Viet World Kitchen

My Mother’s Culinary Obsessions: Ice Cream Scoops and Industrial Cooking

My mom doesn’t drink alcohol so I can’t toast her with champagne love this coming Sunday, when we celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States. However, she cooks. A lot. She inspired my learning and work in the kitchen. Every year, I pause to think of how my mom has impacted what I do in the kitchen. How I cook, create, and eat.

You may have remembered last year’s homage to Me (Vietnamese for mom, pronounced “meh”) in which I revealed her kitchen quirks. A number of people divulged that their moms were like mine, doing strange things such as covering their kitchen counters with plastic. For 2010, I’m focusing on Me’s obsession with using the ice cream scoop and industrial-size cooking projects.

We never had ice cream scoops in Vietnam. But when we came here, my mom discovered the ice cream scoop. She got one to scoop up portions of one of her favorite American discoveries – Thrifty’s pineapple and coconut ice cream. Then she discovered that the scoop was a great cooking tool for evenly portioning sticky rice flour dough for Vietnamese specialties such as banh gio rice pyramid dumplings.


And when she engaged in industrial quantity cooking, which seems like quite often from all the cooking chores I was given, she reached for an ice cream scoop. The scoop allowed her to quickly distribute ingredients. The photos above show her prepping French coquille Saint Jacques (scallops in cream sauce). With the ice cream scoop, she is facile with her fingers, able to fly through cooking repetitious cooking steps without minimum minimal messiness.

Which brings me to why she scoops so much. Her obsession with using the ice cream scoop is related to a desire for industrial cooking. Why cook for a village when you’re just feeding a family?

Pairing Beer with Vietnamese Food

As you may have surmised by now, my stern mother got me cooking and my wacky father got me drinking. Bo Gia (Old Daddy, a term of affection in Vietnamese) introduced me to red wine and cognac when I was of elementary school age. I suppose that was among the benefits of being raised Catholic in a former French colony. Even though Vietnamese women (let alone girls) are not usually thought of as drinkers, Bo Gia (pictured above, photogenic as always!) and I became drinking buddies. It’s been that way for most of my life and after I got married, my husband Rory became part of our drinking circle.

Last week was spring break for Rory and we headed down to Southern California to spend a week hanging out with family, friends. Our activities revolved around lots of food and drinks. We went to my parents’ house for lunch last Monday, and thought it would be fun to introduce my dad to Pinkus, a great certified organic beer from Germany. In case Bo Gia didn’t like the Pinkus hefeweizen or ur pils, we hedged our bets with one of his favorites, Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale. These are sizable 500ml bottles and we figured that the three of us could polish off three beers.

I knew that my mom would be serving a main course of cha ca Ha Noi, the turmeric and dill catfish classic that is enjoyed with funky fermented shrimp sauce (mam tom). It turned out that she had a three-course seafood lunch menu. (Mom is an overachiever when it comes to spoiling people at her table.) Rory and I surprised Bo Gia with the beers and told him that we’d have an impromptu beer tasting.

Roasted Pork Belly Banh Mi Sandwich Recipe

My parents are both in their 70s and despite their concerns over maintaining a healthy diet and low cholesterol, they manage to splurge every once in a while on fatty pleasures such as crispy roast pork. We typically get it from a Chinese barbecue shop and tell the butcher we want a lean cut. I realize that that is somewhat of an oxymoron when it comes to roast pork but perhaps going lean lessens the guilt a bit. When we buy the pork from a Chinese barbecue shop located in a Vietnamese community, the shop usually sells a few accompaniments for the rich indulgences, such as fine rice noodles (banh hoi) and freshly baked baguette.

I’ve written about eating rich grilled foods with banh hoi rice noodles but a roast pork banh mi – well that is something rather visceral in the Vietnamese culinary consciousness. The primary reason is that it is fast. Get the pork cut up from the barbecue shop, grab a baguette, slit the bread open and stuff it with the warm, crisp, juicy pork. That’s instant gratification. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve brought roast pork (thit heo quay) home to my parents and my mom drags out the baguette. We sit around the table and eat our sandwiches and my parents grin from ear to ear, as if they are kids again in Vietnam – refreshed in body and spirit. What a pleasure to witness and share.

Yesterday, after having picked weeds for hours in the front yard, I needed a rewarding pick-up. I decided to make a pork belly banh mi from last week’s leftovers. My roasted pork belly was obviously not freshly roasted so I had to revive it somehow.

A Near Strawberries and Cream Cake Wreck

I love to hear from young people who are getting into food and cooking. Last year, Kimberly, a Vietnamese-American high school junior, emailed me inquiring about a recipe for a Vietnamese/Asian-style cake. She wanted to prepare a mini-version of a strawberry and cream layer cake for her catering class as she had fond memories of it growing up when her mom bought the cakes at their local Asian market. She found the recipe on Viet World Kitchen and wrote:

It might be a little over exaggerated, but it was almost like fate finding your recipe! I've always like to bake. I never have the right equipment at home, but when I do it at school, I get a sense of enjoyment.

