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Fried green rice flake cakes

Kokotaru — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:04:04 +0000

This specialty of autumn food is subject to those foreigners being in Hanoi who love cooking and want to try making a well-known food among Hanoians, as I believe that outside Hanoi, it is difficult to get fresh green rice flakes. Vietnamese people who like this dish living in other cities or countries often have to use dried green rice flake. So if you happen to be staying in Hanoi for work or business, you should try this great seasonal dish before autumn ends and we have to say goodbye with fresh green rice flakes, commonly called "com".

Ingredients: (serves 4-5)

- 200g fresh green rice flakes

- 300g triple – ground pork (so that the meat becomes a very fine paste)

- 200g ground very lean pork

- 2 tbs fish sauce

- 1/2 tsp ground pepper

- 1 big lotus leaf

- cooking oil, to fry

Cooking:

- Combine all the ingredients, mix and use the back of a spoon to press the mixture against the bowl until the mixture is well incorporated and becomes a thick paste.

- Shape into flat round balls.

- Line the lotus leaf in a steamer. Place the balls on the leaf and steam over high heat for about 10 minutes.

- Heat the oil in a large skillet (no need to deep-fry), fry the balls until golden brown on both sides.

Fried squid cakes

Kokotaru — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:45:29 +0000

This is another good dish with seafood. If you’ve read my post on fish cakes, you will find that the way of cooking these two dishes has many things in common. In fact, there are several ways of making fried squid cakes. This time I made the simplest one, I guess. It desn’t take much time to make these fried squid cakes. Some people just process the squids into fine paste. But I prefer chopping the squids with a cleaver to get a chunky paste. Doing this way, you will still feel the true texture of the squids while chewing the squid cakes in your mouth.

I also like making the squid cakes this way as I don’t have to deep-fry them. So I can save some oil and the food is healthier, less oily.

Ingredients: (serves 4)

- 400g squids

- 200g ground pork

- 1 tbs fish sauce

- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

- 1 small bunch of dill, finely chopped

- 5 stalks green onion, finely chopped

- cooking oil, to fry

Cooking:

- Clean the squids, then finely chop.

- Combine the squid, ground pork, fish sauce, pepper, dill and green onion, mix thoroughly until smooth.

- Shape the squid mixture into small flat round cakes.

- Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the squid cakes until golden brown on both sides. Drain on kitchen towels. Serve hot or warm.

Pork with spring onion

Kokotaru — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:07:37 +0000

Simple as it is, this dish is never out of fashion. I cook it when I need a quick meal with enough proteins to provide me more energy. I cook it when, at the end of the week, I nearly run out of ingredients in my fridge and this is a good choice as there are only two main ingredients. But now, it is not the story because I have come back and start my new life again in Vietnam, where I can shop for fresh ingredients everyday.

In the early morning, I go to the wet market near my house, buying things I need for lunch. Sometimes I buy stuffs for dinner as well, but this market opens in the afternoon too and new fresh foods are brought to sell. So, almost anytime I can buy new and fresh ingredients, which is really a big privilege for me as compared with before when I had to shop at weekend for the whole week.

This dish is best to be served with steamed rice.

Ingredients: (serves 2)

- 200g pork belly

- 50g spring onions

- 1 tbs fish sauce

- 1/2 tbs sugar

- 1/4 tsp ground pepper

Cooking:

- Cut the pork belly into 3mm-thick slices.

- Combine the pork with fish sauce, sugar and pepper for 15 minutes.

- Separate the white and green parts of spring onion, then finely chopped.

- Add the pork and white parts into a frying pan over medium heat, stir well. When the juice has evaporated and the pork starts to dry, add the green parts, stirring well for about 3 mintues until the pork is completely dried.

- Sprinkle with extra shredded spring onion. Serve while hot or warm.

“Chrysanthemum” eggs

Kokotaru — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:36:07 +0000

This dish has such a name due to its presentation to resemble the chrysanthemum. Actually, the dish is simply a dish of stuffed eggs. The filling is quite typical and popular in the other dishes I’ve introduced in my blog so far. In fact, fillings for stuffed food are not just boring as such. However, as I am constrained by other circumstances, the availability of ingredients for instance, I only could make pork mixture as fillings for most of the stuffed dishes I’ve cooked up to now.

