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The past seven days have been filled with terrific things and uncomfortable inconveniences. Last Saturday, we had a freak storm in Santa Cruz that brought hail and nonstop rain, resulting in a 44-hour power outage in our neighborhood. Our home is on a crazy power grid and we annually lose power but we’d had never [...]
Sometimes I conflate things in my kitchen and on my plate and they work well. For example, last week’s conversation about western ways to use Asian foods and ingredients and the heartbreaking disaster in Japan resulted in my making Mexican carnitas with Japanese dashi. I had Japan on my mind and lots of dashi stock leftover from [...]
Vietnamese Tet sticky rice cakes (banh chung) are a must-have for the Lunar New Year. When they’ve just been cooked, refreshed through a one-hour boiling, or warmed in the microwave oven, they are fabulously good. Each mouthful is redolent of the tea-like fragrance imparted by the leaves that the cake is wrapped in. But if [...]
Crab Rangoon are deep-fried wontons stuffed with a piquant cream cheese and crab filling. While it is not considered a classic in Asia, it is a popular item on all-you-can-eat Asian American buffet spreads and Chinese-American menus. Most often times, there’s just cream cheese in the wonton, which leaves me crabby. To get my fill [...]
In Vietnamese, there’s a term called thanh toan, which means to take care of loose ends, settle the accounts per se. Every week, I have to thanh toan my refrigerator by using up all the bits of leftovers from prior meals and recipe testing. I don’t like to waste food and need to make space for new [...]
Jack Vu emailed last week wanting to ask VWK reader to weigh in on this question: How do you incorporate Vietnamese food and ingredients into other non-Asian dishes? As an example, Jack dips corn bread in nuoc cham dipping sauce instead of spreading it with butter. “Didn’t think I would like it but it turned out [...]
This is a recipe that’s been long over due. Ever since my book came out a year ago, I’ve been remiss that I couldn’t fit in a recipe for the southern Vietnamese favorite, hu tieu Nam Vangnoodle soup. It’s a Cambodian-Chinese concoction that the Vietnamese ‘borrowed’ and then made their own. Nam Vang is the Viet [...]
These fragrant grilled savory-sweet morsels are a classic Vietnamese appetizer/party food. Perfect for noshing with friends along with a cold beer or dry white wine. For chao tom, a garlicky shrimp paste is wrapped around a stick of sugarcane, briefly steamed to set the paste and shape, and then grilled to finish. Pieces of the [...]
After getting the low down on Vietnamese young green rice (cốm), what can you do with the little flakes. One of the easiest ways to savor the rice is to use it like breadcrumbs (think panko) and use it to coat deep-fried shrimp. Look for the rice at Vietnamese markets abroad or bring some back with [...]
I’ve posted several times about Vietnamese banh mi but realized that I’d never presented a full-fledged, master recipe, nor have I provided some history about the popular Vietnamese snack. First off, a bit about sandwiches themselves. Thank heavens for John Montagu (1718-1792), 4th Earl of Sandwich, who habitually sent for cold meat in between two [...]