Viet World Kitchen

Pho Secrets and Techniques

It's so hard to get the flavor of pho broth just right. You're best off leaving it up the professional cooks at pho noodle shops. Don't even try. It takes so long to make the broth, anyway.  It's more convenient to go out. I don't have the time. Ha! You're teaching non-Vietnamese people to make their own pho? That should be interesting...

Cooking is a skill and craft that just takes practice to master. I've never been one to be discouraged from tinkering in the kitchen. At the end of the day, it's just food. If you mess up, you can still eat whatever you made. It's not likely to harm you.

But there's something about pho. I often hear from young Viet people about how her or his mother, father, grandmother or grandfather says that there's no way to make a bowl of homemade pho that's as good as what you'd get out. Indeed, the fragrant noodle soup is practically Vietnam's national dish, but it's no State secret! I suspect that the elders themselves don't know how to make a good bowl at home so there isn't much wisdom to impart to the kid. 

That, fortunately, is not how I was raised. My parents were determined to tease out the secrets and techniques for making all kinds of Vietnamese foods. They'd ask their friends, professional cooks and family members. They also read stuff too. Their mantra was that they could make most dishes just as good, if not better than store-bought. (My mom stopped at Chinese roast pork when she was shown the inside of the roasting chamber at a Chinese barbecue shop.)

With regard to pho noodle soup, it's really not hard to make a fabulous bowl.  There are detailed recipes in my book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, as well as at the Vietworldkitchen.com mega pho page.  Vietnamese cooks have lots of tricks up their sleeves, but my approach is to keep things straightforward and true.  Before leaping into making pho yourself,  consider the following:

Basic Pho Tips and Techniques

1. Start with good beef bones: Avoid neck bones. Look for knuckle bones and leg bones that contain marrow. At Asian markets, you'll find beef bones cut and bagged in the refrigerated section. Vietnamese markets will sometimes have the leg bones at the butcher counter. You can specify how you want them sawed; ask for two- to three-inch sections.

If you have to buy a little more than what the recipe calls for, lucky you! Your broth will be extra beefy. Miko in Seattle said that his bones were on the biggish side but he bought more than what was called for. I suggested that he thrown them all in for a more intense broth. There was more fat than usual, but Miko refrigerated the broth and lifted the congealed fat off.

From eating pho in Vietnam and observing how the cows there live low-key lives grazing in the countryside, I was inspired to make pho broth from the fragrant bones of grass-fed and natural beef. The experiments have consistently yielded amazing results, with the essence of beef captured every time. To find the bones, ask a butcher who breaks down large beef carcass sections into small retail cuts. Also check these sites for sources for natural, organic or grass-fed beef: Eatwellguide.org, Localharvest.org, Eatwild.com

2. Aim for a clear broth: This is achieved by parboiling and rinsing the bones, which greatly reduces the amount of residue in the broth. You may think you're pouring essential flavors down the drain, but you're not. The bones exude their essence during the three-hour gentle simmer. Cooking at a low heat also helps produce clear broth. [1/19/08 -- Check out the great tool for efficiently skimming scum and fat!]

3. Char the onion and ginger: It imparts a wonderful brown color and deepens the overall flavors. DO NOT skip this step.

4. Use yellow rock sugar: It rounds out all the rough edges and brings the flavors together. Many Viet cooks in the past used granulated sugar and the flavor is just sweet and flat. Look for the golden-yellow sugar sold in plastic bags or paper boxes at Chinese and Vietnamese markets. Avoid the insipid white version, which is like using regular sugar.  Note that the sugar may be labeled rock candy. One package lasts a long time. Just bang on large chunks with a hammer to break them up.

5. Don't dilute. Why simmer broth for hours to create an intense flavor and then dilute it with water? I never got that approach. As my friend Linda Carucci points out in her helpful book, Cooking School Secrets for Real-World Cooks, bones give up their all after about 3 hours of simmering. Unless you're simmering industrial quantities of bones (then you don't need my help), there's no need to simmer the broth for half a day. The only time that'd you need dilute the broth is if you added too much fish sauce or salt and need to correct the seasoning.

6. Leave some fat: Despite all the talk about obesity in the United States, I like some shiny globules of fat floating in the broth. They lend a richness that underscores pho's beefiness.

