Vietnamese Food

[takadi]

YES that's it...I guess it KIND of sounds like "kill fish" to me...it might as well be.

Why am I not surprised that the info was on viet world kitchen...silly me

Edited May 5, 2007 by takadi (log)

[helenjp]

"Fish mint", yes that's houttuynia cordata! Canyou please tell me what other plants would normally be combined for a plate of herbs?

[takadi]

For Cha ca, grilled fish with tumeric, normally I would be served with various mints, lettuce, cilantro, and the elusive dead fish smelling herb. There are also tons of others of meats that can be served in a similar fashion with vermicelli and herbs such as Bo Bay Mon (Seven course beef) or Bun Cha (grilled pork with lemongrass). Usually, heartier herbs like the purple perilla are used. I can't really name herbs off the top of my head, but from the website, the only places I've personally seen saw-leaf coriander is with pho. I've only seen huong que, or thai basil used with soups (mostly noodle soups). The rice paddy herb (Ngo Om) is a little mysterious to me, but I swear I saw that in a dish called Gia Cay, which is basically simmered pork's feet that has a noted stickiness from the gelatin. Gia Cay translates to "fake dog meat".

I'm not an expert though. I thought houttuynia cordata was called "dead fish vegetable". I honestly have never seen gynura bicolor in a dish before. My experience is pretty limited.

Edited May 6, 2007 by takadi (log)

[rarerollingobject]

Chicken simmered with caramel and ginger (Ga Kho) from Vietworld Kitchen.

This turned out better than the image. Making the caramel was a little scary (I have a phobia about making toffee - it's a tortured existence) and the first attempt saw me quickly Googling as to how to remove carbonised lumps of burnt-on sugar from Le Creuset pans (answer: boil water soapy with liquid detergent for 10 mins).

Second attempt was much better and this was v. tasty.

[C. sapidus]

rarerollingobject: Ga kho is wonderful stuff, isn’t it?

guppymo: Thanks for providing that beef soup recipe. I made it tonight (with a few substitutions) and the family loved it. I posted a picture on the Dinner! thread (click).

[rarerollingobject]

Inspired by the "culture clash fried rice" of C. sapidus ( love that!):

Caramelised ground pork (Thit Heo Bam) from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table and (Thai-ish) fried rice flavoured with leftover red curry paste, white pepper, chilli, ginger, snake beans, shallots, fish sauce, palm sugar and limes.

Isn't the internet a wonderful thing when photos of someone's dinner can inspire a person a hemisphere and a continent away to try and recreate it? Thanks C. sapidus!!

(I was just missing the eternal cucumbers! )

[C. sapidus]

rarerollingobject: Wow, that looks and sounds fantastic (and I am deeply honored, thank you). I must have missed the thit heo bam, I would like to try that.

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[snowangel]

Inspired by the "culture clash fried rice" of C. sapidus ( love that!):

Caramelised ground pork (Thit Heo Bam) from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table and (Thai-ish) fried rice flavoured with leftover red curry paste, white pepper, chilli, ginger, snake beans, shallots, fish sauce, palm sugar and limes.

Isn't the internet a wonderful thing when photos of someone's dinner can inspire a person a hemisphere and a continent away to try and recreate it? Thanks C. sapidus!!

(I was just missing the eternal cucumbers!  )

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What I really love is all of the lime wedges. To me, fried rice just isn't fried rice without lime!

[rarerollingobject]

rarerollingobject: Wow, that looks and sounds fantastic (and I am deeply honored, thank you). I must have missed the thit heo bam, I would like to try that.

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Nono, thank YOU! I realise this sounds vaguely stalker-ish, but I've copied so many of your meals, my boyfriend (who is not very good with names) has been known to lurk behind me in the kitchen, look hungrily at the food and ask "Is this gonna be another See Spiderman meal? Is it??"

[C. sapidus]

Nono, thank YOU! I realise this sounds vaguely stalker-ish, but I've copied so many of your meals, my boyfriend (who is not very good with names) has been known to lurk behind me in the kitchen, look hungrily at the food and ask "Is this gonna be another See Spiderman meal? Is it??"   

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Doubly honored, then - I always wanted to be Spiderman

[C. sapidus]

Tonight’s dinner: grilled lemongrass beef skewers (thit bo nuong xa); banh mi; daikon-carrot pickle (do chua), and spicy hoisin-peanut sauce from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. More on Dinner!

[SeaGal]

I love reading this thread and I love Vietnamese food, so thought I'd post this here as well as over on the dinner thread. I added an additional picture of the raw materials:

Pho ga or chicken pho. I made the broth last winter and froze it for convenience. While I love beef pho, we usually go out to get that, but I love pho ga when I'm under the weather or just craving comfort food.

