Archive for August, 2009
Birthday Sugar!
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More Banh, Please
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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.