Vietnamese Food that isn't Pho - A recipe for Bánh Bao

Being a non-Caucasian in America, I often get asked what my ethnic background is.  When the question is phrased as something less vague than "Where are you from?" (which normally prompts me to respond, "Maryland," because I now live in New Jersey and I am surrounded by the Jersey born-and-bred), I tell people that I am Vietnamese.  More than 90% of the time, the response I get is, "Oh my god, I love pho!"  The last word is always pronounced "foe."

I find it very weird.  Can you imagine if you told someone you have an Italian background the person replied, "Cool, I love spaghetti!"  It's strange.  There is so much more to my heritage and cultural background than phở, which, by the way, is pronounced "fuh-ah?"  Because Vietnamese is a tonal language, "phở" is pronounced like a question and as if the word had two syllables.

So instead of sharing a recipe for a Vietnamese noodle soup like bun bo hue or pho, today I want to share with you how to make Bánh Bao.  First, of course, I will tell you what it is.  Think of a stereotypical pork bun you get in Chinatown.  Now imagine that the doughy outside is fluffy and light and the inside has ground pork, eggs, and vegetables.  That is a bánh bao.

When I was growing up, this could serve as my breakfast, a snack food, or lunch.  The filling can be changed to be whatever you want, but the standard bánh bao has a piece of hard boiled egg, some ground meat, and normally lap xuong (also known as Chinese sausage, for all you non-Asians).  I love them.  They're nutritious and healthy, and once you make them, you can store them in the freezer for at least a month, steaming them in the microwave for about a minute whenever you want to eat one.

While writing this recipe, I was faced, yet again, with the problem of transcribing a Vietnamese family recipe into a recipe that others can follow.  On one hand, I was lucky that this recipe is one of the ones that my mother actually has written down, since most things she makes from memory.  On the other hand, the notes she had written read something like this, "half a bowl of milk, add to the flour until it feels right.  If it doesn't feel good, add more milk" and "1/4 bowl of sugar, if you like it sweeter (it tastes better like this)."  I had to ask my mother exactly what "one bowl" measures out to.  Thankfully, we made these together and I could get some measurements down for you.

No Bake Matzo Brittle (aka Chocolate Caramel Matzo)

This recipe really speaks for itself.  It's matzo covered in a layer of delicious caramel that snaps satisfyingly, just like a brittle should, and that caramel is covered in a thin layer of chocolate.  There can even be sea salt or chopped almonds sprinkled on top.

This is a fantastic snack, an easy dessert to make without turning the oven on, and it's great for entertaining.  Given that Passover begins this Monday the 25th, I thought it was an appropriate time to share this recipe.  I'm not Jewish, but I grew up with a good number of Jewish friends, so matzo  (note: singular is matzah) is a familiar thing to me.  I've had matzo brownies, matzo chocolate chip cookies, and matzo ball soup (which I love), but this is by far my favorite way of using matzo.  Of course, if you don't have any matzo on hand, you can also make this recipe with saltine crackers.

I feel like I must say, before sharing this recipe, that the photos really don't do this justice.  Melted chocolate and caramel are hard to capture with a digital camera in a way that captures all the beauty of the two.

Slow-Cooked Apple Cider Pork on the Stove

There is a reason I don't post a lot of savory recipes on this website.  Quite simply: I don't have a lot of recipes.  By that I mean, I make different savory things to eat all the time, but I just don't keep track of what I'm using and how much of it went into the pot.  I do almost everything by eyeballing it or taste-testing; I don't use measuring spoons or cups except when I bake.  This, of course, makes it very hard to share recipes, because I don't even remember all the time what I put into my food.  If I think something needs some curry powder, I add some in.  If I think garlic would be a nice addition, in goes some garlic.  Because I cook for myself, I don't have to worry too much, because I know I'll eat whatever I put on the table.

What I am giving you here is my best effort at actually creating a recipe for other people to follow.  I had some country-style boneless pork ribs on hand that I used as the meat, but you can make this with pork shoulder or loin or such.  This inspiration for this meal was just that I wanted to get more flavor and moisture into the meat.  I don't actually like white meat, so I really shouldn't have bought it, but I did not realize how little dark meat there was in this cut.  Also, it was on sale.

