As I round the corner on finishing the Asian Tofu manuscript for submission next week, there is little time for complicated cooking. Nevertheless, a girl has to eat and I’m not one to give up good food just because I have a deadline to meet. I just figure out some simple things to make. Once in a while a friend invites us over and I don’t have to cook and clean!

A couple weekends ago, winemaker Randall Grahm and his wife Chinshu invited us to dinner. You can’t bring wine to a winemaker’s home, so I called and asked what I could contribute in terms of food. A fine cook, Randall had things covered, though he said that if I had time, I could bring an appetizer.

That afternoon, Rory and I went out for our daily walk and when we got home, we had exactly 1 hour to make some snacks and drive to Randall’s house, about 10 minutes away. I fell back on the notion of a spreads and dips as they’re easy and fast. I knew that Chinshu appreciated little Asian twists on things so I pulled out an old stalwart from back pocket – avocado and mint chutney. Then I came with a no-brainer new one – togarashi goat cheese.

As I readied those appetizers, Rory baked toast points and Vietnamese rice crackers (banh trang nuong/banh da) for guests to scoop and spread to their heart’s delight. We arrived at Randall and Chinshu’s home right on time!

Here they are the recipes for you to try out and tinker with:

Avocado and Mint Chutney

This is basically guacamole but with ginger, garlic, green chile, cumin, and mint. I borrowed the idea from Neelam Batra’s The Indian Vegetarian (1994) and adapted to my regular guacamole recipe.  If you have some green or mint chutney on hand (recipes are in Asian Dumplings), mash the avocado and stir in the chutney and yoghurt.

Serves 4

1 tablespoon chopped yellow onion1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 Thai or Serrano chile, chopped
Salt
1 large ripe avocado, pitted and roughly chopped
Fresh lemon or lime juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2 to 3 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro leaves
2 to 3 tablespoons finely chopped mint leaves
2 tablespoons plain yoghurt

1. Use a mortar and pestle to pound the onion, garlic, ginger, chile and a pinch of salt into a coarse texture. You want the ingredients to shed their liquid. Add the avocado and a few good squeezes of lemon or lime juice. Lightly pound to mash and mix the ingredients together. Stir in the cumin, cilantro, mint and yoghurt.

2. Transfer to a serving bowl. Let it sit for 5 minutes, then taste and adjust the flavor.

Togarashi Goat Cheese

Instead of buying expensive goat cheese already coated with herbs or spices, do it yourself! I put a peppery Japanese coating on a little log of goat cheese. The hardest part was figuring out how to do it without making a mess. You can come up with your own spice blend, perhaps with Sichuan peppercorn for a numbing effect.

Yield depends on the size of the goat cheese

1 log or round goat cheese, any size
Japanese 7-spice pepper blend (nanami/shimichi togarashi)

1. Chill the goat cheese to make it easier to handle. Lay a piece of plastic wrap on your work surface. Sprinkle on some Japanese 7-spice pepper blend (nanami/shimichi togarashi) so that you can set the log atop of it so the cheese does not stick to the plastic.

Put the goat cheese on top of the area covered by the spices, then sprinkle and roll on more of the spices. Use the plastic wrap to efficiently coat the cheese. When you’re satisfied, transfer the goat cheese to a serving plate or wrap it up and you’re ready to go!

2. To serve, slice the cheese into a few rounds to reveal what you have, or else it may look awkward or mysterious to your guests.

With the chutney and cheese, offer toast points, crackers, pita, or tortilla chips! Randall served some amazing Rieslings that paired perfectly with the zesty flavors.

After Thanksgiving, the weather turns, fewer customers come out, and the number of vendors each week declines by thirty to fifty percent. Who wants to brave the cold and rain to sell to a few diehard regulars? I certainly wouldn’t if I were KT Farms, Hmong farmers who drive from Fresno, three hours away, to the coast. All summer and into the early fall, I prepare myself for the inevitable by patronize their stall for eggplant, okra, sinqua ridged squash every Saturday. But as Thanksgiving approaches, no matter how much of those hot-weather veggies I’ve eaten, I start thinking that I’ll never see them again. Okay, so that’s not realistic. It’s more like I’ll never see them again that super fresh – until KT Farms comes back in April or May.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I even start missing things that I hadn’t paid attention to all season long. Vegetables that I’d glossed over as I sorted through the piles of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian and American eggplants suddenly hold huge appeal. This year, as with every year, I realize that I’d taken the peanuts and jicama for granted for months. (It’s a vicious circle that I can’t seem to annually escape from.)

I come home with a bag of peanuts and another of baby jicama. The peanuts are a bit damp, having been dug up just the day before. The jicama are fist-sized with thin, soft skin that can scraped off with a fingernail. Coincidentally, both peanut and jicama are legumes – members of the bean family, and native to the Americas. European traders brought them to Asia in the sixteenth century where they became extremely popular and eventually staple foods.