Talking about this dish in particular, it is not very complicated. What caused me more time and troubles was the eggs. The eggs were not so good and the yolk was not at the centre of the egg, so when I boiled them and cut into halves, the edges of the halved egg whites were not equally thick, which made it more difficult to cut serrated pattern. So, one suggestion is to use fresh eggs. (I often had to buy 30 eggs at a time and stock them in my pantry, so the eggs might not be fresh).

After all, we like the dish and, I rarely eat more than one hard-boiled egg at a time, but I did.

Ingredients: (serves 3-4)

- 4 hard-boiled eggs

- 100g ground pork

- 2 or 3 wood ears, soaked to soften, finely chopped

- 1 shallot, finely chopped

- 1 tsp fish sauce

- 200g baby bok choy

- 1 small piece ginger, finely chopped or cut into juliennes

- 2 tsp sesame oil

- 2 tbs soy sauce

- 1 tsp sugar

- 1 tsp Shao Xing wine

- 1 tsp corn starch

- 2 tbs water

Cooking:

- Half the eggs, mash the yolks and set aside. Cut the egg white halves, with a paring knife, into serrated pattern.

- Combine the ground pork, wood ears, shallot and fish sauce, mix well. Fill the egg white halves with the pork mixture, then place them in a shallow dish and steam until the pork mixture is cooked thoroughly.

- Wash the bok choy well. Place in a saucepan of boiling water and cook until just done. Arrange the steamed stuffed egg halves on the dish of boiled bok choy.

- Combine the ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar and wine in a small saucepan or frying pan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Place the pan over medium heat and cook the sauce until boiled.

- Stir the cornstarch in water, then pour into the sauce and cook until thickened. Pour the sauce over bok choy and egg. Sprinkle with mashed egg yolks.

Steamed daikon radish rolls

Kokotaru — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 01:09:38 +0000

I do not often cook this dish because it takes me long time to prepare the paper-thin sheets cut out from a daikon radish. I don’t warrantee that this time I cut them perfectly thin but this was the best I could do with my clumsy knife. Having a good set of knifes is still my dream now. However, I have never tried peeling the paper-thin sheets from a slicer or mandoline. (The one I have now is very basic and not so goot either). Anyway, sometimes I watched the chefs peeling the sheets from vegetable roots into very thin long sheets, so I tried as far as I could to make these radish sheets to wrap the rolls.

About the ingredients for this dish, there are just a few and they are always easy to get from the market. It’s just the time and effort that you need to invest in preparing it. Anyway, I like these rolls since they have the most sweetness from the meat and vegetables. By steaming, most of the substances are not lost but stay in the rolls themselves and some come out as a sweet broth which you can also eat. Enjoying these rolls with chili sauce is always my preference.

Ingredients (serves 2)

- 1 cylinder cut from a large daikon radish, about 7cm in length and 5cm in diameter

- 100g ground pork

- 1 tsp fish sauce

- 1 tsp soy sauce

- 1/4 tsp ground black pepper

- 50g bean sprouts, rinsed well and drained

- 1 small carrot, cut into 7cm juliennes

- 1 stalk spring onion, cut into long strips

Cooking:

- Peel the radish and run the knife around the cylinder to cut into very thin sheets as long and thin as you can. If you break, it is fine to start again because the sheet only needs to be large enough to wrap the fillings tightly inside. Place the thin radish sheets into lightly salted butter to soften them a bit, which makes it easier to wrap later. Then drain well.

- Combine the ground pork, fish sauce, soy sauce and pepper.

- Place a sheet of radish on a surface. Arrange two spring onion strips diagonally on the radish sheet. Then spoon a little pork mixture, place some carrot strips and bean sprouts alongside the pork. Roll up the radish sheet to wrap the fillings inside tightly. Place the complete roll on a large dish.

- Continue with the remaining ingredients.

- Place the dish of radish rolls in a large steaming pot over medium-high heat. Steam for about 9-10 minutes. Remove and serve warm with chili sauce.