I marinated the pork overnight with soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and honey, and then I baked it in an oven at 350F until it was done (about 30-40 minutes).  Then, I decided to slow cook it on the stove, to really get the meat soft and tender, so that it would melt in my mouth.  I wanted that fall-off-the-bone pork texture, except that there was no bone for the meat to fall off of, but you know what I mean.

Pork and apples are a classic combination, and balsamic goes wonderfully with pork, so I made up a little recipe with what I had in my kitchen. The end result was absolutely delicious.  I love the way the meat just falls apart - it is perfect for a sandwich or with a salad - and the reduced cooking liquid makes an incredible sauce.  The apple flavor is so faint, it's almost like a homemade barbeque sauce, and who wouldn't like something like that?

Slow-Cooked Apple Cider Pork on the Stove


3 splashes of balsamic vinegar (probably about 2 tbsp)
1 splash of red vine vinegar (probably a scant tablespoon)
roughly 1 teaspoon of salt
2-3 cups of chicken stock (I used a homemade stock made with only chicken bones, breast meat, salt, garlic cloves, and water)
2 packets of instant spiced apple cider (I used Alpine brand, which contains sugar, malic acid, mltodextrin, tricalcium phsphate, apple juice solids, caramel color, sodium citrate, ascorbic acid, natural and artificial falvors, spice extractive... and now that I've written those ingredients, I'm horrified)
1/2 cup of unsweetened apple sauce (I used Motts because it was on sale)
3-4 cups of water
4 lbs of cooked pork (see above)
3 cloves of garlic
a splash of fish sauce because I'm Vietnamese  (optional)

Combine everything in a large Dutch oven or non-stick pot.
Bring the pot to a rapid boil on high heat, while stirring occasionally.
Once the mixture has come to a boil, lower the heat to medium so that it is still simmering.  For me, on an electric stove that goes from 1-2-3-4-5-6-high, I left the heat around 4.  Allow the mixture to cook for at least 1 hour and 30 minutes, with the lid on.  The meat will be tender at this point, but not falling-of-the-bone (if you have no bone, they it will not be at the point of pulled pork yet).

Stir occasionally and check the level of your cooking liquid, especially after about 45 minutes.  The liquid will reduce as it cooks, but if the sauce gets too thick and the level gets too low, it can burn; just add a bit of water (about 1/2 cup) if you see this starting to happen.  You can reduce the braising/cooking liquid at the end, after pulling all the meat out, if the sauce isn't thick enough for you.  In my case, I had to add more water 3 times during a total cooking time of 2 hours, and the sauce was perfect at the end (I had no need to reduce it).

After 1 hour and 30 minutes, reduce your heat to low.  If you like your meat to be very tender, crush the pieces of meat with a fork and allow to continue to cook for another 30-50 minutes, depending on the size of your pieces of meat.  I was working with pieces about the size of half a hockey puck and had a total cooking time of 2 hours.

Serve with veggies and some sort of carbohydrate for a complete meal.

Life, love, and some germs

I'm so out of it right now, I just read a recipe for "Chicken Liver Pate" thinking that it said "Chocolate Liver Pate."  I was fascinated, and it wasn't until I had read through the entire recipe and wondered to myself how the author could possibly put "chocolate" in the name and neglect to include it anywhere in the recipe that I went back and re-read the title and realized that I was the one who was terribly mistaken.

Anyhow, I've been busy, as I always tell you.  But I have a very legitimate excuse (as I always do): I've been away in Paris.  I spent a lovely holiday with both my family and B.'s family.  I'm always amazed by how wonderful it can be to just do simple things with the man that I love.  Eat breakfast.  Go to the movies.  Go grocery shopping.  Clean an apartment.

But blissful as I may make our holidays sound, the reality is that for two days that we were together, I was truly, horribly sick.  I mean the kind of sick where I was sitting on the floor, unable to keep food or water down, and his brother and sister had to go out on Christmas morning to find a pharmacy that was open in order to buy me medicine.
Yet, even though I have never been so miserable in my life, it was also so nice to be taken care of by him.  He was wonderful to me.  I kept apologizing for being sick, and he stopped me at some point and told me, "I don't want to choose just the good moments. I am your partner."