In my kitchen, I savor these precious treasures in common Vietnamese fashion. I boil the peanuts and snack on the buttery, nutty beans over the course of a week’s time. The jicama get peeled and cut into small wedges and enjoyed with a dip in chile salt that enhances the tuberous root’s natural sweetness. (This savory-sweet combination is found in many tropical cuisines like that of Mexico.)

These simple pleasures remind me not to neglect them next year. But I will. Maybe eating them right before they disappear makes me appreciate them even more? I’ll never know because this is an annual ritual that I can’t give up.

Boiled Fresh Peanuts

Put the peanuts in a pot with plenty of water. The peanuts will bob around so aim for about 5 inches of water. Add a generous amount of salt. I put a tablespoon in when boiling peanuts in 3 to 4 quarts of water. Bring to a boil and keep them going fast and furious for an hour. It takes a while because the water has to penetrate the shell so this isn’t like cooking fresh shell beans.

Check on the water about 3 times during cooking to see if you need to add extra water. To check for doneness, eat one, but remember to rinse it in cold water to cool before you try. Drain and set aside to cool. Refrigerate, if you like, or start cracking the shells to get to the beans.

Jicama and Chile Salt

Peel the jicama and cut into wedges or sticks – whatever shape you like. In a mortar and pestle, pound together a chopped Thai chile, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and ¼ teaspoon sugar to create a slightly wet, pinkish-orange mixture. Use a spatula to scrape the chile salt out onto a small dish and serve with the jicama.

You can certainly use jicama from regular supermarkets for this snack. Or try a tart fruit like a green apple or green mango.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Last year I had a freak accident while traveling in Southeast Asia. I fell and put a hairline crack in my front teeth. Ever since then, I’ve neither been able to gnaw on ribs nor bite into corn on the cob. My dentist warned me against it, lest I aggravate the injury. We’re heading into corn season as the weather heats up these days. I unfortunately have to pass on one of my favorite summer foods – grilled corn on the cob slathered with scallion oil and garnished with a sprinkling of salt. It’s a Vietnamese treat that I remember from childhood, and just because I can’t enjoy it doesn’t mean that you can’t either. Just make some scallion oil and grill the corn (boil it first) till the corn gets some charred parts.

I love corn and I was looking for — and needed — a corny change. Last month while dining at Street, Susan Feniger’s restaurant in Los Angeles, I noticed a side dish called “Vietnamese corn”.  Oh, I thought, Susan was offering Angelenos a version of a Vietnamese street treat that I’d enjoyed a few years ago in the Motherland. How clever.

Once home, I looked through my travel notes and came across some chicken scratch I’d jotted down during a visit to Chau Doc, a border town on the fringes of Vietnam in the Mekong Delta. Rory and I were totally bowled over by the bap xao (“bahp sow”) that two women vendors were selling in the Chau Doc main square. Hot from the skillet, the corn was spicy, sweet, and briny. I asked for the recipe and the ladies told me how they sautéed the corn with various seasonings and insisted that a little margarine made their corn sing. They added a touch of MSG too but our sweet American corn doesn’t require that culinary trick.

I actually think that what makes the seared corn remarkable is the addition of dried shrimp, which imparts a delicate lobster-shrimp quality. Fish sauce undergirds the of-the-sea flavor. The hot chile contrasts well with the sweet corn. Butter is here to pump up and stay true to the Chau Doc street food vendors’ recipe. This simple dish is uncommonly tasty.

Corn with Chile, Scallion, and Shrimp
Bap Xao

During summer, choose the sweetest corn available and remove the fibrous silk as you cut the corn, or you’ll be flossing with it. When out of season, frozen corn is a worthy stand-in. Dried shrimp is sold at Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai markets. In a pinch, use Mexican ground dried shrimp sold in plastic packages and start out with 1 tablespoon as it’s got a super fine texture. If you don’t have dried shrimp, use about 1/4 cup chopped shrimp and/or increase the fish sauce to add briny oomph.

Serves 4 as a side dish

1 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup chopped scallion, white and green parts
1 1/2 tablespoons dried shrimp, quickly rinsed in warm water and finely chopped
1 or 2 red Thai chiles, chopped
4 cups fresh corn (cut from 4 large ears of corn)
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
About 1/8 teaspoon salt

1. Heat the oil and butter in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the scallion, dried shrimp and chiles. Cook for about 30 seconds until the scallion has wilted and the mixture is aromatic.

2. Add the corn, give things a big stir to combine, then sprinkle in the fish sauce and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, for 3 to 4 minutes, until the corn has cooked through. Remove from the heat, taste and add additional salt, as necessary, for a savory-sweet finish. Transfer to a serving bowl. Great when served hot or warm.