Vietnamese

Seafood / Vietnamese — View Comments
6
Mar 11

Canh Chua Ca – Vietnamese Sour Fish Soup with Tamarind, Pineapple and Okra

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Rating: 3.3/5 (12 votes cast)


Canh Chua


This is my favourite comfort soup to make. It’s a healthy combination of so many vegetables (pineapple, tomatoes, okra, taro stem (bac ha) and bean sprouts. The classic fish in Vietnam to use is Cat Fish but I prefer to go with fresh fish that I find – this time I used a whole salmon coho. The best part of the fish for the soup is the head (and tail) so if you want to live on the cheap, pick up some fish head (sometimes obtained for free or dirt cheap). This is my family’s recipe for Salmon Fish Soup. Andrea Nguyen‘s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen is also a good reference for this recipe and more.

You can find this dish in more traditional Vietnamese restaurants (no guarantees that the fast food Pho places will have it). In Vancouver, I loved it at Phnom Penh. In the Bay Area, there were so many: Vung Tau, Khanh’s Restaurant, Anh Hong to name a few. In Toronto, well the best place to have Canh Chua would probably be at my parents home.

Summary


Preparation Time: 20 min Chopping and Tamarind prep
Cook Time: 20 min
Total Time: 40 min
Servings: 6 portions I made double the portion (12 people) in a big pot since we had a whole fish but will just refer to half here.
Meal type: Soup
Cost: $15

Ingredients

  • 1 lb salmon steaks (or catfish and any fish head/tails)
    ingredients
  • 4 oz tamarind pulp – this was my first time making tamarind concentrate from pulp+water but it is time consuming! Put about 4 tablespoons concentrate tamarind liquid
  • 6 cups water
  • 1 cup chunks of pineapple – frozen or fresh
  • 1/2 lb okra – de-stem and cut in halves
    ingredients
  • 3 stalks bac ha (taro stem)
    ingredients
  • 2 tomatoes cut into wedges
  • 1 cup bean sprouts
  • 2 sprigs culantro and Vietnamese rice paddy herb
    culantro
  • 2 sprigs cilantro
  • 1 medium cooking sliced onion
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoon fish sauce – adjust with taste

Instructions


1. To make the tamarind concentrate from tamarind pulp, take a look at this recipe. You can make this in bulk and freeze in ice cube tray or just buy tamarind concentrate which is what I usually do.

2. To separate the pulp and seeds as the paste reduce, we used a french press since we didn’t have a course mesh sieve. We ended up having to put some of that pulp back to get more than a few drops of concentrate tamarind.
tamarind

3. In a pot, heat canola oil in medium heat and add onions until soft. There was a shortage in pots in the kitchen so we used a pan to cook the onion before pouring it into the pot.
tamarind

4. Add tamarind concentrate, sugar, fish sauce, salt and water and bring to a boil.
5. Lower heat to low and add fish heads, fish steaks and pineapple and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
soup
soup

6. The remaining vegetables only need about 2-3 minutes to cook so add this when ready to serve. Add the okra , tomatoes, bac ha.
soup
7. Add bean sprouts.
soup

8. Add chopped up sprigs of culantro, cilantro and rice paddy herbs.
soup
9. Take out the fish steaks onto a place and serve fish soup in a family style bowl.
soup

Results

Usually a Vietnamese dinner consists of jasmine rice and a few dishes, always finishing with a substantial soup. I’m a fan of just having this soup and rice as a complete meal since it’s so filling, delicious and healthy! Here’s how it could be served.
Fish Soup

 

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Rating: 3.3/5 (12 votes cast)

Vietnamese — View Comments
19
Jul 10

Anthony Bourdain and the Vietnamese claypot

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Thit Kho

Some friends of mine just went to Vietnam and described some of the dishes and restaurants they tried. One of my favourite restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City is Com Nieu Saigon and conveniently it is one of Anthony Bourdain’s favourite place too:



It’s a fun experience there, they cook claypots of rice and when they’re ready to serve, they break open the claypot and toss the rice across the room. It is a fun place to eat while you hearing smashing claypot sounds every few minutes. All the dishes at Com Nieu are delicious and in particular very basic and simple Vietnamese dishes can be found there such as braised pork belly with egg or braised catfish. In Vietnamese, this is braising of meat is called Kho and is quite common. This is an example of a meal that’s not typically in restaurants but made at home for its simplicity and comfort.

