Vietnam still holds me.  I miss the food, I miss the weather, I miss the people, I miss the noise, I miss the energy.

So when an opportunity arises for me to somehow connect back to it, I grab on.

At the last book club meeting I hosted, we were discussing a book that took place partly in Cambodia.  And for my purposes, Cambodia is close enough to Vietnam to make a culinary cheat leap when deciding what to make for snacks.  The book does mention a character often eating a baguette sandwich… which of course is Vietnamese banh mi by any other name.  So really, I wasn’t cheating all that much.  And when I found the perfect recipe for a banh mi mise en place, the menu was shaping up perfectly.

While the chicken was well flavoured from the marinade, the standout ingredients were the pickled carrots and fresh bread.  I kept to the recipe closely with the exception of the onions, daikon, lime (a member’s allergy caused me to use lemon), and the salad.  I marinated the carrots for about 6 hours and everyone raved about them.  I placed a special order at Cobs for the small baguettes.  They were all chewy, golden goodness.

Unexpectedly, banh (loosely, bread/cake) became another theme of the evening.  While walking aimlessly one night in Hue, I decided to try a sweet I had seen a few times in display cases.  Simply labelled “banana cake,” it had the look of an upside-down cake; caramelized bananas atop a moist, white cake.  The flavour, however, was more like a bread pudding.  When I started searching for a recipe, I found that the cake I had tasted and had wanted to make for book club was called banh chuoi nuong.

Like any good bread pudding recipe, eggs and milk make over stale bread.  And like many good dessert recipes from tropical climates, coconut and banana have leading roles.

After a few bites, you immediately understand why banh is such a widely used prefix in Vietnamese cooking.  Everything it touches turns delicious.

Banh Chuoi Nuong

8 bananas

2 day-old/stale French loaves (not baguettes)

2 eggs

1.25 cups sugar

2 cups milk

2 cups coconut milk

4 tablespoons melted butter

1 tablespoon vanilla

0.5 teaspoon cinnamon

Slice bananas and mix with flour, 0.25 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons of the butter, and cinnamon.  Beat eggs with the remaining cup of sugar.  Then add coconut milk, milk, vanilla, and remaining butter.  Remove crusts from bread.  Slice into 0.5-inch slices.  Grease a 9-inch glass pie plate.  Quickly dip the bread slices in the egg mixture and lay the slices into the bottom of pan to create the first layer.  Squish bread down as much as you can.  Add half of the banana slices.  Repeat bread layer, squishing down again.  Finish off with the rest of the banana slices.  You may have leftover bread and banana slices.  Bake at 350 degrees F until golden, about 45 minutes.

Let cool completely.  Serve at room temperature.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream wouldn’t hurt it.

Green papaya salad with shrimp, Mango Rooms, Hoi An

Green papaya and green mango salads quickly became an obsession.  Few things seemed more perfect on a hot afternoon than a cold salad of crunchy fruit in a salty dressing.

Green papaya salad, Hoa Sua School, Hanoi

Hoa Sua School

KOTO

Banana flower salad, KOTO, Hanoi

Banana flower salad, Red Bridge Cooking School, Hoi An

The salads were what I wanted most when I came home.  An inspired bowl of cold-spicy and salty-sweet to offset the persistence of dry radiator air.  Something that would be kind to my waistline after one too many baguettes and cones of “young rice” ice cream.  For a quick fix, I headed to Lucky 97 to get some ingredients to go with the rotisserie chicken I had at home.   

With the exception of the dressing, I didn’t really follow a recipe.  For two girls who were to stay in and paint their nails, I bought two mangos and one green papaya.  Purple basil, cilantro, and mint.  Shredded carrots.  One diced chili.  Scallions.  Sesame seeds.  The chicken.   A super simple dressing c/o Red Bridge:  juice of one lime, 1 teaspoon of fish sauce, 1 garlic clove crushed, and 1 tablespoon of sugar. 