Ingredients, minus the yellow onion.

Condiments, the best part!

Pho ga

Digging in!

This thread is a real inspiration!

[C. sapidus]

Tonight's dinner was from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.

Char siu pork (thit xa xiu) We cut a pork shoulder into strips and marinated it for 8 hours in garlic, five-spice powder, hoisin sauce, honey, sugar, Shaoxing wine, soy, dark soy, and sesame oil. We cooked half of the pork in the oven and half on the grill. Both were delicious, but grilled was better. Basting the pork in its marinade yielded a fragrant, caramelized glaze.

Banh mi We assembled our own sandwiches from char siu pork, liver pate, carrot-daikon pickle, mayo, Maggi Seasoning, cilantro, and thinly-sliced jalapeno chiles and/or cucumbers.

Spinach stir-fried with garlic This had a delicious flavoring sauce of oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and oil, thickened with cornstarch slurry.

[snowangel]

Beautiful spinach and bahn mi, Bruce. I had a bahn mi today, but purchased (still a buck and a half at the local place).

But, the spinach. We love stir-fried spinach. And, not to mix topics or food cultures, do you own Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cooking? There is a recipe in there for charred garlic and spinach which is to die for...

[C. sapidus]

Beautiful spinach and bahn mi, Bruce.  I had a bahn mi today, but purchased (still a buck and a half at the local place).

Thanks, Susan. Yep, for a buck fifty I'd skip the cooking, too.

But, the spinach.  We love stir-fried spinach.  And, not to mix topics or food cultures, do you own Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cooking?  There is a recipe in there for charred garlic and spinach which is to die for...

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I have the book, and that recipe is on my list. I forgot about using the stems - I should have done that tonight.

[snowangel]

But, the spinach.  We love stir-fried spinach.  And, not to mix topics or food cultures, do you own Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cooking?  There is a recipe in there for charred garlic and spinach which is to die for...

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I have the book, and that recipe is on my list. I forgot about using the stems - I should have done that tonight.

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Bruce, a couple of things about that Tropp recipe. I'm happiest not blanching the spinach, but making sure it is as dry as possible -- and if the heat is high enough, you'll actually have some char on the spinach which is paper thin and absolutely wonderful. The other thing is that if you don't set off the smoke detector with this one, you're not doing it right. It's my go-to dish when the first of the springs crinkly spinach appears every spring.

Now, to get back onto to the Vietnamese topic! I did add some everyday daikon and carrot pickles to my bahn mi (which was take-out) just because I wanted the extra crunch.

[mizducky]

Howdy folks--if I might interrupt all this gorgeous-looking food with a query:

A local Vietnamese restaurant here has a couple of dishes on its menu that, at least in English translation, feature "deer" as the meat. For instance, there's a bun plate called Bun Nai Xao or "Rice Vermicelle w/Stir Fried Deer." The staff is way friendly but I'm running into a little language barrier in determining whether this really is venison, or perhaps some other sort of meat. And I've eaten venison so rarely that tasting the stuff is not clarifying matters much (other than that, while it looks a little like beef, it doesn't really taste like beef). Anyone able to help with a translation or explanation? Thanks muchly!

[snowangel]

Howdy folks--if I might interrupt all this gorgeous-looking food with a query:

A local Vietnamese restaurant here has a couple of dishes on its menu that, at least in English translation, feature "deer" as the meat. For instance, there's a bun plate called Bun Nai Xao or "Rice Vermicelle w/Stir Fried Deer." The staff is way friendly but I'm running into a little language barrier in determining whether this really is venison, or perhaps some other sort of meat. And I've eaten venison so rarely that tasting the stuff is not clarifying matters much (other than that, while it looks a little like beef, it doesn't really taste like beef). Anyone able to help with a translation or explanation? Thanks muchly!

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No explanation of the translation, but venison can range in quality and taste, depending on how it was butchered, and what the conditions were like that winter.

I find it usually to be denser and leaner, and depending on the cut, less lean. But, you need not have a gamey taste to the venison, depending on the condtions I have described.

You might want to start here and read up and down topic to get the full story on venison!

[fodgycakes]

Howdy folks--if I might interrupt all this gorgeous-looking food with a query:

A local Vietnamese restaurant here has a couple of dishes on its menu that, at least in English translation, feature "deer" as the meat. For instance, there's a bun plate called Bun Nai Xao or "Rice Vermicelle w/Stir Fried Deer." The staff is way friendly but I'm running into a little language barrier in determining whether this really is venison, or perhaps some other sort of meat. And I've eaten venison so rarely that tasting the stuff is not clarifying matters much (other than that, while it looks a little like beef, it doesn't really taste like beef). Anyone able to help with a translation or explanation? Thanks muchly!