I’ve been meaning to learn how to cook my favourite Vietnamese dishes so that if I had any questions, I could just call home and ask my mom and grandmother any questions. So what better time than to start with some very basic dishes! So I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.

Braising pork or fish (or chicken, shrimp, beef) the Vietnamese way requires two basic Vietnamese sauces: Fish sauce and Caramel sauce.

Caramel Sauce

The Vietnamese caramel sauce looks deceivingly simple to make at home but took me a few tries to perfect. Essentially Vietnamese caramel sauce is heating water saturated with sugar until the sugar burns. As heat is applied, the sugar water mixture turns from opaque to clear to yellow (tea colour) to orange …and if you’re unfortunate, to brown and black. Yup I might have unfortunately screwed up a few times :) Every recipe that I looked up had a different ratio of sugar to water.

- 1 cup sugar + 1/4 cup of water (then 1/2 cup of water later).
- 2/3 cup sugar + 1/4 cup of water
- 2 Tbsp sugar + 1/4 cup of water

I’m not sure if it was the amount of sugar that made me cringe every time I made this last week to try to get the best sauce but I do prefer using the 2 Tbsp sugar instead of the 1 cup. The more authentic Vietnamese recipes do call for closer to a cup though. So it depends on your taste! I also figured out how easy it is to burn the sugar and how unpleasant the burnt sauce taste is.

1. Place sugar and water into a pot on medium heat.
2. Stir until sugar dissolves.
3. The water will boil and bubble. Keep watching (takes about 15 minutes).
4. You will see the water start turning yellow to orange as the sugar carmelizes.
5. At this point, be careful because it can turn brown and black quickly. As soon as it turns orange-brown and some smoke starts rising, turn off the heat and slowly pour in 1/2 cup of water. You don’t want the sauce to be too thick or too thin. Some people pour in boiling water but there’ll be a surprisingly big reaction when you do that.
nuoc mau
Now that is your Vietnamese caramel sauce for any braising needs you have. You can pour the rest in a jar and store in your fridge indefinitely. The sauce will thicken as it cools. Remember that this is NOT how to make regular caramel sauce and by no means should you eat this with ice cream or other desserts, it’ll taste bittersweet and terrible :)

If you don’t want to venture off to burn…er… caramelize your own sugar, you can find the sauce in grocery stores usually called Coconut Caramel Sauce. Also, I found that when I bought frozen catfish from Vietnam, it came with a package of pre-made sauce!

Claypot

claypot
Also the other thing that is special about Vietnamese braising technique is the use of the claypot. When my grandmother braises meat, they just use a metal pot sitting on low heat for a few hours. I’ve never owned a claypot and never knew how to cook with one so I bought one and learned how to use it! Unfortunately, I won’t be smashing my claypot at every meal like at Com Nieu but maybe one day!

When cooking with claypots, there are special handling instructions you need to follow. Claypots, by the nature of their material, are porous and absorb everything. The idea of cooking with a claypot is to soak it in water for at least 30 minutes so that later when heat is applied, the pot will release the water as steam which will cook the food.

Another property of claypots is that it is very sensitive to sudden temperature changes. Putting a (room temperature or cold) claypot into a pre-heated hot oven might cause the claypot to crack. Hence, no pre-heating of the oven is needed for claypot braising. The pot and the stove must start out at the same temperature and heated together. Also, remember this when taking out the claypot from the oven to not place it on a cold surface but on a cloth or towel first (for the same reasons).

Lastly, don’t use detergent to clean the claypots because it’ll will also just get soaked into the claypot themselves. The thought of a my braised pork belly steamed with dishwashing detergent does not sound appealing at all. I use salt and water to clean my claypot instead.

Alright, other than the sauce and the claypot handling instructions, I discovered that this dish is really easy to make. It is also quite tasty. As for the recipe for the crispy rice in a claypot as shown at Com Nieu in Anthony Bourdain’s video, I have yet to make that! You’ll have to stay tuned for that recipe.