It is those moments that I realize how lucky I am.  I know that with B., I will be taken care of.  I have someone who will hold back my hair, sit on the floor with me, and hand me toilet paper to use as tissues when I need it.  I have someone who will make me tea, heat up soup for me when my appetite returns, and carry me up the stairs when I'm too tired and in too much pain to do it alone.  I know that he will be there when I am at my worst, my least attractive, and my most vulnerable.  And for all this, I love him.

Of course, the way life is, in return for all his sweetness, I gave him my virus, and then he was horribly ill, but the point of this story is that what we have is great, germs and all.

As for any food news, before you know it, B. will be here again (long distance love is all about counting down the days in between seeing one another).  Hopefully, there will be no more germs and no more stories about sickness in the near future.

Happy belated new year, to all my readers.  Here's to hoping 2013 is even better than 2012!

Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies

I don't like brownies.  Really.  I don't see the appeal in them.  Most brownies just taste like chocolate and flour, and I don't mean that in a good way.  I find 99% of brownie recipes to be one note. They are dense, and taste of cake-y chocolate with no real character and after about one bite, they get incredibly dull.  If a dessert requires a cup of coffee, a scoop of ice cream, or whipped cream in order to be good, then it is not a good dessert.  Good desserts should be able to stand on their own.

So it goes without saying that I rarely ever make brownies, yet here I am, posting about a brownie recipe.  I like this recipe so much the first time I made it, I had to make a second batch the next day to be sure that it wasn't a fluke.  This is no mistake: this recipe is gold.

The brownies that this recipe turns out are just sweet enough, but not at all cloying.  You don't need coffee or milk or ice cream to make these good.  In fact, I've eaten them for breakfast.  The espresso in the batter heightens the deep flavor of the dark chocolate, and the cinnamon adds a warm background fragrance.  Best of all are the lingering notes of black pepper and cayenne pepper.  They add just enough heat to makes your tastes buds light up, but it isn't at all overwhelming.  In fact, I find the spiciness rather comforting.  Of course, you can adjust this to your liking.  The first time I made this recipe, I omitted the cayenne pepper but used freshly ground black pepper.  It was delicious.  The second time I used both.  Also delicious.  Seriously, I have no complaints about this recipe.

If you're like me and you don't normally make brownies, I beg you to make an exception in this case.  Or if you the type of person who loves brownies, I highly suggest trying these.  The recipe is very easy to make.  I did this in a food processor for easy clean up, but you can also make this with a standard mixer.

Happy Holidays all!

This pictures speaks for itself.  Make these brownies.

Custard-Filled Corn Bread

A good recipe for both Thanksgiving and Christmas — or really anytime of the year when it's cold outside and you want comfort food — is corn bread.  I love corn bread.  It is filling, sweet, savory, and cornmeal gives the bread a lovely texture that is both crumbly and cake-y.

This cornbread is everything you're looking for. When it comes out of the oven, it has beautifully crispy edges and a soft and delicate crumb.  What sets this apart from other corn bread recipes though is the moist interior... the creamy and luscious custard layer.  When it is cold, from the fridge, the creamy custard layer is like a savory icing, inside of a corn bread cake.  I wish I could describe it better.  I only know that after Thanksgiving, when I went Black Friday shopping with my mom and my sister, I kept thinking about how I wanted to go home and eat this cornbread for lunch.  It's that good.

Lunch at Blue Duck Tavern

Following our engagement, B. and I went to eat with my mother at a restaurant in DC that my parents and I fell in love with a few years back during restaurant week.  Incredibly enough, it has take me four months to write about it.  Such is the life of someone in medical school.  (B. insists that he knows what he is getting into.)

Located in the Park Hyatt Hotel, Blue Duck Tavern is a lovely contemporary style restaurant serving new American cuisine.  Their menu is set up to "recognize the purveyors and artisans who enrich [the] menu with their fresh ingredients," so each course has listed beside it the area from which it came.

Our party of three was promptly seated and we mulled over the choices offer on the menu before finally settling on our selections.  Having eaten there before, my mom and I knew that the main courses were large enough to be more than enough for a full meal; no need for starters or sides.

