Dumplings/Hue Fried Rice

Sitting around the dinner table with friends and family leads to great stories and wonderful times. During these evenings, I enjoy making various dumplings which allows everyone can sit back and share the meal and fun while snacking on a parcel of goodness.

These are more traditional Chinese dumplings, as the Vietnamese style dumplings are usually made with tapioca starch or rice flour. Frequently, they are wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.  I will be using gyoza wrappers and pan frying a batch, also.  Follow closely as we have two techniques and both are enjoyable!!  

I also included a very simple fried rice recipe which originates from the central Vietnamese region of Hue.  

Steamed/Fried Pork Dumplings
3 oz dried wood ear mushrooms

1.5 oz bean thread vermicelli

2 lbs. ground pork

3 shallots minced

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp light soy

2 tsp black pepper
1 pack gyoza wrappers
bowl of water

Dipping Sauce
Soy Sauce
Roasted Chili Paste

Red Oil Sauce
4 tbsp red chili oil
2-3 tbsp soy sauce
2 cloves garlic mashed
1 tbsp szechuan peppercorns
Mix all ingredients thoroughly

In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients. Place 1 tbsp of filling in each wrapper, and rub the edge with water then pinch closed.  When all dumplings are filled, place them in a steamer and cook for about 10 minutes.   Mix soy and chili paste and dip dumplings.  ENJOY!!!

Alternative method- Fill wrappers with 1 tbsp of filling and fold in half.  Add 1/4 cup of canola oil in a skillet and place on medium heat.  When the oil is nice and hot, add a few dumplings and pan fry until golden brown.  Repeat until all dumplings are cooked.

Potstickers- Place a medium pan on med-high heat.  When it is hot, lightly coat with oil, add about 6-8 dumplings.  Let them brown for a minute, then add 1/2 cup of water and cover.  Steam for another 2-3 minutes.  Repeat until all dumplings are cooked.

Hue Fried Rice

3 cups cooked rice

Shrimp blend

3 tbsp dry shrimp (soak in water for about 30 minutes)

2 shallots, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Thai chili, minced

1 stalk lemongrass, minced

Pulse in a food processor or blend well in a mixing bowl to form a nice paste

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 onion, diced

2 tbsp water or stock

3 tbsp nuoc mam

fried shallots, herbs (basil, mint, Vietnamese coriander, cilantro)

In a hot wok or skillet, add oil and onions.  Stir fry until soft, add shrimp blend and stir fry until fragrant.  Add the rice and toss until the blend is well incorporated.  When the rice is coated with the shrimp mixture add water and nuoc mam.  Toss until it is thoroughly mixed and hot.  Serve topped with fried shallots and fresh Vietnamese herbs.

Ribs/Jellyfish Salad

Let me start this by saying- I LOVE RIBS! Arguably my favorite cut of meat is the rib, preferably St. Louis or spareribs. Sticky sauce all over my fingers and face just makes me a happy guy.  My wife- not so much. Well, sometimes we just need ribs and beer!

A traditional Vietnamese dish, rib meat can be removed from the bone and eaten in lettuce wraps or with a side of greens.  I decided to throw a wrench into tradition and make a jellyfish salad (julienne jellyfish, carrots, cucumbers, and green papaya, dressing is below).  Also, I changed the cooking technique. Normally grilled or even slow cooked, I seared the ribs then finished them in a pressure cooker. In 22 minutes, they were perfect.  I reduced the sauce and had a lovely dinner.

Suon Nuong Xa- Ribs

1 rack of St. Louis pork ribs, cut in fourths

Marinade

½ cup fish sauce

4 oz palm sugar

1 piece lemongrass minced

2 cloves garlic minced

1 Thai chili minced

pinch white pepper

1) Mix the marinade ingredients and form a nice paste. Thoroughly rub the ribs until coated and place in the refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight, if possible. About 30 minutes prior to cooking, remove from the refrigerator and allow them to come to room temperature. 

2) Remove the ribs from the marinade, scrape off the rub (reserving any liquid and rub) and place them in another baking pan. 

3) Add a small amount of oil to a large skillet, and turn it on high heat until it begins to smoke.  Gently place a couple of sections of the ribs (meaty side down) in the pan and sear until it becomes dark brown. Be very careful because the pan is going to be hot, and watch for the garlic and lemongrass as it will burn. Spoon any dark bits into a side plate. When the ribs are the proper color, remove them to a baking sheet, and clean out the skillet. 

4) Repeat the procedure. 

5) Using a pressure cooker, in a cross-cross manner, stack the ribs and pour any extra marinade or rub over the ribs.  Cook them on high for 22 minutes and naturally release the pressure. 

6) Remove the ribs to a chopping block, and let them rest. 