It was too cold for a cold beer, but that’s what was then needed.
And as they say in Vietnam:  Yo!

I am always in the mood for Thai food.  Edmonton has a number of very good Thai places to choose from, and I have two or three in particular that I would never turn down an invite to.  But, as I’ve had the pleasure of preparing and tasting some Thai recipes made on a home stove, I thought that I would try to make one of my favourites rather than try to rustle someone up for a dinner out.  And it’s much more budget friendly.

Like Sugar, I’m a big fan of green curries.  A green curry with chicken is a standard for me when eating out.  The other one is basil chicken.  The flavour is not as complex or as rich as a curry, but the spice of the chilies and the sweetness of the basil is a winning combination.  Add an appetizer and some steamed rice, and Cream is in Thai heaven.

Essentially just a stir fry, there’s not a lot to fret about regarding ingredients or technique when making basil chicken.  Googling a recipe results in the Thai names of Gai Pad Krapow or Pad Krapow Gai.  Both paths will end in deliciousness I think.  As I waded through results, I found that a more authentic recipe calls for holy basil, which is apparently hard to find.  The real deal is not made with the expected purple-stemmed Thai basil.  A few sites recommended using a mix of mint and Thai basil as a substitution.  So, I did just that. 

It’s not a dish with many vegetables, but as the restaurant versions I prefer always have bell peppers, I required one of those, and I added green beans for good measure.  It also seems to be more authentic to use ground chicken.  The reason for this being that more surface area of the chicken gets hit with the few but strong flavours.  So, if you’re using breast (like me), make sure to dice it quite small.

The aromas that fill the house when the ingredients hit the hot pan are intoxicating.  Add the perfume of a pot of jasmine rice and the sun of a long Alberta day, and Thai heaven is in fact your own home.

Thai Basil Chicken

Makes enough for two.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2-5 chilies, finely chopped (I used 3 small Thai red chilies and the heat was a tolerable medium)

2 shallots, finely sliced

3 garlic cloves, minced

About 2 handfuls of green beans, trimmed and chopped to about 1.5 inches in length

1 red pepper, sliced

2 chicken breasts, diced

2.5 tablespoons fish sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

About 1 cup Thai basil leaves

About 0.5 cup mint leaves

1 lime

Cooked jasmine rice

1.  Heat oil over high heat in wok or frying pan.  When the oil starts to smoke, add the chilies, shallots, and garlic and stir fry for about 30 seconds, until golden.

2.  Add the beans and red pepper and fry until tender-crisp, about 4 minutes.

3.  Add the chicken and stir fry until cooked, about 5 minutes, depending on size of dice.

4.  Add the fish sauce and sugar, stir to coat.

5.  Reduce heat to medium and add the herbs.  Stir fry until wilted.  Remove from heat.

Serve with lime wedges and atop jasmine rice.

The ease with which we tend to take Sundays—the day of rest—often means dinners that can take time and involve the word “slow.”  But, the phenomenon of a Lazy Sunday also exists.  And it exists a lot in my life.

So, a post about a lazy meal on a lazy Sunday is going to be just that.  The laziness also extends to it being posted a week late.  But as it’s Sunday again, it all works.

The most effort this lazy salad required was making the red wine vinaigrette and slicing the fennel.  Otherwise, everything was simply chopped:  pre-washed baby romaine, kalamata olives, tiny sweet peppers, avocado, yellow tomatoes, fennel, fresh basil, store-bought rotisserie chicken.

The modified ham and cheese required the use of the broiler.  Therefore, I technically cooked.

After slicing the cheddar biscuits (from the freezer), I placed shaved prosciutto, sliced Granny Smith, and goat cheese on top.

Dessert was Breyer’s.  The digestif was a good dose of laughing while watching the gang of 30 Rock with my Lazy Sunday partner in crime.

I did not make a Sunday roast, but I did turn the oven on and the chicken had been roasted at some point.

So there.