7. Serve it hot: To cook the raw beef and warm the cooked beef and noodles, the broth must be boiling when it's ladled into the bowl. But hot pho shouldn't be left to sit in the bowl. The noodles will absorb too much broth.

8. Freeze it! Leftover broth and cooked meats may be frozen for a treat on another day.

Pho Secrets?

• Roasting the bones. I've tried this and have not found that it's done much to the broth aside from making the broth dark, something that I've not found to be attractive. If you start with good bones, there's no need to roast, as the French would do for a veal stock, or demi-glace, as Miko pointed out.
• Filet or Wagyu beef in pho. I like my beef to have taste and have never found super tender, rich filet or Wagyu (American Kobe) to have much oomph. There's plenty of flavor and fat from regular (and cheap) brisket, chuck, drop flank (nam), tendon, etc. Pho is humble food and to add filet or Wagyu removes some  soul from the soup.  Finally, after reading a story by Gary Estabrook in the December 2007 issue of Gourmet on how Kobe and Wagyu cows are raised, I refuse to eat that meat. Let's say that the cotws are massaged because they're arthritic from having to standing still and carrying all that weight!
• Pho seasoning packets. These little bags sold at Viet markets save you no time. You still have to simmer the bones and meats for broth. You don't know how old the spices are too. Why not gather them yourself?
• Instant pho extract/paste. Can contain MSG.  If you don't use bouillon for broth, why would you use something like this?
• Hoisin. Spicy sweet hoisin sauce adds flavor and is something that southern Vietnamese folks like. For me, it obliterates a well crafted broth. Perhaps pho shops set the bottles of Lee Kum Kee out and encourage diners to squirt it into their bowls because their broth isn't well-flavored? I reach for the hoisin to dip a beef meatball into, but that's about it.

Feel free to debate the points I've made here, or add any tips, etc.  of your own!

Related information:

• Evolution of pho (history and background)
• Chicken pho noodle soup recipe (on this blog)

Chestnuts for the Holidays

As I type, my parents are probably peeling chestnuts. It's not because they're in their seventies and don't have anything to do, but rather that for our Christmas Eve dinner, we eat lots of chestnuts. It's a tedious task, but they do it as a team and it's a ritual they share. (Chestnuts are enjoyed in Vietnam, China, Japan and Korea. They originally came from West Asia and have been cultivated in China for as long as they've been cultivated in Europe!)

Once the nuts are peeled, my mom simmers them in broth with butter, canned chicken broth and cilantro. Many years ago, when she forgot to buy parsley, she substituted cilantro and found the flavor to be extremely agreeable so we've made the chestnuts that way ever since. The buttery sweet results go into the sticky rice stuffing and are served as a side dish. She reserves the biggest whole ones to serve on the side and will likely say, "There's enough so that you each get X number." We savor each one because we know that we won't have them again on our menu until the next season.

My parents are into feeding a crowd so they're working on several pounds of chestnuts. You don't have to be as over-achieving as they are. Here's a recipe pulled from my cookbook to get you on the way:

Chestnuts Simmered with Butter and Cilantro

Makes about 2 cups

11/2 cups shelled and peeled chestnuts (3/4 pound unpeeled), whole ones halved lengthwise
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
5 sprigs cilantro
2 cups or more low-sodium canned chicken broth

Select a small saucepan in which the chestnuts may lay in more or less one layer. Add the butter, cilantro, and broth to cover by 1/2 inch. Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and simmer softly for about 20 minutes, or until the nuts are tender-firm and still holding their shape. Avoid boiling or the nuts will disintegrate. When done, some pieces will be intact while others will have broken apart. Set aside to cool. Use in your stuffing or serve as a side dish.

Buying and Storing Chestnuts
Chestnuts are in season in the late fall and early winter so you may be able to get some fresh ones still. (Chinese and Korean markets are good source for them.) Select shiny, heavy-feeling nuts and store them in a cool, dry place. Use the nuts while they're still full and heavy. Or, freeze them unshelled, thawing them in the refrigerator before use.