7) Skim the fat off any liquid in the cooker and reduce the reserved liquid.  You should have a nice amount of liquid in the cooker, and this will form a wonderful sauce.  Cut the ribs between the bones and pour the sauce over them.  

Serve with a green papaya salad!  I made a green papaya, carrot, cucumber and jellyfish salad which is pictured below.  The dressing is a black vinaigrette (recipe below)! 

Black Vinaigrette- 1 tbsp water, 4 tbsp Chinese black vinegar, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 4 tbsp soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp mirin, 1 clove garlic minced, 1 Thai chili minced, 1 small piece of ginger minced. Mix all of the ingredients until the sugar dissolves.

Enjoy with a cold beer!  Brooklyn Summer Ale currently resides in my hand!

The other night I was flipping through the stations, and one of those Soft Rock infomercials was on television. My wife was in the next room, and she said, "I don't remember Air Supply sounding that good!!"  She sings along, then a few songs later after she's done swaying to "Lost in Love", I called her out for being a closeted Air Supply fan!  She's going to kill me when she sees this post!  Honey, I love you!!! Heehee!!  I got a good laugh!

A few days later I had a new Twitter follower.  So, I'm checking out my new follower's pictures and thinking, "Hmm...pretty cool.  Nice pictures.  She's really into food.  Wonder what she does?  I did a quick search and lo and behold, who do I find out it is?  None other than Ingrid Croce--the late and great Jim Croce's wife!  All those old school television mail order greatest hits came to mind, and I thought of Jim Croce, who tragically died in a plane crash when I was an infant.  Those commercials introduced me to his music, then many years ago I bought his greatest hits. So I wrote this blog while listening to his catalog. "Rapid Roy" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" are two fun, upbeat songs, and he pulls off a cool moustache!  Croce's Restaurant is a tribute to Jim from his wife Ingrid!  What a splendid woman!  Here's to you, Ingrid! 

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Pate Chaud

Baguettes, shallots, asparagus, croissants and many, many other food items now popular in Vietnam can be attributed to the French.  For slightly over 150 years, Vietnam was colonized by the French (outside of a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II), and the influence on the local cuisine is unmistakable.  

The wonderful desserts and breads directly reflect French influence, and one of my favorite French/Vietnamese snacks is the Banh Pate So, which is from the long ago used French term of Pate Chaud meaning hot pie or hot pastry.  Pate in French now refers to meat, so this term could be misunderstood, but the Vietnamese term refers to so and chaud being pronounced identically, and banh and pate both mean pastry.  So it is an interesting backstory on the terminology of the dish.  Enough on the linguistics lesson, let's eat!

Banh Pate So- Pate Chaud- Hot Pie

 3 oz dried wood ear mushrooms

1.5 oz bean thread vermicelli

2 lbs. ground pork

3 shallots minced

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp light soy

2 tsp black pepper

puff pastry

2 eggs beaten

1 cup beer

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Soak the wood ear mushroom and vermicelli in separate bowls of water for about 20 minutes until soft.  If the wood ear is in larger pieces, then thinly slice.  Cut the vermicelli into pieces about 1 inch long.  Thoroughly mix the pork, wood ear, vermicelli, shallots, fish sauce, soy and pepper.  If you overwork the meat then you will get a tougher filling, so be gentle.  Using a large biscuit cutter (about 4 inches in diameter), punch out large circles of puff pastry.  Form meatballs with the filling and place in the center of the pastry.  Brush the edges with some beer and place another piece of pastry on top.  Gently press down and use a fork to seal the edges.  Repeat until the pastry is gone.  If you have extra filling, you can use it in Vietnamese egg rolls (which will be a blog for another day!)  Brush the pastry tops with egg and bake until golden brown.

Custom plates by Gerald Haessig

In honor of arguably my favorite Vietnamese food item, I rocked to some Guns 'N Roses and Appetite for Destruction!  Possibly the best album of the 80s and maybe the best debut album of all time, in my opinion, the band was never able to reach this zenith again.  Songs like "Mr. Brownstone", "Think About You", and "Rocket Queen" stand the test of time and could blend in with today's top rock acts.  "Sweet Child 'O Mine" might be the best monster ballad in the history of MONSTER BALLADS!  An  disagrees that this song is a monster ballad...what say you?  Seriously, who doesn't immediately know Slash's guitar riff?  Too bad Axl had to break it all down, but give this album a listen and come back and discuss this with me!

My beverage of choice was a wonderful Ca Phe Sua Da.  The Vietnamese version of iced coffee is sweet and filled with a wonderful kick!  I make my own slow drip cold coffee with either French Market, CDM, Trung Nguyen, or Cafe de Paris.  Pour some condensed milk in the bottom of a glass, and top it with coffee and stir well.  Add ice and enjoy!  

