R E L A T E D
I N F O

Viet Cookbooks in English

Viet Cookbooks in Vietnamese

Other Asian Cookbooks

Useful Reference Books

Magazine and Newspaper Articles

Noteworthy
Websites

Copyright 2006 San Jose Mercury News

January 25, 2006

New Year's soups: Add spoonfuls of celebration to your holiday

By Carolyn Jung

Sunday, families of Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean heritage will gather around the Lunar New Year table with appetites primed for festive foods served with a grand flourish.

And at each celebration, soup will make a quiet, yet important, entrance.

Other foods may command greater attention or hold more significance. For the Chinese: dumplings shaped like gold nuggets for good fortune, and jai, a vegetarian dish of ingredients that connote luck, prosperity and longevity. For Vietnamese: banh chung, dense, sticky rice cakes filled with pork and mung beans, with rice representing the Earth and mung beans the sun. For Koreans: cabbage, mushrooms, chicken and beef tossed with a mound of noodles, a wish for long life.

Soup may not be the showstopper like a whole fish or whole chicken artfully presented on a big platter to represent abundance and togetherness. But soup's cleansing, restorative and warming nature provides a welcome interlude during the filling holiday repast.

Of the three cultures ushering in the new year, Koreans place the most emphasis on the soup course. Although tkokkuk, rice cake soup, is enjoyed year-round now, it is an absolute must-have on New Year's Day.

The brothy soup is chock full of ground beef, green onions, kelp or other seaweed, and the all-important chewy slices of white rice cake sticks -- for purity and longevity. Eating a bowl of the soup on New Year's Day is thought to ensure that you'll live to enjoy the next year.

For the Chinese and the Vietnamese, no one soup is associated with the new year. One popular choice for Chinese-Americans is winter melon soup -- rich chicken stock redolent with snowy soft cubes of the refreshing squash, and served in the winter melon's hollowed-out jade-green shell.

Bay Area Chinese cooking authority Martin Yan does an updated, cross-cultural riff on the soup, forgoing the winter melon and choosing a Japanese kabocha squash instead. With its mottled green exterior and vibrant orange flesh, it makes a colorful vessel for Eight Treasures soup. It's a most appropriate soup: Eight is considered a particularly auspicious number in the Chinese language because it sounds like ``to grow.''

For the Vietnamese, especially those with roots in southern Vietnam, a classic Tet dish is stuffed bitter melon soup. Resembling a cucumber with warty ridges, bitter melon was long ago thought by many Asian cultures to purify blood, as well as to cool and cleanse the digestive system. It's also rich in iron, and contains twice the beta carotene of broccoli, twice the calcium of spinach, and twice the potassium of bananas.

But its flavor can be quite an acquired taste. Its strong bitterness comes from quinine, which is also what gives tonic water its acridness.

To lessen its bitter bite, try this trick I learned from the cooks at Ming's Chinese Cuisine and Bar in Palo Alto: Remove the seeds, then soak the bitter melon in very cold water for about 20 to 30 minutes before cooking. It will lose some of its edge, much like cut onions will after a cold water soak.

For another option, Andrea Nguyen of Santa Cruz, whose upcoming book on Vietnamese cuisine will be published this fall by Ten Speed Press, suggests substituting green fuzzy melon. It's similar in size and shape, but because it's related to winter melon, it packs a tamer taste.

Like a peach, fuzzy melon is covered in fine fuzz or hair. In fact, if you spy some that are fuzz-less, they're too old. Peel them before using. A grapefruit knife works well to scoop out the interior membrane before stuffing the melon with a simple mixture of ground pork, scallions and chopped cellophane noodles. The stuffed melons are cooked whole in chicken stock, then sliced into wheels before being added back into the broth for serving. The technique helps keep the filling more neatly intact.

Whether or not you greet the Lunar New Year with Gung hay fat choy in Cantonese, Xin nian kuai le in Mandarin, Chuc mung nam moi in Vietnamese or Saehae pok manhi baduseyo in Korean, you're sure to savor these soups that make any winter day a little more comforting.