Braised stuffed tomatoes

Kokotaru — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:44:39 +0000

Tomatoes are my forever-loved veggie. Each week I always have to buy a large pack of tomatoes. In Vietnamese cuisine, tomatoes are used frequently in daily cooking, especially during hot summer, tomatoes are often indispensable in sour soups, which help relieve the heat of the summer.

However, I find tomatoes are best in winter when tomatoes are not only cheap but firm and red. The flesh of the tomatoes then is so "sweet" with less seeds. Here, I often see only two kinds of tomatoes. One kind is the normal tomatoes. The other is baby tomatoes such as grape tomatoes – which are called cherry tomatoes here in Singapore. The vine-ripen tomatoes are available at some specialty stores or some big supermarkets, however, they are not cheap and so not affordable for me.

To make this stuffed tomatoes, I used tomatoes of medium size and chose the ripe but firm ones. The soft tomatoes are vulnerable to break apart while braising. And the small ones like these also look lovelier than the large ones.

Ingredients (serves 2)

- 150g minced pork

- 10 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked to soften

- 2-3 black fungus (wood-ear), soaked to soften

- 1 egg

- 1 tbs fish sauce

- 1/4 tsp ground pepper

- 1 shallot, finely chopped

- several medium-sized ripe and firm tomatoes

- vegetable oil, as needed

- cilantro, to serve

Cooking:

- Rinse the mushrooms well. Reserve the soaking water. Chop the mushrooms finely.

- Rinse the black fungus well, then chop finely.

- Combine the pork, mushrooms, black fungus, egg, fish sauce, pepper and shallot.

- Cut out the top of the tomatoes and remove the seeds inside. Stuff the tomatoes with the pork mixture until all the fillings are used.

- Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Fry the tomatoes, concentrate on frying the tops where the pork mixture is present. Fry until the skins start to dry.

- Transfer the fried tomatoes into a saucepan. Add the reserved mushroom-soaking water. If you like, you may add some dried mushrooms and cilantro roots into the saucepan. Braise the tomatoes over medium-low heat for about 12-15 minutes.

- Serve hot or warm with cilantro.

Nagasaki stewed pork

Kokotaru — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:04:48 +0000

I learned this dish from one of my Japanese cookbook. This stewed pork is applicable but it is quite troublesome. I actually didn’t understand the cooking process and the purpose of some required techniques applied in making this dish.

The result was quite pleasant to the taste but I didn’t see much outstanding taste or flavor after all those cooking procedures. Maybe I didn’t cook well enough to get the best from this dish.

Stewed pork and vegetables soup

Kokotaru — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:06:35 +0000

This soup is one of my favorites. It contains a very tender pork, which is slowly stewed for a long time and a lot of vegetables. These veggies are almost available all time and, as compared with other kinds of veggies, they are much more affordable.

Stewing requires cooking for hours, however, sometimes it is actually not time consuming as it sounds. I mean, while placing a pot for stewing, we can always do other things and return to the kitchen occasionally to check the food. In the process we don’t have to stay in the kitchen all the time. Prep for this soup is quite fast too. Putting the veggies together is quite flexible as well. We can alter the quantity of each item according to our favor and what we have on hand.

So, what I normally put into this soup is pork ribs or the meat around the ribs, potato, carrot, celery, snow peas. To finish the soup, I add some cilantro leaves to enhance the flavor of the soup.

Each veggie has a different time of cooking welldone. So during the cooking progress, each goes to the pot at different moment. Snow peas are added last and of course, the cilantro leaves are sprinkled over the soup when it is ready and removed from the heat.

My family can have this soup in any season, but we most prefer it in winter.

Steamed flat rice cake topped with pork and shrimp

Kokotaru — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:19:35 +0000

If you’ve ever travelled to the Middle Vietnam, visiting the places such as Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, etc. you may have come across these steamed rice cakes. The name in Vietnamese is "banh beo". They used to be the street food of ordinary people, but nowadays, they are served in the restaurants as well as a kind of regional specialities.

In Vietnam, there are a large variety of steamed cakes, most of which are made from rice flour, glutinous rice flour, or tapioca flour. They are either wrapped in green leaves such as banana leaves or steamed uncovered. These steamed cakes in particular have many versions, depending on which provinces they are originated from.

