But anyway, back to my story.  The grey of Vancouver is like the cold of Edmonton.  It gets to you in January and you long for something else.  Like Vietnam in February.  I’ve had some bare bones Vietnamese here—dodgy pho et al—like I got at home.  But, what I’ve been craving to wash away the Vancouver grey is the colour and perfume of the fresh food that embraced you every day on the streets of Vietnam.

I caught a little whiff of that tonight when at Chau Kitchen and Bar.  Although not really “authentic” Vietnamese, I could taste Vietnam.  I liked what I tasted.  A lot.

Two of us shared four dishes:  papaya salad, pork and mint salad rolls, jungle vegetable curry, and caramel pork.

I will order all again and have a number of other dishes I would like to try.  The pork was almost the same as the version I had when in the Mekong Delta.

Thanks to Chau, I can happily say ciao to January.
(I’m sorry, I had to.)

Along the Mekong.

Chau Kitchen and Bar
1500 Robson St
Vancouver

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.

In Vietnam, I ran across noodles as often as rice—fat or skinny, in a soup, as a salad, or on their own.  My spaghetti dreams were adequately filled. At the Red Bridge Cooking School, I had the opportunity to make my own noodles for pho.  I stirred the thin batter, poured it on taut cotton, steamed it, carefully lifted the thick rice crepes, and then cut them into noodles to add to my soup.  I’m not sure I could ever do it again without the watchful eye of Chef Phi, but it was an experience I won’t soon forget.

Most often, I order bun at home with a lemongrass protein (usually beef or chicken) rather than something on a skewer or only spring rolls. I like that the lemongrass sauce as it were adds another layer to the nuoc cham sauce that comes on the side.  (Note:  If you’re only getting straight fish sauce as your bun dressing, you’re getting cheated out of flavour.)

I went with beef, and as my Vietnamese cookbook had no recipe for bun, I took amalgamated inspiration from bun bo xao recipes that came from Food Safari and Williams-Sonoma.  I’m not a big fan of bean sprouts so I left those out. I found brown rice vermicelli and just followed the directions on the package (even with the trendy fibre, they are ready in less than 5 minutes).  My shredded carrots were in the nuoc cham.  The beef was marinated for about 20 minutes.  The Food Safari recipe calls for perilla.  If you can find this herb, I highly recommend using it (with mint like I did).  It has quite a strong flavour and is almost warming when compared to the freshness of the mint.  As important as the lemongrass is for flavour, so is the nuoc cham that you add before eating.  Make sure you have enough.  In my previous post, my friend Hong posted her recipe and it is very close to what I made.  I will reproduce hers as parts are easier to multiply than measurements.  I would go with one clove of garlic and one chili per serving.

Hong’s Nuoc Cham 

1 part fish sauce
4 parts water
2 parts fresh lime juice
2 parts sugar
fresh chillies (chopped)
fresh garlic (minced/chopped)

Stir everything together.

This “dressing” can be kept in your fridge for a couple of weeks. She uses this for everything (eggs, salads, meat, fish, etc). 

Don’t forget to mix! 

For those of you who know me, I apologize that since vacationing in Vietnam,  the only post I’ve done about it concerns fruit. 

Amazing fruit, mind you, but fruit nonetheless.

Every time I think about doing a post, I start to miss being there.  And as Edmonton’s winter still seems to be leaving its trace, remembering moments in tropical heat makes my current discontent all the more worse.  As we cannot stop mentioning the longer Alberta days, I thought our obsession with the sun would twin nicely with posts on Vietnam.  And as the days are just going to get shorter again (too) soon, I should get in while the getting’s good.  Like Kramer and Newman with the Mackinaw peaches.

I don’t have to go much into why a foodie would want to go to Vietnam.  Culinary stars such as Tony Bourdain and Dorie Greenspan have made recent journeys to taste the vast landscape of Vietnamese cuisine.  More sweet in the South, more bitter in the North.  City air that is as heavy with the smells of rice and cilantro as it is with scooter exhaust.  The best baguettes I’ve had outside of France.  Right now I’m craving a deep-fried pumpkin flower stuffed with catfish that I had while in the Mekong Delta. *sigh*

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!

Jewels in the culinary crown of Vietnam, the fruits native to the South are… better than chocolate.  Their sweet juices, soft flesh, and heavenly perfumes reference the sun and all the glory that it brings.

The sun bursts from passion fruit, jackfruit, and pommelos.

Can you get much prettier than a mangosteen?

Its thick case is almost sponge-like.  You can push on the bottom to crack it and reveal the edible segments.  Soft and delicate, they burst with intense sweetness.

In a place where you “don’t drink the water,” the plethora of peel-able fruit is extraordinary.  The milk apple requires you only to scoop out the soft middles of the halves or quarters you cut.  Doing so releases it’s milky juice that should also be lapped up.

My new favourite fruit is the custard apple.  It’s slightly fibrous flesh is dense with tropical sugar (and apparently calories).  It is contained within a thick, bumpy skin that could camouflage it as an artichoke from afar.  Its custard flesh is dotted with shiny and black kidney-shaped seeds. 

I’m not sure how to describe it except to say that it’s heavenly.  Perhaps more apt—it’s worth spending 18 hours in a plane to get one.