B. ordered the veal "schnitzel" with mustard spaetzle and mushroom sauce (from Chapel Hill, NC, $20).  It was earthy and full of character, but the kitchen has still managed to keep the veal light.  It had great texture, and we all liked that the layer of breading was just right; not too thick, and not at all greasy.  Both my mom and I felt that it was missing high notes or a fresh acidity that a salad or fresh vegetables might have provided, but B. liked that it was fairly traditional.  My mom and I gave it a 8.5 out of 10.  B. gave it a 9 out of 10.

I ordered the wood oven roasted confit of duck leg served with frisee, a poached egg, and warm bacon vinaigrette (from Grimaud Garms, CA, $20).  The salad was very beautifully dressed.  I am not normally impressed with salads, but this one definitely stood out.  The acidity and body of the vinaigrette was the perfect foil for the duck confit.  I love the sweet, crunchy Kalamata olives and the wobbly, perfectly "saucy" poached egg.  Everything together was lovely.  All the elements worked together, and I gave it a 9 out of 10 overall.  The duck was good, but alone I felt that it was only a 7 out of 10, as it wasn't as moist as I was hoping.

My mom ordered the crispy skin salmon, served with cucumber, hearts of palm, smoked roe, and sorrel cream (from Sitka, AK $23).  The dish truly lived up to its name, as the skin on the salmon was beautifully crispy, while the fish was perfect moist and light.  The sorrel cream, hearts of palm, and cucumber provided a fresh and light spring element to the dish.  We gave it an 8.5 out of 10.

For dessert, we were all approaching fullness, so we decided that among the three of us, we would split two desserts.  Every day there is a "Market Dessert" that is offered on the menu, and this changes with the seasons.  When our waiter described their market dessert for the day, it sounded too good to pass up.

The Market Dessert of the day was a peach and rosemary tart served with vanilla creme fraiche and candied rosemary ($9).  The roasted peaches sat on a dense olive oil cake (I wouldn't call it a tart, as it was more sponge-y than crumbly).  It was a very creative dessert.  The candied rosemary was very interesting, though I think had the kitchen fried the rosemary, it would have been more fragrant and effective.  We loved the combination of the creme fraiche, peach puree, olive oil cake, and roasted peaches together.  It was a very satisfying dessert.  We gave it an 8.5 out of 10.

The other dessert we ordered was the milk chocolate banana s'mores ($9).  This was rich in flavor but light and playful.  I absolutely loved the brûléed mashmallow and the thin banana chip.  The graham cracker crumbs went well with the milk chocolate.  I do not know quite how to describe the milk chocolate part, except that it was like a cross between a panna cotta and a pot de creme.  It was silky, creamy, and light.  We gave it an 8 out of 10.

In the end, we were very satisfied and full, and as usual, we had perfect service throughout the meal.  I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone in the area.

Blue Duck Tavern
1201 24th Street NW
Washington, DC 20037
Tel. (202) 419-6755

A Thanksgiving Spread

I've truly been slacking on posting lately, but this was the Thanksgiving spread this year at the D. family house.  It was just the four of us -- my sweet B. did not join us this year because our long distance relationship means we need to spread out our visits evenly, and I was only just in Paris in September and I will be returning for Christmas -- but as usual, my mother, my sister, and I worked all day in the kitchen to make a delicious spread.

There was maple link sausage, chestnut, mushroom, onion, sage, and thyme stuffing, which was every bit was delicious as it sounds.  There was also garlic soup, thickened with parmigiano reggiano and served with fresh croutons.  We repeated the kale chips recipe from last year, and we added Molly Wizenberg's recipe for custard-filled corn bread to our list of favorites.  As always, the star of the meal was my mother's rosemary Cornish game hens, stuffed with a mixture of sticky rice, corn, water chestnuts, lap xuong (Chinese sausage), and caramelized onions.  We drank Moscato d'Asti, a very light sparkling white wine, and for dessert, I made a dark chocolate, caramel, and coffee tart with a sable crust.  

After that Thanksgiving meal there was a family movie, Black Friday shopping, and a lovely dinner at Restaurant Eve to celebrate my dad's belated birthday.  More pictures, recipes, and a review to follow.