I made a trip to visit some Southern cities of Vietnam last December, and I got to eat these cakes twice, and of course they are different kinds. Mostly the toppings and dipping sauce make the difference. Instead of dried shrimps, fresh shrimps are used and made into sponge dried shrimp meat. The dipping sauce is either thin or thick, using either pure water or water from boiling the shrimps.

There are two common things. Firstly, these cakes are steamed in small shallow dishes and served in the dishes themselves. Unlike what you are seeing in my photos, because I removed the cakes from the dishes that I poured the batter in to steam. Why? It’s because I had only two such dishes, they are not exactly the type of dishes used for these cakes but somehow quite similar. So, each batch I could steam only two cakes. After that I had to remove the cakes from the dishes and started another batch. Secondly, the cakes are sometimes oily. The green onions are cooked in oil or ghee, then topped on the cakes. I tried to make a healthy version of the cake, so I didn’t fry the spring onion with oil but sprinkle them over the cakes only.

Ingredients and cooking methods:

* Steamed rice cake:

- 200g rice flour

- 20g tapioca flour

- 500ml water

=> Mix all the ingredients together. Let stand for 30 minutes. Just before steaming, stir in 1/4 tsp salt.

* Pork and dried shrimps topping:

- 150g minced pork

- 50g small dried shrimps

- 1/2 tbs fish sauce

- 1/8 tsp ground pepper

- little oil

- green onions, chopped

=> Soak the dried shrimps in water for 20 minutes to soften. Combine the pork with fish sauce and pepper. Heat the oil in a skillet, add the dried shrimps and marinated minced pork to the skillet and stir-fry quickly until cooked through. Remove from the heat. Mix in the chopped green onions.

- Prepare several small shallow dishes put in the large steaming pot over high heat. When the water boils, pour tablespoons of the rice flour mixture into the dishes up to 2/3 full. Cover the steam for about 5 minutes. Continue with the next batches until all the batter is used up.

- If you don’t have many spare dishes, you may remove the steamed cakes from the dishes and place on large serving plate. Then return the dishes to the steaming pot and continue with the other batches.

- Before serving, top the cakes with pork and shrimp mixture right at the centre of each cake.

* Dipping sauce:

- Make the dipping sauce with fish sauce, drinking water, lime juice, sugar and chili. Adjust the seasonings so that the sauce is just lightly salty, with the balance of sweetness and sourness.

* Serving:

- Dip the cakes into the sauce and enjoy them at the same time.

Pig heart porridge

Kokotaru — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:10:38 +0000

This is the other half of the pig heart I reserved. I cooked the pig heart in advance for safety, and keep them in the fridge until the porridge got ready. At that time I only needed to re-heat the pig heart before adding them to the porridge.

When I was small, my Mom often cooked this porridge for her childen when they fell sick. In Vietnam there are other kinds of fresh herbs that are good for our health and can be added to this porridge, especially for sick people, however, here I could have only two basic ones, which are fresh cilantro and green onion. Still, the taste of the porridge was still good.

Ingredients (serves 2)

- 1/2 a pig heart, cut into thin strips

- 1/2 tbs fish sauce

- 1/8 tsp ground pepper

- 1 tsp vegetable oil

- 1 shallot, thinly sliced

- 60ml long grain rice, soaked in water for several hours, drain

- chicken stock granules

- green onion, chopped

- cilantro, chopped

Cooking:

- Put the pig heart strips, fish sauce and ground pepper in a small bowl. Marinate for 15 minutes.

- Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, add the shallot and cook for 1 minute then add the pig heart strips, stir-fry constantly until cooked through. Do not over cook. Remove from the saucepan, set aside.

- Add the rice into the saucepan with about 1 tsp chicken stock granules, stirring for about 3 mintues. Add about 3 cup water to the saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low to simmer, stir occasionally, until the grains break into smaller parts and resemble fine meals. The porridge should neither be too runny nor too thick. You may need to add more water during cooking time if necessary.

- When the porridge is done, divide into two large bowls. Arrange the pig heart strips, chopped green onion and cilantro on top, sprinkle with ground black pepper. Stir to combine before eating.