No preservatives please!) Most Thais buy Sriracha so there aren’t many published recipes, especially in English. However, I remembered tasting Chef Robert Danhi’s version of Sriracha that he made from scratch. I looked in his densely packed cookbook, Southeast Asian Flavors, and found it on page 133. Robert’s Sriracha recipe came in two versions: quick (I call it fresh here) and fermented. He’d researched it from going to the actual town of Sri Racha in Thailand and analyzing both Thai and American sauces. I tried both of Robert’s versions.

Daikon and Carrot Pickle Recipe (Do Chua)

“Dilly the Pickle” emailed last week to announce that the 2009 International Pickle Week goes from May 15 to 25 (pickleweek.com). That' s more like 11/2 weeks, but I didn't care because I’m a sucker for cute cartoon icons and pickles of any kind, so I looked in the fridge for my go-to Vietnamese pickle – do chua made of tangy sweet daikon and carrot. This ubiquitous Vietnamese pickle is what’s stuffed into banh mi sandwiches, served alongside morsels such as grilled beef in wild betel leaf (thit bo la lot), and added to salads.

Sadly, my jar of daikon and carrot pickle was mostly brine and a few floating white and orange sticks of vegetables. Oye, what kind of respectable Vietnamese cook was I? It’s not so much that it is national pickle week, but rather that pickles play an important role at the Vietnamese table. They provide textural and flavor contrasts to food. For example, the flavor of rich foods gets cut (mitigated) by a tart-sweet pickle. At Tet Lunar New Year celebrations, you always see several kinds of pickles on the menu as that’s a holiday where lots of fatty dishes are served. In banh mi sandwiches, the daikon and carrot offer a crunch that pairs well with the baguette and the tartness offsets the savory rich meats and mayonnaise. But Vietnamese cooks, like their Asian brethren, prefer to make what I call fast pickles.  

Vietnamese Scallion Oil Garnish Recipe (Mo Hanh)

How can two ingredients add up to so much? I’m always amazed when I make this quick little Vietnamese garnish. It adds a richness and bright green finish to foods such as banh beo rice pancakes, banh hoi rice noodles, and rice paper rolls (e.g., salad/summer rolls). Use mo hanh the day you make it or the color dissipates from verdant to dull green. The flavor though, remains more or less the same.

Scallion Oil Garnish
Mo Hanh

Makes about 1/2 cup

4 scallions, white and green parts, thinly sliced (1 cup)
1/4 cup canola oil

1. Have the scallions ready in a bowl so they may be quickly added to the oil. In a small saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat until hot. Test the oil by dropping in a scallion slice; it should sizzle on contact. Add the scallions, and stir immediately to expose them quickly to the oil. When the scallions have collapsed and are soft, after about 30 seconds.

2. The garnish will keep for several hours at room temperature. Or, cover and refrigerate for up to 7 days, then bring to room temperature before using.

Note: This recipe was originally published in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2006)

Candied Lotus Seeds Recipe

Monday, January 26 ushers in the Year of the Ox. With all that’s been happening on the economic and political fronts, seems like Lunar New Year is a bit eclipsed this year. How can the Year of the Ox trump the Dawning of the Obama Era? But perhaps the ox (think water buffalo) -- a beloved patient, work animal in Vietnam -- can lend us its characteristically stable and persevering attitude. Bye bye get-rich-quick schemes a la Bernard Madoff. Hello nose-to-the-grindstone work to patch things up and rebuild.

 I thought about various oxen qualities as I experimented with candied lotus seeds earlier this week. Sweetmeats are a must-have at Tet, Vietnamese Lunar New Year. I can’t stand the stuff sold at the markets as they tend to be laden with food coloring and tasteless. As busy as I was this week with an arduous four-day photo shoot for a new cookbook (more on that soon), I carved out time to fiddle with candying lotus seeds, one of my favorite sweetmeats. They’re a little buttery and lightly sweet. A touch of vanilla lends a nice floral note to them.

Recipes from Viet cookbooks suggested soaking the seeds for hours before cooking them and then repeatedly coating in sugar syrup, much as you would for French candied chestnuts (maron glacee). But I have a neat trick for cutting down the cooking time for the seeds.