Summary of Claypot Pork Belly and Egg

Preparation Time: 5 min
Cook Time: 1 hour
Servings: 4
Cost: $5
Meal type: Main

Recipe Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Ingredients

  • 2 hardboiled eggs
  • 1 lb pork belly (or pork shoulder or pork butt – essentially any piece of pork with a layer of fat still in tact). Cut up into 2 inch chunks.
  • 1 shallot
  • 3 Tbsp of caramel sauce
  • 3 Tbsp of fish sauce
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure

1. Make sure that claypot was soaked in water before you prepare this dish.
2. Put pork, eggs, shallots into claypot.
It is always a struggle for me to fit everything I want in there. I cut the eggs in half.
3. In a separate bowl, combine caramel sauce, fish sauce, salt and pepper to mix.
4. Pour mixture into claypot.
5. Put claypot into oven and set to 400 degrees. Bake for 45 min.

If you don’t have a claypot, you can also do this on low heat on your stove top.

Results

Vietnamese meal
This dish is so easy and tasty. I like to eat it with rice, cucumber or pickled bean sprouts. Also feel free to use any other meats – fish, chicken, beef will all work. Eggplant or tofu would taste good too.

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Main / Vietnamese — View Comments
8
Feb 10

Vietnamese New Year: How to cut and serve Bánh Chưng

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Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)


So the Lunar New Year is coming up ! I was lucky to be back home with my family a week before the festivities. When I was in Vietnam in 2001, the streets of Ho Chi Minh City were deserted for 5 days of celebrations of the New Year. Everyone goes home to the country side with their family to eat, drink and have fun. The days are full of food, music, (firecrackers were banned), and family fun. Incidentally, it was the only time in the city that I could cross the street without fear of motorcycles, bikes and cars running me over. I was surprised, since I expected huge celebrations on the street, parades, and such. But no, this is a strictly family festivity.

Aside from the red envelopes of money that I look forward to, there’s always a special dish in Vietnamese culture that’s served (along with many other dried fruit or sugar treats). It’s called Bánh Chưng which consists of glutinous rice, mung bean, and pork. There’s also a variation that is round/cylindrical that is popular. This dish was brought into Vietnamese tradition in 1695. In determining the successor for the throne, all the princes were supposed to bring back a national dish that represented the country. Hùng Vương was much poorer than other princes and could only afford to make something from very basic ingredients – glutinus rice, mung bean and pork. He made the square and the round kind and “won” this early food contest to become the successor to the throne. The dish is delicious and pays respect to ancestors and helps you remember that you don’t really need fancy ingredients to make a winning dish. You need to be resourceful and use what you have. I don’t know of many other dishes that have survived the 315 year test of time.

As a side note, wouldn’t it be great if we were to pick leaders of our countries based on their culinary abilities and how they run a kitchen? Who’d be the Prime Minister in Canada? Who would be the president of the United States? What would happen if Gordon Ramsey was the Prime Minister of the UK?

Procedure for Bánh Chưng


I won’t attempt to show you how to make Bánh Chưng because I have not made it personally. For $5 you can just buy it at any Vietnamese grocery store. However, Serious Eats has very nice instructions and pictures for making Banh Chung. it requires a wooden frame, made by a woodworker ;) Also one of those double decker steamers. It also requires many hours. So it’s always been a blackbox to me how to make it and will continue to be :) If you are inspired to make it yourself, let us know!

Procedure for Cutting Bánh Chưng

Alright instead, I will tell you what to do AFTER you get a delicious square or roll of Bánh Chưng. Well first, you have to heat it up. Microwave or steaming is fine – I think 3-5 min in the Microwave worked.