I hope your website is around for a while. I'm going to be off on my own soon. I want to still eat the many foods I grew up with. I know I'll be coming back to learn more about how to make our culture's cuisine.

I wrote back, encouraging Kimberly and asking for photos and a report back when she made the cake. Last Sunday, she emailed and sent the photo above. I love her stamina. Through all her travails, she successfully made the cake for Superbowl Sunday – and is going to repeat it for practice. Her adventure in making and using the strawberry and cream layer cake recipe is full of humor and grace:

A Message from My Nephew Colin

A ginormous THANK YOU to the many people who assisted with my nephew's Flat Stanley school project.  Just in the past few days, over 40 people put Flat Colin on a bullet train/Concorde supersonic jet and welcomed him into their homes. He became quite the cosmopolitan traveler and has made many new friends. I truly appreciate your international contributions as we've all greatly expanded the reach and scope of Colin's world. All the neat stories you shared will not go to waste. Maybe we'll be in his class show-and-tell . . .

Just today, my sister Tasha and Colin added this comment to the original post:

Hello all from 3-D Colin and his mother,

Thank you all for the virtual tour of the world. If Flat Colin ate all the foods you mentioned he would be the size of 3-D Colin, whose favorite VN food is bun nem nuong [garlicky grilled meatballs with rice noodles] accompanied by some good nuoc dung for pho bo (broth for beef pho).

Flat Colin is in TX and after that Alaska and Washington. There are lots of good VN food in TX so we will see what he eats while there. Unfortunately Flat Colin won't make it to many of the places in his virtual tour, but then again it's not that easy to go to New Zealand.

Here's a shout out to auntie Andrea for her nifty idea, although from the pix she did scar Flat Colin for life...

-- Tasha and Colin

Yep, I had to send Flat Colin to Dallas where he's spending time with a finance expert. Maybe Flat Colin can tell us where interest rates will be going?! ;-)

Help My Nephew's Flat Stanley Project

Do you have or know elementary school kids? If you do, you may have come into contact with Flat Stanley, a children's book by Jeff Brown. The plot low-down is that Stanley gets crushed by a falling bulletin board while he's asleep. In his flattened state, Stanley goes on many adventures, the best one being that his parents mail him in an envelope from New York to California. He meets new friends and connects with family, eventually returning home where his little bro helps to turn Stanley back to his 3-D self.

One of the common elementary school projects in America is to have each student send a flat version of themselves to  adults in their lives. The adults then take the flat child around and report back in the child's passport book. Eventually, the flat child is mailed home, full of wonderful stories to share with his/her classmates.

I have eleven (11) nieces and nephews. Over the years, Rory and I have hosted Flat Cynthia and her brother Flat Michael in our home. Over the weekend, Flat Colin arrived via FedEx from New York City. He'd already ventured from his house in Los Angeles to his Japanese grandma's place in San Gabriel then to my parents' home in San Clemente. My folks took Flat Colin to a local clam chowder cookoff and took snapshots. During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, Flat Colin went to New York, Milan, and then back to New York. My sister says that he overextended his European and Big Apple sojourn and needs to get back home. Flat Colin can't go home till his passport is full. (Read: My nephew is behind on his assignment!) He needs help.

Our Crazy Vietnamese Holiday Menu

Everyone is doing a 2009 year in review and looking back, all I have to say is, "What a year it has been." I hope that you've all enjoyed the holiday season. Mine was restful and I'm happy to report that all the family events went smoothly. No one misbehaved.  What do Vietnamese people eat at Christmas time? Well, that all depends as Vietnamese people celebrate the holidays in many ways. It's often multicultural, reflecting the unique cultural amalgam that is at the core of Vietnamese culture. There are traditional foods for Lunar New Year (Tet Nguyen Dan), but for Christmas it's all mixed up. For example, my family is Catholic and we celebrate on December 24 according to the French/European tradition of reveillon. This year, we had an unusual mixture of Eastern and Western fare at my parents' home on Christmas Eve. 

Attitude of Gratitude: 8 Things I’m Grateful For

On Monday over lunch at the new Bush Street Out the Door in San Francisco, my friend Faith Wheeler, a Bay Area restaurant publicist, let me in on one of her life secrets. We were discussing Thanksgiving plans and most people typically unload on how they dread family gatherings during the holidays. Not Faith. She grinned nice and big and giddily said:

Thanksgiving is always special for me. Very special. In my spare time, I study neuroscience. Studies show that our brains cannot handle anxiety and gratitude at the same time. It physiologically can’t do it. When I feel anxious, I think of things I’m grateful for and all the anxiety seems to just melt away. That’s why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Having gratitude for all the good things in life is important to living.

For the past several days, I’ve been practicing what Faith preached and you know what? It works. In preparation for Thanksgiving and the holiday season ahead, here’s my short list of things I’m grateful for: (this is not in any particular order)