This is one of the dishes with glutinous rice I like the most. Not only it has a lovely green color which reminds us of green growing rice-fields, it offers a gentle refreshing flavor of pandan leaves as well.
In the past, pandan leaves used to play an important part to increase the quality of meals of Vietnamese common people. During that hard time, people had only poor-quality rice to eat. The rice was not fragrant at all, not mentioning many had to eat rice with bad smell. In order to make the rice more palatable to eat, people added some pandan leaves when they cooked rice. The fragrance of the leaves would distract the undesirable smell.
Nowadays people no longer use pandan leaves when cooking rice. But their use value is still useful in many other dishes.
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So far, I have introduced some Vietnamese dishes with glutinous rice, all of which are "white" glutinous rice. Here I introduce another dish with BLACK glutinous rice. Black one is not used as popularly as the white one, however, it is used in several very special dishes. We have black glutinous rice cooked and fermented to have alcoholic taste and flavor. We cook black glutinous rice into sweet soup to serve with yogurt, which is a really really well-liked street food among teenagers.
Visitting Vietnam, and walking along the streets, in almost every large city, you will see pedlers with their small trolleys walking or standing at the street corners, piles of smoke are rising from their trolleys, or more exactly, from piles of hot glutinous rice dishes which are still being steamed. They appear in several colors, representing different kinds of glutinous rice dishes that the sellers offer. Yellow is glutinous rice with mungbean and turmeric, green is pandan glutinous rice, white is glutinous rice with whole mungbeans or peanut or Chinese lapcheong, etc, and black is the one I am writing about in this post.
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Coconut juice – the clear water inside a coconut – is not just a perfect drink on summer days but also a favorite ingredient that is used in many Vietnamese traditional foods. I like cooking with coconut juice as meat, or fish, when cooked in it, becomes very tender yet retains a special flavour inside. Not only during cooking, even you marinate the meat in coconut juice, it also tenderizes the meat.
I like all the dishes with pork ribs, and this is one of the recipes that cooks pork ribs in coconut juice that I like the most. It is simple, and doesn’t take long time as compared with other stewing dishes. I think it worths your time trying cooking this dish 
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I was feeling so sinful when making these Lamingtons. This was the first time I ever knew about these cake cubes with the name Lamington and ever knew the real process of making them. I got the inspiration from Joy of Baking to try out these Lamingtons long ago, however, I was still reluctant to make them because I realized a great amount of sugar used in making the chocolate frosting that covers the cakes. And I was wondering what would happen if I reduced the sugar lke I often do.
When I gathered all the courage to began this cake, things turned out as I had expected. I baked a white cake first, with reduced sugar. No problem with the cake. The following day, I made the chocolate frosting. The recipe called for 454g icing sugar for 30g cocoa powder . I started with 200g icing sugar first, and the frosting turned out too too runny and too thin. I added 100g more, and that was still not enough. I continued with another 100g and then it seemed to be of a fine consistency to apply to the cake.
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Let’s try these Vietnamese crispy prawns with the added coconut flavor.
As you may know, old coconut flesh is used in many Vietnamese dishes. These prawns are dipped in the batter mixture of flour, egg and grated coconut flesh, then they are rolled over bread crumbs and deep-fried.
So, the prawns are not only crispy outside but more especially, you can taste the coconut. The prawns are kept juicy and firm inside. Since I often cook for only two people, the amount of ingredients is often small. And I made this dish out of the habit, so I am not so sure of the exact amount of ingredients for the batter. I often made a little so that I can use up all of the batter without wasting any. So, I just write up the ingredients as reference.
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This sweet pizza tastes a little richer than my first apple and raisin pizza due to the presence of dessicated coconut in the topping. As usual, I used thin pizza base and green apples for this pizza. Sometimes, changing the appetite with this sweet pizza is quite interesting. Though, after eating two slices of my tiny pizza, I already felt full.
Not like other meat or veggie pizzas, I can try to finish the whole pizza when I am full, with this sweet pizza, I couldn’t. How much I wished to have some children around me so that I could bake lots of stuffs for them to enjoy and share with their friends.
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I made this green mango salad following the Thai salad style. I really like having something light and sour on hot days since consuming these flavors makes me feel more comfortable.
Green mangoes are easy to find at Asian supermarket, so I often use them to cook sour soup. However, this time I used green mango in this salad, which is very fresh and crunchy. The mango strips are a little softened yet crunchy, you can still hear the sound when you chew them in your mouth. The roasted coconut flesh and cashew nuts not only add the texture but also the buttery taste to the salad. This is also the familiar taste I often get from my home country’s salads.
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