How to Shell and Peel Chestnuts
To shell and peel chestnuts, first use a sharp paring knife to cut a cross on the flat side of the nut; do this on a dishtowel to prevent the nut from rolling away. Preheat a toaster oven or regular oven to 400°F. Place the nuts, cut side up, directly on the rack or in a shallow pan. Bake them until they feel hot and the cut part of the shells open and curl (about 5 minutes in the toaster oven, or 10 to 15 minutes in the regular oven).

Put the nuts on a dishtowel, wrap them up, and squeeze on them to crack their shells. Working on one at a time, remove the smooth outer shell and then peel, scrape, and/or cut off the papery inner brown skin. Use the knife tip to pry out skin bits stuck in the crevices. It's okay if a nut breaks during peeling. As you work, keep unpeeled nuts warm in the dishtowel so the shells remain pliable and easier to remove. Shell and peel chestnuts up to 3 days in advance and keep them refrigerated. They also freeze beautifully for months.

Our Holiday Menus

The holidays are full of fun, frolic, and potentially fright if you’re dealing with stressful travel or social situations. Whatever that happens in the next two weeks, there’s plenty of good food to be had. I’d like to know how you’re celebrating Christmas and New Year -- what you’re eating and drinking, specifically. It doesn’t have to be pure, 100% Vietnamese food.

In fact, that’s never how my family has celebrated Christmas. We’re Catholic so we go to mass on Christmas Eve and then come home, take off our nicey church clothes, and eat for a few hours. In Vietnam, we attended midnight mass and went home for Reveillon, the French term for a holiday dinner. We’d open our gifts when the clock struck twelve that evening. Once we arrived in the U.S., we got lazy and went to mass earlier, but never gave up the gift opening time. We actually moved it up!

As a kid, my friends thought that I cheated by not waiting until morning to rip into the wrapped gifts. They also didn’t understand why we made dozens of yule log cakes (buche de Noel cake) to gift to friends, family and neighbors. On Christmas Eve, we had roast goose or turkey with stuffing featuring  sticky rice and chestnut. It was and continues to be a delectable mash-up of wonderful food.

For many years I made Christmas Eve dinner for my parents but next Monday, my mother and I are doing it together. I’m also going to enlist my nieces and nephews, who are old enough to handle knives well. Mom is roasting Cornish game hens stuffed with the aforementioned dressing with a little cognac in there for good measure. (As always, my sister Tasha will seek out the crusty bits of rice for herself.) My mother will also make a creamy corn and shiitake mushroom soup, our modern take on the Chinese canned cream corn soup.

As for me, I’m in charge of the deep-fried cha gio imperial rolls. We’re in Dungeness crab season where I live so fresh crab meat will be mixed into the shrimp-pork-jicama-and-cellophane noodle filling. Lots of fresh lettuce and Vietnamese herbs and nuoc cham sort of make cha gio our salad course. We’ll also roast cauliflower because it's simple and something tasty that I picked up this year. My mother loves sweet potatoes so I’ll have to figure something out for them. We need a green vegetable so it’ll be green beans. For dessert? Assorted cookies and small pastries that I’ve baked and whatever that my mom has around that she wants to tantalize us with. Here's a recap of our menu:

Creamy Corn and Shiitake Mushroom Soup
Cha Gio Imperial Rolls with Lettuce, Fresh Herbs and Nuoc Cham
Roasted Cauliflower with Indian Spices
A Sweet Potato Something (perhaps with Ginger and Tangerine Peel)
Stir-fried Green Beans
Roasted Cornish Game Hens with Sticky Rice and Chestnut Stuffing

Fresh Fruit
Assorted Homemade Sweets

My father will have lots of wine flowing to make sure we sleep well on December 24.

What will you be feasting on?

Let us all know. It can be as simple as posting your menu as a comment below. Add a link to a photo, if you want to make our mouths water more! Or email me a photo of your holiday spread and I’ll post it here.

Gifts that Keep on Giving: Knives

There a lot of talk these days about the U.S. economy being on the verge of stumbling. The housing market hiccups, personal credit crunches, weak dollar, rising oil prices and federal budget deficit are making consumers a little skittish.

People are tightening their belts by eating out less. I've read about a couple who up until recently ate at the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) everyday. They may be jonesing for their daily pancake fix but may have to work the griddle themselves. Painful as that may sound, those folks may discover that homemade can be as good if not better than restaurant food.