Salt and Pepper Squid

Eight arms, two tentacles, an ink sac and highly edible?  Sounds strange, but throughout the world squid are among the more popular seafoods.  From Japan to Italy to America, they adorn restaurant menus and street food stands everywhere.  Americans have adopted the Italian term calamari in reference to the cephalopod.  

In Vietnam, squid or muc are highly regarded and among the more popular street foods.  Sometimes stuffed with ground pork and bean thread vermicelli, we will explore one of my favorite versions.  Using five spice and some chili, we will do salt and pepper squid which can be an appetizer or entree served with steamed rice.

Muc Rang Muoi- Salt and Pepper Squid

2 lbs. squid bodies sliced across and tentacles, separate
Vegetable Oil

2 egg whites whipped until blended well

2 cups potato starch (or corn starch or rice flour)

1 cup green onion sliced

1 thai chili thinly sliced

1 medium onion thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves minced

salt and pepper blend- 1 tbsp salt, 1 tsp white pepper, 1 tsp sugar, ½ tsp five spice, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp ground ginger

nuoc mam

Toss the squid in the egg whites, then drain and mix with starch.  Heat oil in a deep fryer or wok, and in small batches fry squid until golden brown and remove to a plate lined with a paper towel.  Continue until all the squid is cooked.  Carefully, pour off all the oil into a heatproof container until you have about 3 tbsp remaining.  Place wok back on burner and add onion, chili and garlic.  Stir fry until very fragrant, and add cooked squid back to wok, turn off heat.  Toss gently, add salt and pepper blend and toss again.  Serve with nuoc mam.

The Echo and the Bunnymen Spotify radio station fueled this post!  "Lips Like Sugar" and "The Killing Moon" set the bar for this 80s band who acquired their name from the drum machine originally used in the studio- its name was Echo!  Not only did the station play many Echo contemporaries, but it also added some newer bands and not so new bands.  Interpol, Blur, The Strokes, and Oasis were on the list.  I am just getting into Spotify so any tips would be appreciated, but so far I enjoy the selections.  

Combination Fried Rice

"Can I have an order of shrimp fried rice?"  Wow, real creative ordering!  Sit in any Asian restaurant across America and those words will be uttered.  Combinations of this dish exist all over the world from curry fried rice to Thai hot dog fried rice (yes, it exists) to Hawaiian fried rice (of course it includes spam). Arguably the most popular dish in Asian-American cuisine is fried rice, and sometimes it seems as though fried rice is more American than Asian, but have you ever tried to make it at home?

Sometimes nothing beats a nice warm bowl of fried rice, and the Vietnamese add Chinese sausage and fish sauce to theirs which gives it a wonderful sweet and salty flavor. 

Com Chien-Combination Fried Rice 

8 oz. Gulf shrimp peeled and deveined

8 oz. salt fish diced (see notes)

1 cup Chinese sausage sliced

2 tbsp sesame oil

1 carrot diced

1 medium onion diced

1 tbsp minced garlic

4 cups cooked Jasmine rice

½ tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

¼ tsp black pepper

3 eggs scrambled

2 tsp soy sauce

2 tsp fish sauce

1 cup chopped green onions

1 cup chopped cilantro

Notes- Salt fish can be purchased at an Asian market and must be rehydrated before using.  However, you can make your own solution by combining 1 quart of water with 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of salt.  Mix until dissolved, and pour the solution over clean fish filets and hold in a refrigerator for 4-5 hours or overnight if desired (depending on the salinity level you wish to incorporate).

Any number of vegetables can be added to fried rice including peas, celery, leafy greens such as chard or spinach, small cut green beans, etc.

In a hot wok or big skillet, add sesame oil and in small batches sear the shrimp.  When they are not quite cooked through, remove them to a plate and reserve for later.  Do the same thing to the fish.  Add the sausage and let the juices begin to release, then remove and hold.  In the same wok, add onions, carrots, and garlic and sweat while scraping any bits of the bottom of the pan.  

Once the vegetables are soft, add the eggs and lightly scramble, when they are still runny on top begin to fold in the rice and vigorously stir fry everything.  Add seasoning and both sauces and fold thoroughly.  Add shrimp, fish, and sausage and continue to stir fry until proteins are cooked and check for flavor.  If you need to add more sauce or pepper, feel free.  Fold in green onions and cilantro.

The rice should be free of clumps and thoroughly mixed with all ingredients.  Enjoy with a nice cold beer!!  

