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.

Bathtub Gin Recipe

There are gin lovers and there are vodka lovers. My husband and I happen to tilt toward gin, though we keep a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka around for good measure. We didn’t think that the two would cross paths. But this past week, we put the vodka to use to make bathtub gin. The pale yellow result is what you see above.

My husband read an LA Times story by Greg Easter on using his family's Prohibition Era-bathtub gin recipe. Easter actually used his concoction to doctor up moderately priced gin. The result was supposed to be more "natural tasting gin." We were so intrigued by the idea of using vodka and white wine to create a gin-like spirit that we had to try it. Actually, we tried it twice in the past several days. 

Pan-Fried Cucumber with Red Perilla (Tia To) Recipe

Asian food expert Bruce Cost told me years back that two-toned Vietnamese tia to (red perilla) was also used by the Chinese. I didn't see it mentioned until I read Fuchsia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. In her collection of Hunan recipes was this gem. It's unusual to cook cucumber but it's understandable.  There are few vegetables that are eaten raw in the Chinese repertoire so it's no wonder that cucumber gets cooked. Pan-frying turns cucumber into a juicy morsel with a slight pickle-like crunch.

The aromatics and seasonings enliven the flavors. At the end, chopped red perilla (aka purple perilla, zi su in Mandarin) is added for an herby finish. Our mild winter left me with a decent amount of tia to leaves in my garden. Thai basil could be substituted if you can't find the perilla, which is sold at Vietnamese and Chinese markets catering to Vietnamese shoppers. In Chinese, this Hunan dish is called zi su jian huang gua.

Apple Tart Tatin with Banh Mi (Bread) Recipe

After months of deadlines, I had a breather this past week for goofing around in the kitchen. Having succeeded with the fried apple spring rolls – a tasty exercise in mutant cooking of sorts – I decided to try a nontraditional approach to making tart tatin, a classic French upside-down fruit tart, typically made with apples. At a professional food conference this summer, I watched the legendary Jacques Pepin tweak an apple charlotte by cooking it in a skillet and putting the bread on top instead lining the pan with it; for serving, the result was inverted like a tatin. He'd crossed the charlotte with the tatin, said to be created by two sisters in in 1898.  

Since a tart tatin required caramelizing the apples stovetop followed by covering them with a pastry crust and baking, why couldn’t I substitute slices of white bread for the crust? I suppose you could think of that approach as a Franco-Viet tart tatin. Imagine a resourceful cook in Vietnam not having enough butter for cooking the apples and making the pastry. Perhaps she or he would reach for a few slices of banh mi to fudge the dough? In Vietnamese, banh mi refers to both bread and sandwich. Baguette and sliced white bread are both types of banh mi to Vietnamese people.

I had plenty of butter and flour for the pastry but frankly was feeling a little lazy about making dough, and also was very curious about how the bread would function as a crust. I also had these fears: What if the whole thing fell apart when I inverted the pan? What if the bread didn’t stick to the fruit or crisp up? What if the tart looked ugly or worse, tasted bad?

Barley and Asian Herb Salad

There just a few months left of the fresh herb season so I’m trying to find ways to eat up as much of the leaves as I can. Plus, it’s a constant battle with the bugs. Hopefully, I will enjoy more of the herbs than the bugs do.

A while back I wrote about using herbs for a Southeast Asian rice salad. Dried shrimp and a stunning array of finely chopped aromatics were part of the nasi ulam recipe. Then I went to Chimu, a new Peruvian restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. There, the chef presented a barley salad tossed with a green salsa criolla. The dish was called trigo mote, and though trigo means wheat in Spanish, barley was used. The Peruvian barley salad also had bits of beets, feta and leaves of tarragon. It was refreshing.

I’d mostly eaten barley in western soups but the Peruvian treatment made me realize that barley is appreciated as a major grain in many parts of the world. After all, we’d had roasted barley tea at many Korean and Japanese restaurants. Barley is used for the Tibetan staple tsampa. China is one of the world’s biggest consumers of barley as food. Obviously, barley is not just for beer and beef soup.