I love to eat out, but at the end of the day I root for the home cook. Vietnamese food poses challenges to cooks because there tends to be a fair amount of chopping involved. Don't despair, gift yourself a few good knives this season (I always launch the holidays by buying myself something), and you'll find that they're the kind of gift that keeps on giving for years to come.

When I first moved away from home, my first serious knife was a  Henckels 8-inch chef's knife, purchased from a now-defunct chain of discount stores called Adray's.  I can't remember which kind it was but at the time, it was a major investment. I felt like I could conquer any culinary task placed before me. After he sold his Italian restaurant and retired, my husband's uncle, James Hoffman, gave me a well-worn cleaver (see second photo, on the left). Jim butchered his own meat so I started hacking away at chickens with that knife. I invested in one of the diamond-studded electronic knife sharpeners to keep my edge.

Those knives worked fine for me until I started work on my cookbook manuscript and was testing recipes over and over and over to get things just right. The amount of repeated prep work was astounding and I was honing my knife skills as well as my knives. What I found was that the Henckels lost its edge quickly, and the sharpening didn't help much. An article in 2005 by Los Angeles Times food writer Russ Parsons led me to try out a Japanese vegetable knife -- the lighter, thinner santoku that are popular nowadays.

As a struggling writer, I had no money for fancy blades and picked one up for $13 (above, on the left) at a restaurant supply shop in Culver City called Surfas (it wasn't as dolled up as it is now, but it's still great). That knife changed my life.  The blade stayed sharp, was easy to maintain, and best of all, allowed me to chop and mince to perfection without wearing me down. It's very light.

In the past, I looked down upon such knives because they seemed so flimsy. Now I'm eating crow. That's how Asian cooks get thin slices and perfect cut without little fuss. Then I stepped up to a $19 rectangular usuba (above, on the right, what a splurge!) which doesn't have the pointy tip like the santoku. After 3 months with these Asian knives I reluctantly slipped the Henckel and a Chicago Cutlery chefs knife I'd picked up in protective sleeves and put them in a drawer. The Japanese knives took their places in the knife block. 

The electric knife sharpener had a lifetime guarantee but its lifetime seemed to have past for me. My husband gifted me a steel for my birthday one year and I've used that primarily ever since.  Once a quarter I have my knives professionally sharpened. In between sharpenings, all I do is lightly steel the blades and they come back nice and sharp.

Knife sharpening tip: My local knife sharpening man, Terry Beech of Sharp Quick mobile sharpening services (if you live in the Monterey Bay, he'll come to your house if you want!), says that if you hold the knife up with the sharp blade facing you and you can make out the edge of the blade, it needs sharpening. It should be so razor thin that you can't see a clean line in the blade. I also gently brush my thumb across the blade to see if it's sharp or not.

A few months ago, I semi-retired Jim's cleaver. Turns out it was a vegetable cleaver all this time. It was fine when it went through the many cheap chickens I'd bought for stock. But when I wanted to hack at pork ribs or a duck, it was no good. Terry told me that I shouldn't have been using a vegetable cleaver anyway and suggested I find a heavy meat cleaver.

The ones at the Chinese restaurant supply shops were too big and heavy for me. I wasn't about to work at a barbecue joint.  In the end, I went with a cleaver made by F. Dick (stop your laughing, it stands for Friedrich Dick). A German cutlery company, F. Dick markets to chefs and commercial kitchens and they've started out in the butchering business, Terry told me. (F. Dick kitchen knives are supposedly also sold under the name Calphalon Professional Cutlery, but I've not seen them.)

The blade is a good 3/16" thick and it weighs in just over a pound. Jim's vegetable cleaver weighs 11 ounces. The weight is important because that gives you an assist when you're striking a blow at thick bones.

At first, I ordered an 8-inch cleaver, but it was huge -- like something from a bad cartoon. The 6-inch cleaver (about $60, to the right above) felt better in my hand, though at first I felt like I was being a bit wimpy. Probably for liability reasons, the cleaver came completely unsharpened and Terry did the job for me. I used it first on a couple of free-range chickens that I bought from a local farmer and the bones cut nice and clean. Last night I needed some tomato sauce quick and took a block out of the freezer and hacked a chunk out with the cleaver. It was great -- one of the best gifts for myself that I bought this year.