Unwrap the banana leaf:

The problem with cutting up this special cake is that sticky rice is really sticky. If you use a knife, everything will clump together and it’ll just end up looking like a gooey mess. So back in the day the pre-packaged squares were wrapped with twine (a kind of rope). You’d use this to section off the square. However, looks like the one we bought did not come with any string or twine. So the trick is …

Dental floss. Make sure it’s not mint flavoured ;) Or I suppose you’ll get another taste. However, floss works well to cut Bánh Chưng. To cut into squares of 9:

1. Rip off 4 pieces of dental floss, which is a little longer than the length of the Bánh Chưng.

2. Arrange 2 vertically and 2 horizontally so you see 9 equal pieces.

3. Flip the square upside down.

4. Take the ends of the floss and pull (pretend like you’re going to tie your shoelace)

5. Repeat with all 4 pieces of floss to get precision cuts of Bánh Chưng.

Serving Bánh Chưng

After cutting it up, you could also deep fry it, because everything tastes even better when its crunchy. I’m a fan of this, but it might not be the healthiest. Actually the cylindrical version can be cut with floss and it’s more common to fry these.

You’ll need to eat this dish with some preserved pickled vegetables (onions, carrots, shallots), and fish sauce. An opened up square will last a few days where one wrapped up in banana leaves can keep for 2 weeks. Each region in Vietnam has different accompanying pickled vegetables and spices to go along with Bánh Chưng – however you won’t meet a Vietnamese person who doesn’t know what Bánh Chưng is.

Happy New Year! / Chúc Mừng Năm Mới !

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Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Beef / Vietnamese — View Comments
8
Jan 10

Vietnamese Shaking Beef (Thit Bo Luc Lac)

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Pho is by far the most popular Vietnamese dish to spread around the world – but it is fast food. The most popular Vietnamese dish that I’ve seen appear in all fine dining Vietnamese places in the Bay area is indeed Bo Luc Lac.

In Vancouver, actually I haven’t found an upscale Vietnamese restaurant yet! (If you know of one that services Bo Luc Lac, let me know). I did see this dish at the Red Door Pan Asian Grill.

I think partly this dish is a novelty for it’s name – I always wondered why it was called shaking beef and realized it was the act of shaking the wok to move the beef around. I never got a chance to ask my family how to make this when I was craving it so I found two recipes which I followed – one was fromChef Phan at Slanted Door and one was from the VietKitchen blog.

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min to prepare the beef to marinate. Marinate for 2 hours.
Cook Time: 4-5 minutes
Servings: 4 servings.
Meal type: Main / Side dish
Grocery Cost: $10 ($2.50/person vs $15-$20 for the meal outside!!)

Recipe Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 pound of tri tip beef ($7.00) cut into 3/4 inch cubes.

    Honestly, the way the beef is marinated and seasoned in this dish, the crappiest cut of beef (tri tip, bottom sirloin) tastes pretty good (and more authentic). Slanted Door uses Filet Mignon and I’m also pretty sure that grain fed beef would taste even better so you can decide how much you want to spend on the beef.

Marinade:

The great thing about the marinade for the beef is that it’s every single staple ingredient inside of an asian household. If I were to guess how much it costs for the marinade just for this cooking – it’d probably be around $1. These bottles of soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce never seem to finish!

  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 1 teaspoon fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon regular (light) soy sauce, or 2 teaspoons regular (light) and 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce

Dressing/Side

  • 1 shallot, thinly sliced (1/4 cup total) @0.50
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 or 2 pinches salt
  • 3 to 5 cracks black pepper
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 4 cups watercress, use only the tender leafy parts ($2.00)
  • 2 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

1. Cut off excess fat on the beef and split into 3/4-1 inch cubes.

2. In a bowl mix all ingredients of the marinade.
3. Soak the beef with the marinade. Set aside for at least 20 min but preferably 2 hours.
4. In bowl, combine the sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar and water. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the shallot. Put the watercress on top but hold off on tossing.

5. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the beef and spread it out in one layer.
6. Let the beef sear for about 1 minute, before shaking the wok or skillet to sear another side.
7. Cook for another 30 seconds or so and shake. Cook the beef for about 4 minutes total, until nicely browned and medium rare.
8. Serve with the watercress and dressing.

Quick Notes

Definitely glad I listened to Viet World Kitchen about using the cheapest cut of beef. The taste of it was still delicious as ever. I shook the beef often and didn’t let any of it sit still. Now I can’t help but imagine what it’d taste like with filet mignon or kobe :)

Variations

Watercress is an acquired taste that I detested back when I was growing up. You can easily use any other greens like spinach and lettuce to accompany the beef. Also, eating rice or rice noodles works well with this dish. I opted for rice noodles.