Musically, I was torn, so I chose Fugazi.  I put on Repeater which is arguably the greatest album of all time, and I feel if I were stranded on an island, this album could get me through.  From the opening song "Turnover", this album is filled with complex musical structures and lyrics.  It is hard to believe that it is 23 years old, and for all of you out there listening to bands such as the Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam, check this out.  Fugazi straight up kicks ass!  Although, they might not use this recipe since they are vegan.  At least the music is great!

Vietnamese Style Stir Fried Clams

Freshly steamed clams are among nature's great treasures!!  These amazing bivalves create a succulent broth with very little help.  The Vietnamese use clams and lemongrass to create wonderful street food, and this style of cooking has been used with mussels and snails also. Some crushed peanuts and herbs adds to a delightful snack!  This recipe has two steps.  A quick stir fry with the first round of seasoning, and then we will steam them in a sauce.  The clam broth combined with our soy based sauce will leave us no choice but to sop it up with some great bread.

Con Nghieu Hap- Vietnamese Steamed Clams

5 lbs. Littleneck Clams (about 50 each)

2 Thai Chilis minced

2 cloves garlic minced

2 tbsp ginger minced
2 tbsp canola oil

Sauce

3 tbsp thick soy sauce

2 tbsp rice wine

½ tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

Vietnamese coriander

cilantro

First, make sure the clams are clean.  Discard any open or broken clams.  Place them in cold water in the refrigerator and leave for about 20-30 minutes.  Then remove from the cold water allowing the dirt to remain on the bottom of the bowl.  Place them in a new bowl and cover with a damp towel.

While the clams soak, combine the ingredients for the stir fry sauce.  

In a hot wok or larger pan, add canola oil and stir fry garlic, ginger, and chilis.  When they become very fragrant, add the clams and toss to coat.  Pour in the sauce and gently shake clams to coat.  Cover and steam for about 10 minutes, or until all the clams have opened.  

Finished with a generous helping of the chopped herbs and some crusty bread!! 

In South Louisiana summer is upon us, and we tend to look for refreshing beverages.  Today's drink is a nice crisp gewurztraminer from Pacific Rim.  A grape that originates from Alsace,  gewurztraminer has a low acidity, and when trying to think of comparable flavors just imagine ginger and peach.  Pacific Rim is a winery from the Columbia Valley in Washington where this grape is now heavily marketed.  A rather sweet and summery wine, it paired up nicely with the clams.

Chicken Liver Pate

Today's recipe is from an amazing cookbook.  I enjoy cookbooks that add historical references to recipes and give knowledge or background concerning a certain dish.  Luke Nguyen produced a series of cookbooks that are closer to history books.  My Vietnam, Secrets of the Red Lantern, The Songs of Sapa, and Indochine are visually stunning, filled with great recipes and wonderful, sometimes heart-wrenching stories of Vietnam and their family's escape.  I cannot give a stronger recommendation.  Here is a wonderful recipe from Indochine that is traditionally spread on a banh mi or eaten as an appetizer.  This pate is not as smooth as a traditional French style, but it is filled with flavor.  The only ingredient I altered was the use of Grand Marnier instead of brandy or a regular cognac.  ENJOY!!!

The plate is an original from our neighbor Gerald Haessig.  You can find his work at Gerald Haessig Designs.  

Pate Gan Ga Heo- Chicken and Pork Liver Pate by Luke Nguyen

Ingredients

200g (7oz) pork livers

200g (7oz) chicken livers

100g (3 ½ oz) butter, softened

100g (3 ½ oz) minced pork

2 red Asian shallots, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 tblsp brandy or Cognac 

4 tblsp pouring (whipping) cream

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

½ tsp white pepper
Vietnamese Baguettes, to serve

Clean the livers of fat and sinew. Cut the pork livers to match the size of hte chicken livers. Wash under cold, running water, then dry well with paper towels.  

Put 2 teaspoons of butter in a large frypan over medium heat. When the butter starts to bubble, add half the livers and fry for 1-2 minutes until browned, then turn them over and brown the other side for 1-2 minutes, making sure the livers remain pink in the middle.  Remove to a plate, then repeat the process with a little more butter and the remaining livers.   

Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the pan and gently cook the pork mince for about 2 minutes, or until cooked through but not browned. Remove and set aside.  Wipe the pan clean with kitchen paper, then add 2 teaspoons of butter and gently fry the shallots and garlic for 5 minutes, until very soft and slightly caramelised. Increase the heat, then return the livers and pork to the pan, pour over the brandy or Cognac and ignite the alcohol.  Once the flame subsides, pour the liver mixture into a food processor and process until smooth.  With the motor running, add the remaining butter and the cream.

Season the pate with sugar, salt and white pepper; taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.   Pour into a container and refrigerate for about 2 hours, or until set.  Before serving, remove from the fridge and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Serve with baguettes.

recipe from Indochine by Luke Nguyen