Knife buying/gifting tips:

• Go for the full tang. The metal of the blade (called a tang) should go all the way through to the end of the handle. That's one of the major marks of a sturdy knife.
• There are certain knives for certain jobs but in the main, multi-purpose knife, like the santoku  or usuba are fabulous. Get a few cheapie paring knives.
• Never buy a knife until you've held it. Hold the knife and see if it feels good in your hand. Price doesn't guarantee comfort. Those little ceramic steels don't cost much and work very well.
• If you gift someone a knife, it's Vietnamese custom for the recipient to give you a little money in return -- like as if they paid for the knife. Otherwise, it's considered bad luck.
• Visit restaurant supply shops (Asian and non-Asian), housewares stores like Sur la Table and Williams Sonoma. In Berkeley, try Hida Tools and Tokyo Fish Market, both on San Pablo. In San Francisco, try the Wok Shop in Chinatown or Kamei housewares on Clement.

More info at:

• Kitchen Knife Buying Guide
• eGullet Japanese knives (discussion thread)

What are you buying yourself for the holidays?

Mystery Lao Spice

Since we were so successful with identifying "bass leaves" as ivy gourd, we may be able to figure out what this spice is. Does anyone know?

Pat Tanumihardja of ediblewords.com came across it in Seattle, where a Lao farmer had used it in a sausage stuffing. Pat didn't taste it. It looks like Sichuan peppercorns but it's got a 3-point configuration like star anise (which has 8 points).

Also, what does it taste like and how can one use it?

Thanks!

Eating in Saigon

Robyn Eckhart and her husband Dave, American expats residing in Kuala Lumpur, went to Saigon a little while back. Robyn has been posting her food forays on her amazing blog, Eating Asia, complete with Dave's stunning photography. Their postings are definitely worth checking out, especially to see how food is prepared in the Motherland these days.

Highlights include:

• Vietnam's Black Gold (cafe sua da/ice coffee)
• The Feel Good Factor (Hong Hang restaurant/southern and central Viet fare)
• Duck Rice Porridge (chao vit, with all the trimmings)

Thanks Robyn and Dave!

Eating in Hanoi

When I last visited the Motherland, I stayed in the south to bask in its warmth. It's been several years since I've been to Hanoi. Katie, a food stylist who assisted on the photos for Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, will be visiting Hanoi soon. She wrote asking about where and what to eat.

Here's were my suggestions:

Don't miss these Hanoi specialties:

• beef pho noodle soup
• bun cha rice noodles with grilled pork
• bun thang noodle soup
• banh cuon steamed rice rolls
• cha ca thanh long -- people say to go the restaurant in the old quarter, but I think it's overrated. My homemade version is better, though it's always interesting to see the dolled up version.

Cheap or moderately priced places to eat:

• In the old quarter in the evening, there's usually street food vendors who set up shop offering things like green papaya salad near where the water puppet theater is.
• Near the Hilton Opera, we breakfasted daily on great coffee, croissants and pate chauds at a bakery/cafe. Walk out of the Hilton, go right and then left and you'll see it across the street. It's charmingly French looking.
• Hoa Sua (81 Tho Nhuom) is a cooking school for disadvantaged youth that's great for lunch. It's in an old French villa.
• At night, the Metropole Hotel has live music in their charming bar.

High-end restaurants:

• Bobby Chinn's eponymous restaurant is very swank, should you want to experience Cal-Med-Vietnamese fusion.
• Verticale  is new this year and opened by Didier Corlou,  whom the Vietnamese consider their foreign ambassador for Vietnamese food. It's suppose to be beautiful, and offer Corlou's French-Vietnamese hybrid cuisine.

Other sources to check include:

• Penn State University faculty member Rukmalie Jayakody's  short list of Hanoi eateries (The person lived and conducted research there. This link leads to lots of helpful information.)
• Noodlepie's 2001 PDF document of Hanoi eats and his 2007 notes on food places in Hanoi
• Savour Asia's tips and notes on eating in Hanoi

Health and safety:

• Safe eating in Vietnam is a posting on this blog has tips on traveling and eating in Vietnam.
• Vietnamese food in the time of cholera is another posting that has links to info on the current health concerns there.