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Hi there! I'm Vietnamese, and the translation of "bun nai xao" is exactly what the menu says.. vermicelli with stir-fried deer.

nun = vermicelli noodles

nai = deer

xao = stir-fried

Perhaps you can ask the staff there by writing on a piece of paper "thit nai?" with a dot under the i in "thit" and see if they say yes or no. (Thit means meat).

[fodgycakes]

Oops, sorry for the typeo above, "nun" should be "bun."

guppymo, or others, I've got another Vietnamese cooking question.. anyone have a good recipe for bo la lot? I had so much good Vietnamese food when I was in San Diego a couple weeks ago and that was one of my favorite dishes, but it's something my own family has never made. It seems pretty simple, mixing some ground beef with perhaps some garlic, lemongrass, sugar, salt, maybe some other spices? What leaves should be used to wrap up the beef, it seems similar to the grape leaves used to wrap Greek dolmas.

Mam nem is so delicious.

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Fodgycakes,

You can try the following simple recipe

Those leaves are called wild-betel or wild pepper leaves, if you can't find those you can follow SuzySushi and substitute shiso leaves (tia to).

Good luck.

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A very late update! I finally got around to making this dish at home using the recipe here: http://www.recipehound.com/Recipes/1857.html

I served it rice paper style, wrapping the beef in rice papers with rice vermicelli, fresh pineapple, and Vietnamese basil (the store was out of kinh gioi and tia to). My mam nem was just thrown together to taste.. minced chili peppers with fermented shrimp paste (mam tom.. I couldn't find the fermented anchovy paste at the store), lime juice, sugar, pineapple, and water. guppymo, do you have a favored recipe for mam nem?

So good! I can't find la lot around here and grape leaves worked great.

Sorry, I was planning on taking a picture but we all got to eating too fast!

Edited May 29, 2007 by fodgycakes (log)

[iguana]

Thank you for this inspirational thread. I've enjoyed many dishes from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Tonight I made Ca Kho Rieng, Salmon and Galangal Simmered in Caramel Sauce:

Plated: (note cucumber homage to C. sapidus)

The cooking method for this dish was to simmer salmon in the fish sauce and caramel sauce for an hour, which seemed like it might make for dry fish, but it had a wonderful texture. Pork belly is added for its lovely fat, which probably helps keep the fish moist.

I didn't have any raw pork belly, so I used this:

Although Hungarian bacon is not a traditional Vietnamese ingredient, the unctuous smokiness of bacon was superb with the slightly bitter sweetness of the caramel sauce, the flavor of the galangal and the savoriness of the fish sauce.

Thank you again for this inspirational thread!

Jen

[C. sapidus]

Although Hungarian bacon is not a traditional Vietnamese ingredient, the unctuous smokiness of bacon was superb with the slightly bitter sweetness of the caramel sauce, the flavor of the galangal and the savoriness of the fish sauce.

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Jen: Welcome! I haven't tried Ca Kho Rieng, but it looks and sounds delicious. I can imagine how smoky bacon would complement caramel sauce, fish sauce, and galangal. Thanks for the cucumber homage and I love the Schlitz iguana.

ETA: I forgot to post wok-seared shrimp from the other night (also from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen).

Edited June 6, 2007 by C. sapidus (log)

[C. sapidus]

Grilled lemongrass pork riblets (suon nuong xa), from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Marinated overnight with caramel sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, lemongrass, garlic, shallots, palm sugar, oil, and black pepper, these disappeared quickly. I’m not sure what cut of meat we used. Described as “pork riblets”, these were quite meaty with a bit of a fat cap and very little bone. The pork emerged juicy and tender after 20-30 minutes over a medium grill. Definitely worth making again.

ETA: We also made a simple dipping sauce of Thai chile muddled in light soy sauce.

Suon nuong xa

Edited June 9, 2007 by C. sapidus (log)

[C. sapidus]

Tonight we made caramelized minced pork (thit heo bam), from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. This was remarkably easy and very popular with the family – a perfect weeknight meal. The only ingredients were ground pork, onion, fish sauce, caramel sauce, sugar, scallions, and oil. The pork was done in the time it took to steam the rice.

The family made lettuce rolls with the pork, rice, and green mango slivers.

[snowangel]

Bruce, that looks absolutuley wonderful. Are green mangos easy to find? What kind of lettuce?