Making Caramel

You know why there haven't been recipes lately?  Because this is what I ate for dinner tonight.

And this is what I ate for dinner the other night.

I sautéed up some zucchini in a pan with garlic, cracked an egg, and then threw some rice in at a last minute.  I didn't even get a plate; I ate straight from the skillet.  That's what medical school and living alone is like.

I'm not saying I eat badly, it's just that this is hardly blogging material.  I do, however, have some pictures of caramel making, for all those who might be intimidated by the process, as I used to be.  Sorry, but there are no photos of the finished product because at the end of the process it's hard to stir, add butter, and add milk, and also take pictures at the same time.

I've been making salted caramel sauce a lot lately, mostly to eat with apples.  Apples are in season now, and grocery store apples get tiring to eat, but it's an easy and inexpensive fruit to buy, so I eat a lot of apples.  To make this less dull, I now spread caramel sauce on them.  This makes it a lot less healthy, but oh well.  You win some, you lose some.

It's very simple to make a dry caramel.  Just throw sugar into a pot and let it melt and start to cook.  Stir occasionally (for people who are paranoid: it doesn't matter how often you stir).  Once it has reached your desired level of caramelization, turn off the heat, add in a little bit of salt, a tab of butter, and some warm cream or milk.  Now you have caramel sauce perfect for ice cream, apples, coffee, etc.  If your caramel seizes up, just heat it on low heat for a little while.  Store in a glass jar in the fridge.  It'll keep for about a week.

You can also turn this caramel sauce into a delicious buttercream frosting, to decorate any cakes or cupcakes of your making, the recipe for which can be found here or here.

Election Day Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting

My fiancé once pointed out to me that although I love to cook, I have nearly no savory recipes on my blog; instead, I tend to write exclusively about sweet recipes for baked goods.  The reason for this is mostly that when I cook, I don't use recipes.

For example, I made a Vietnamese-style duck soup (mi vit tiem) the other night with dried lily bud flowers (kim cham), Chinese dried apples (tao tau), ginger, and orange peel.  It was the perfect thing for the cold weather we're having here in New Jersey.  But I couldn't tell you how much water was in it or how much soy sauce I put in the broth or how much ginger I used.  I just know that I tasted along the way and the end product was delicious.  Also, I made the soup with duck bones and I seriously doubt that you, my dear readers, keep Asian marinated duck bones in your fridge that are just waiting to be made into a delicious stock.  In fact, 90% of the ingredients that went into that soup are things that I'm willing to bet no one who isn't Vietnamese keeps in their kitchen.  In fact, my own mother, who knows how much I love this soup, doesn't always keep all the ingredients for it on hand.  Long story short, the point it, I do make savory foods.  I just don't know how to write about them, since I don't have recipes for a lot of what I make.

I do, however, have a lovely recipe for a chocolate cupcake with salted caramel frosting.  And I promise you, this salted caramel frosting is a breeze to make.  This caramel never fails, never cracks, never breaks... it is perfect.  You don't even need to keep your eye on it the entire time you're making it.  I've probably made it close to a dozen times in the past two months and it's never gone wrong.

I made these cupcakes to eat as my friends and I watch the election results, and I'm hoping they will be celebratory cupcakes.  Of course, since it'll probably be too late for you to make these in the spirit of the election, they also work well as birthday treats.

This recipe makes 36-42 cupcakes, or two 10-inch layers, or three 8-inch layers (if you're the cake making type).  You can also mix this combination up and bake 12 cupcakes and two 8-inch layers, or so on.

The cupcakes are the perfect level of chocolate-y.  They are flavorful, with a moist and delicate crumb, and the salted caramel frosting is the perfect ooomph to elevate everything to perfection.  Unlike other cupcakes, these don't taste like brownies.  By that, I mean they aren't overwhelming fudge-y in a way that makes you feel sick after three bites.  And the combination of vanilla, coffee, and rum in this recipe makes this all just irresistible.

I recommend making these cupcakes a day in advance.  Frost them and then keep them in a covered container in the fridge.  The flavors seem to just get better on the second day.  The chocolate is more intense and the nuances of vanilla and coffee seem to meld in a very lovely way.