If you have a tip for Katie, add to this list!

Banh Mi Incarnations

Vietnamese banh mi is a sandwich that's constantly being reinvented and reinterpreted. For example, at David Chang's acclaimed Momofuku Ssam Bar in Manhattan, there's a version that sells for $9. The bread was a bit too crusty hard for me, the pickles rather flaccid, and the three-meat terrine was unfortunately nondescript that evening. Nevertheless, I appreciated his interpretation as a sign that Vietnamese food is part of the current gourmet hipster food culture. Chang has a Viet-American chef among his staff to boot, which perhaps explains Momofuku's roasted Brussel sprouts tossed with nuoc mam fish sauce --  an addictive salty-sweet-spicy-pungent treat. (Note: When I used the Gourmet recipe (linked above), my cooking time was half of their estimate. The oven is hot so keep an eye on the Brussel sprouts or they'll be toast.)

Sunset Magazine's November issue included a post-Thanksgiving version of banh mi that was essentially a spicy turkey and cabbage salad stuffed into a toasted roll. Their Vietnamese-style turkey subs called for chili garlic sauce (tuong ot toi) and no mayonnaise to soften the blow so watch out for the heat and vinegar blast!

If you've eaten banh mi these days -- either in Vietnam or abroad - there's a meatball version called banh mi xiu mai. Check Noodlepie's page on banh mi in Vietnam and you'll see that there are many fans of that version.  I'm not one of them, and have never made one myself, though there's a xiu mai recipe on the Viet World Kitchen main site should you want to try it out!

Regardless, why deny people who love the Vietnamese-Chinese-Italian blending. Blake Killian at the Serious Eats website, recently posted on a banh mi sao [sic] mai that competed in the  New Orleans Po' Boy Preservation Festival for best po' boy.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to Brigitte Nguyen's $2,000 Vietnamese pork burger, which was a Vietnamese sandwich in a bun.  Inspired by Brigitte, Chuck created and posted a spectacular looking Vietnamese pulled pork recipe on his Sunday Nite Dinner blog. He topped a burger bun with the tasty-looking pork.

Now how about putting that pulled pork in a baguette or bolillo roll with all the usual banh mi  suspects. Here's what you'll need and how to do it: 

• nice light baguette, split, toasted and insides gutted
• whole egg mayonnaise (don't skimp on the fat), smear the inside of the toasted baguette with mayo
• soy sauce or Maggi Seasoning sauce, give the bread a shot of the brown condiment of choice for savory depth

Then add the meat and tuck in the following:

• daikon and carrot pickle (do chua, see recipe below)
• cucumber strips (seeds removed)
• cilantro sprigs
• thinly sliced jalapeno (resist chili garlic sauce because it overwhelms)

Cut it in half and eat. Delish.

If you have banh mi inventions of your own, let us know!

Everday Daikon and Carrot Pickle
Đồ Chua

Makes about 3 cups

1 large carrot, peeled and cut into thick matchsticks
1 pound daikons, each no larger than 2 inches in diameter, peeled and cut into thick matchsticks
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons plus 1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups distilled white vinegar
1 cup lukewarm water

1. Place the carrot and daikons in a bowl and sprinkle with the salt and 2 teaspoons of the sugar. Use your hands to knead the vegetables for about 3 minutes, expelling the water from them. They will soften and liquid will pool at the bottom of the bowl. Stop kneading when you can bend a piece of daikon so that the ends touch but the daikon does not break. The vegetables should have lost about one-fourth of their volume. Drain in a colander and rinse under cold running water, then press gently to expel extra water. Return the vegetables to the bowl if you plan to eat them soon, or transfer them to a 1-quart jar for longer storage.

2. To make the brine, in a bowl, combine the 1/2 cup sugar, the vinegar, and the water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Pour over the vegetables. The brine should cover the vegetables. Let the vegetables marinate in the brine for at least 1 hour before eating. They will keep in the refrigerator for up to 4 weeks. Beyond that point, they get tired.

From: Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors (2006, Ten Speed Press)