Nep Chien/Sticky Rice-Covered Meatballs

[lapageria]

Flush with success from my most recent venture regarding banh beo (thank you, Andrea!!!), my second request is for info nep chien.

As I've had them in SF, they're little meatballs covered with sticky rice (nep), fried, and then served as an appetizer with a dipping sauce which (I think) is soy-based (possibly with black vinegar, although my palette is not that sophisticated). Googling reveals about 3 hits, referencing an SF restaurant named "La Vie." I've had them at Sai's, an SF Financial District restaurant which caters to us office drones. Middle-of-the-road acceptable Vietnamese food if you're stuck in the Financial District at long and don't want to c.imb the hill and brave the crowds in C'town.

A friend of a friend from Vietnam mentioned that he was not familiar with nep chien, and they certainly don't "Google" up a lot of info.

God willing and the river don't rise I'm going to attempt to recreate them in turkey (I know, lame, but I have a 13 year-old Vietnamese pot-bellied pig as a pet and feel it's just too "off" to eat pork--although he likes it, the little cannibal!). Believe it or not, turkey works quite well as a substitute for pork in some recipes. Who knows, it might start a trend, LOL.

Sooooo....nep chien recipes? (As a side note, I'm doing something I just hate by typing these Vietnamese names without proper accent marks. My friend Huong would be horrified, but it's beyond my skill set in this medium. Please forgive).

Noel (Scrounging Recipes Always) in Napa

[ecr]

I've not encountered these in Vietnam and since you're dipping sauce is soy/black vinegar I would suspect Chinese origin. I have had something similar in Shanghai, the name of the dish translated as something like "pearl balls".....

[ecr]

try inquiring on the China section...

[lapageria]

Dang! That would explain a lot, although I do have reference to them appearing on a Vietnamese menu here. Although I'm unable to provide appropriate accent marks, any idea what the "chien" part of "nep chien" might be? I know the nep part is glutinous rice, but the "chien has me stumped.

In a fit of zeal, I attempted a replication this evening using soaked glutinous rice. I made the meat balls (seasoned with pepper, fish sauce, a bit of ginger, onion, carrot), then rolled them in the soaked "nep." I deep fried these in oil and they turned out pretty darned close. The rice was crispy and chewy, the interiors cooked. Served them on lettuce leaves with pickled ginger and cucumbers, hot chili sauce, and a dipping sauce of black vinegar, kecap manis, sesame oil, and a squeeze of lime. Pretty good, but not quite it, yet.

Any further thoughts?

Noel in Napa

[trillium]

Pearl balls have wandered in and out of quite a few threads in the Chinese forum, here is one to get you started. They get steamed all the times I've had them, but I've never had them in a Vietnamese context. If you used turkey are you sure your mix had enough fat in it? Or is fat what you're trying to avoid?

regards,

trillium

[lapageria]

Thank you, Trillium, for the reference to the Wandering Pearl Balls. It's so nice to have our paths cross again, as they did often in rec.food.cooking in its glory days.

You are definitely on to something, as pearl balls (as confirmed on the site you mentioned and in further research in Barbara Tropp) are definitely related to what I've been eating under the title "nep chien" (which means, by the way, "fried thing made of glutinous rice" according to Nga at Sai's).

The major difference is that they are definitely fried, not steamed like Pearl Balls.

I may be looking at a dish which is particular to San Francisco's Vietnamese restaurants and doesn't really occur in its homeland (sort of like the burrito). This is pure conjecture on my part, but it's total absence in most of the "major" Vietnamese cookbooks and non-appearance in Google seem to point to this (when compared to other "standards" and their appearance).

Reviewing Tropp lead me to a recipe called "Crispy Pork Balls" covered with rice flour and then fried (the recipe is just before "Pearl Balls," btw, in "The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking"). So with a few tweaks I think I can pull it over towards the "nep chien" I've been having. Her trick of two-heat deep frying looks quite interesting.

Regading the fat, I'm all for it; the lack of pork is purely out of respect to my cannibal hog pet. But that's a good point as ground turkey can become alarmingly dry and rubbery, even when deep fried.

Noel in Napa (off to the Farmers' Market in search of shallots to fry)

[ecr]

I've just remembered that abt a yr ago I had in Saigon what you describe but with a difference -- the filling was fish not meat. In fact it was sort of like a rice-covered rubbery fish ball, deep-fried. The crisp rice part was tasty, the fish ball was, well rubbery and sort of tasteless (which is probably why the dish was buried in my memory).

This was at a restaurant run by Chinese Vietnamese. Just bec. something appears on a Viet menu doesn't mean it's an (originally) Vietnamese dish. There are tons of Chs immigrants here and a fair amount of borrowing/adapting from Chinese cuisine (eg. quiet a lot of Viet stir-fry dishes are of Chinese origin), as you'll find in the rest of SE Asia.

Chien, with the inverted "v" over the e, means "fried". Com chien=fried rice, nep chien= fried glutinous rice.

[trillium]

Regading the fat, I'm all for it; the lack of pork is purely out of respect to my cannibal hog pet. But that's a good point as ground turkey can become alarmingly dry and rubbery, even when deep fried.

I guess my suggestion of adding some fatback to your mix is probably no good then, huh?

I think your dish is one of those fusion things (I mean that in a good way) and that's why you're not seeing it in classical Vietnamese cookbooks.

regards,

trillium

[lapageria]

Fatback....no. LOL. Although Boolie the Hog wouldn't mind. As I mentioned, he is morally adrift and a cannibal.

I think Trillium is right about Nep Chien being a sort of "fusion" recipe, especially in light of ECR's fish ball post. It's just fascinating to me that it is isolated to the US West Coast (or as far as I can discern).

Made another batch today and they were pretty good, although I'm not much of a deep frier. I also took a tip from Barbara Tropp and ground up some nep (glutinous rice) and used that with the soaked rice to dredge the meat balls before frying. This made them a bit more manageable (they're quite wet and sticky) and added a very nice crunch to the shell.

Noel in Napa