I added onion and green onion in the dressing because I had some! It complimented the beef rather well.

Results


I’m really happy that I was able to finally see how shaking beef is made! And pleasantly surprised that I have all the ready ingredients 90% of the time and only need to buy the beef.

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Beef / Main / Recipe / Restaurant / Vietnamese — View Comments
3
Jan 10

Thit Bo La Lot (Beef in Wild Betel Leaf)

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While in San Jose, I enjoyed showing people there was a whole variety of Vietnamese food aside from Pho. My personal favourite place for any celebration was Anh Hong for their 7 courses of beef (Bo 7 Mon). It is beef made 7 different ways – a salad, a soup, beef dipped in hot pot water, and a few different ground beef variances to be rolled in rice paper. It’s my personal favourite way of introducing friends to Vietnamese food because the experience is interactive and tasty!

My favourite dish in the 7 courses of beef has always been Thit Bo La Lot – beef wrapped in this extremely flavourful and tasty leaf. I’ve never made it before and stumbled upon this great Viet food blog and followed her clear well written steps. What an awesome blog and what an awesome recipe!!!! It was an instant hit with my friends! I’m on a mission to learn how to make the remaining 6 dishes and have a 7 course of beef dinner within a few months!!

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min to prepare the beef. 30 min to roll 30-45 rolls.
Cook Time: 8 min broil for each tray of beef
Servings: 40 rolls
Meal type: Main / Side dish
Grocery Cost: $6.50

Recipe Rating: ★★★★★ 

Ingredients


I slightly modified VietKitchen’s recipe for the meat seasoning.

  • 1 pound ground beef, chuck preferred ($4.00)
  • ¼ cup minced scallion (about 3 stalks of green onion) ($0.50)
  • 2 teaspoons fish sauce
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¾ teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon Madras curry powder
  • 2 tablespoons finely minced lemongrass (about 1 medium-small stalk) ($0.50)
  • 1 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 1 bag of la lot leaves with stems (4 ounces that yield 30 large leaves) ($1.50)
  • 1 tablespoon neutral flavored oil (I used olive oil)

Instructions

1. In a bowl combine the beef, scallions, fish sauce, curry powder, salt, pepper, lemongrass and cornstarch.

2. Mix well with your hands and set aside.
3. Wash the leaves thoroughly and remove the leaves from the main (bigger) center stem but keep the leaf stem).

4. Scoop some meat onto the leaf and roll. Use the stem to seal up the roll. See the VietKitchen blog for more detailed pictures.

5. Brush a bit of olive oil on each roll. Place on aluminum baking sheet.

6. Set the oven on broil (high) and set the baking sheet on the top 1/3 of the oven.
7.I kept checking on it from 7min to about 9 min. Once the leaves look slightly shriveled and charred, its done!

8.To serve this dish as part of the 7 courses of beef, you eat it with rice paper, rice noodles, lettuce and of course nuoc mam (fish sauce dipping sauce!) I’ll write more about how to do this in another post!

Quick Notes

I made this twice this week. The first batch, I used 1 lb of lean ground beef and we ended up with many extra betel leaves in the package! So the next batch, I used double portions of everything and ended up making too big of rolls even though I used all the leaves. I’d probably say go with 1.5 lbs of ground beef for the packages of betel leaves that I bought.

Variations

The VietKitchen blog offered varieties on how to marinate the meat. I distinctly remember lemongrass for this meat everytime I’ve eaten it in the past so I was determine to use this in my cooking! However, I didn’t want to add oyster sauce as the Seasoning option 2 suggested since I felt it would take away from the basic Vietnamese taste. So I essentially just added lemon grass to Seasoning option 1.

Actually traditionally, this is made on the BBQ so I was quite impressed the broiling worked so well ! I’d love to try this on the BBQ in the summer.

Results


DELICIOUS!!! I feel this recipe yielded exactly what I’ve been missing from not having Anh Hong in my neighborhood and eating in Vietnam. It’s one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes of all time and am so happy that it took less than an hour! Try it out, you won’t be disappointed!

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