Copyright 2006 San Jose Mercury News

Eight Treasures Squash Soup

Serves 4

1 whole kabocha squash, 2 to 3 pounds
1/4 pound medium raw shrimp, shelled, deveined and butterflied
1/4 pound boneless, skinless chicken, diced
1/4 pound Virginia ham, diced
3 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded, caps diced
1 small carrot, diced
1/4 cup frozen peas, thawed
3 to 4 cups chicken stock
3 tablespoons Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
1 green onion, thinly sliced, for garnish

Bring large pot of water to boil. Lower squash into water so that it is completely covered and cook 10 minutes; drain. Let stand until cool enough to handle. Cut top off squash and reserve as lid; scoop out and discard seeds.

Place shrimp, chicken, ham, mushrooms, carrot and peas in squash. Place filled squash in a large pot.

Combine stock and rice wine in bowl; pour into filled squash so liquid comes to within 1 inch of the top. Pour remaining liquid into pot around squash. Place reserved squash lid over filled squash.

Cover pot and bring to boil over high heat. Decrease heat and simmer until flesh of squash is tender when pierced, 30 to 35 minutes.

Ladle soup into 4 bowls. With spoon, scoop flesh from squash and divide among soup bowls. Garnish with green onion.

From ``Martin Yan's Asian Favorites'' (Ten Speed Press) by Martin Yan

Bitter Melon Soup

Serves 6 as a first course

1/2 a 1.8-ounce package cellophane noodles
4 medium bitter melons (1 1/2 pounds; available in some supermarkets and in Asian markets)
1/2 pound ground pork
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon bottled fish sauce (nuoc mam)
6 cups chicken stock
8 small sprigs cilantro

Soak cellophane noodles in medium bowl of cold water to cover until pliable, about 3 minutes. Drain and with scissors cut the noodles into 2-inch lengths.

Cut both ends from melons, and with your fingers push the inner core of seeds to one end. With a chopstick, push the seeds all the way out. You should have a hollow channel ready for filling in each melon.

In medium bowl, combine pork, noodles, green onion, pepper and 1 teaspoon fish sauce. Divide mixture into 4 portions and stuff each melon snugly.

In large saucepan, cover melons with chicken stock and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, skimming occasionally, until melons are tender when pierced with a knife, about 10 minutes. Add remaining fish sauce. Remove melons and slice crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick stuffed rounds. Put equivalent of half a melon into each soup bowl and ladle stock over it. Top with cilantro sprigs and pass extra fish sauce and black pepper at the table.

From ``Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking'' (Prentice Hall Press) by Binh Duong and Marcia Kiesel

Korean Rice Cake Soup

Serves 4

6 cups (1/8-inch-thick) rice cake stick rounds (available in the freezer section of Korean markets; thaw in refrigerator before using)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1/2 pound lean ground beef sirloin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 green onions, white and pale green part only
8 cups beef stock or chicken stock
1 strip (1 inch wide and 6 inches long) dried kelp (optional; available in Asian markets)
1 tablespoon sil koch'u (hot red pepper threads), for garnish (available at Korean markets)

In a bowl, soak rice cake rounds in cold water for 30 minutes to soften. Meanwhile, in a skillet, heat oil over medium heat until hot. Add garlic and saute 2 minutes, until fragrant. Add ground sirloin and saute 5 minutes, until meat is barely cooked through. Season with salt and pepper, and set aside.

Slice a small amount of green onions into thin rings and set aside for garnish. Slice rest of onions diagonally into 1/4-inch pieces. In stockpot, bring stock to vigorous boil over high heat. Decrease heat to medium-high, add green onion pieces and kelp, and boil 10 minutes. Add rice cake rounds and cook 10 minutes, until rice cakes are soft and chewy, or to desired consistency. Transfer kelp to cutting board and cut into diamonds. Set aside.

To serve, ladle soup into individual serving bowls and top with the meat. Garnish with green onion rings, kelp pieces and sil koch'u. Serve very hot with a side dish of kimchi, if you like.

Note: Steamed filled dumplings are often added to this soup for New Year's Day. If you don't want to make your own, buy prepared frozen ones. Steam or boil them in a pot of water. Then add a few to each bowl of soup just before serving.

Adapted from ``Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen'' (Ten Speed Press) by Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall