Project Food Blog Entry #2: Just call me Miss Saigon Crepe......

Was it the weather?

It could, I suppose, have been the weather.

It's been unfairly hot and punishingly humid around the Valley all through September. Mosquitoes have been feasting on us, hair has been limp, eyeliner has been running.......but it all seems so very much more romantic if you close your eyes and imagine that instead of sweaty Phoenix you might be in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (once Saigon), clinging to the back of a motor scooter weaving its way through the humidity and the crowded streets, on your way to some fresh, streetside fare like phở.....or perhaps bánh xèo and chao tom?

It might also have been because of the discovery Mike and I made this month of our new favorite Vietnamese soup house, a place so nice we visited it twice......in a single week. 'You--back again??" roared the cheerful female Vietnamese proprietor when I strolled back in just two days after having eaten a lovely meal there and chatting with her and her husband over steaming bowls of beef tendon and tripe in broth. I threw up my hands in an 'I give up' gesture, laughing at the absurdity and admitting to her the cravings that both my husband and I had been suffering for her soup ever since we'd first been. Vietnamese cuisine, as it turns out, can be a highly addictive substance.

Still, when the second challenge for Project Food Blog came along and challenged me to choose 'an ethnic classic that is outside your comfort zone,' Vietnamese didn't immediately spring to mind. After all, there are so many places I've never traveled, not even at the end of a fork, so many cultures I've never visited. I've never had taro in Tahiti or hákarl in Iceland, never known what it's like to sample ajiaco or arepas in Colombia, or sega wat with injera in Ethiopia. I think of myself as a fearless cook, ready to tackle even the most unknown-to-me dishes, but truthfully there are a lot of things that could be said to be 'outside of my comfort zone.' Finally, I remembered that first, ecstatic bowl of phở and my head cleared. I have a lot of enthusiasm for eating Vietnamese food, clearly, but not much experience actually preparing it myself. At home. From scratch. With authentic ingredients. Envisioning a trip to our local pan-Asian megamarket (the venerable LeeLee Market, originator of such previous posts as this one), I excitedly began researching recipes.

Phở was too simple, too obvious. Phở is arguably a food whose time has come, one which has gone mainstream in a major and well-deserved way. Even my non-foodie friends are starting to talk about it, a sure sign of the times. And soup, even divine, sublime soup just didn't seem.......challenging enough for a Project Food Blog challenge. Where's the flash, the drama, the sweat? Where's the oh-my-God-this-might-fail-at-the-last-crucial-moment cooking method? Soup just..........simmers. And then my brain rested on something else, something I've never cooked or eaten, from a country I've never visited. A dish I've never even seen except through others' descriptions and photographs. A street food sizzling-crepe classic known as bánh xèo.

As with any local specialty in the world, there are as many different ways to make bánh xèo as there are local regions where it is made. There may even be as many different ways as there are people in all of Vietnam. Most seem to agree, however, that pork, shrimp and bean sprouts are the preferred filling. I settled on a version that includes turmeric, rice flour and coconut milk in the banh batter. Also, interestingly enough, this particular recipe calls for........beer. Some recipes called only for water, but I reasoned that beer as an ingredient would result in the light, bubbly batter I needed to make the wafer-thin, crispy and ever so slightly chewy pancakes I was after. So, beer* it was.

( *Full disclosure: No Vietnamese beer of any kind being available, even at our beloved LeeLee Market, I reached for a popular Chinese brew instead. Still delicious.)

The name bánh xèo is adorably onomatopoetic, a fancy term meaning that to say the word aloud suggests a sound, in this case the sound of a thin crepe merrily sizzling in hot, splattering oil over a searingly hot skillet. Banh ssssssssssssaaaayyyoww. It's even fun to say!


To accompany our bánh xèo, I chose another popular dish known as chao tom, a juicy little shrimpcake made of finely minced shrimp, sugar, scallion and a little beaten egg, molded kebab-style around a skewer of sugar cane which also imparts its sweetness to the dish. These are then grilled over coals until lightly charred to perfection, then dipped in salty fish sauce and enjoyed. I've had chao tom before, including a fantastic version at a little Vietnamese place on a side street of Hong Kong, and they're amazing as an accompaniment to just about everything. Plus, if you're going to stand at your kitchen counter and peel and devein a pound of shrimp for an hour, you might as well get an extra shrimp dish out of the whole affair, am I right? Right.

Some slight trouble arose when Mike and I realized that the simple-enough-sounding little shrimpcakes, in order to achieve maximum deliciousness and authenticity, would need to be grilled outside over charcoal. We hadn't grilled all summer. We looked at each other and froze in horror, having both just remembered the day we threw out our rusted old Weber grill, several months prior to this moment, in a fit of extreme spring cleaning. True, the thing was on its last aluminum legs, rusted almost completely through the bottom, and had originally been purchased in rough shape by me at a Goodwill, five years earlier. But at that moment I would have given anything to have the old girl back. How on earth were we going to cook the savory-sweet, smokey, juicy morsels of fragrant shrimp paste of my dreams?


In what I like to think of as the true street food vendor spirit, we devised an improvised plan that worked suprisingly well, involving hot coals, an old saucer-shaped metal firepit that was also hanging around the yard (no photos of our yard will be shown, for obvious reasons....the theme song from 'Sanford & Son' is already running through my head), and long, oiled strips of twisted aluminum foil. Mission Grill? Accomplished!

With the chao tom out of the way, I set myself to the task of putting together the bánh xèo, which comes together at very, very high temperature in a short matter of minutes. The batter was whisked together and set aside while I chopped scallions and sliced pork shoulder. The bean sprouts and small brown beech mushrooms were lightly stir-fried in a small amount of vegetable oil and a pinch of salt, then also set aside. Finally, it was time to put everything in the pan, super-heated and shimmering with vegetable oil. First in went the slices of pork, which were swirled briefly until almost cooked, and then the shrimp. The batter I poured directly on top of this and swirled again until it was as thin a crepe as I could possibly make it. The characteristic sizzle was happening here, the desired crispy edges appearing. The bánh xèo cooked from the edges inward, and when the cooking had all but reached the center I spread the rest of the filling of bean sprouts and mushrooms on one side, then lifted the other side of the crepe and gently folded it over--bánh xèo at this point should be hot, oily and crackling but still soft enough to manipulate.

I slid one masterpiece onto a plate and held my breath, feeling like someone on the verge of a new discovery. It smelled amazing. It even sounded amazing. It was sizzling. Sssssssssssssaaaayyyoww!

And then Mike whisked it, and the plate that followed, away for photo-taking and our once-sizzling Saigon crepes eventually became cold bánh xèo that needed to be reheated--gasp!--in the oven. Such is the lot in life of a food blogger, I suppose. We suffer a little so that you may enjoy photographs taken right at the moment our lovely newborn food enters the world, steaming hot and already dying a little every second. And anyway, even rewarmed from the oven they tasted amazing--each bite is wrapped in cooling lettuce leaf and mint leaves, then dipped in your condiment of choice, pickled chili-garlic paste, lime juice, nuoc mam. The fresh, herbal zing of the greens containing the rich sliced meats and crackling pancake, bound together by a splash of salty sauce was true heaven.


So, bánh xèo: the ingredients, the method, the taste, even the pronunciation......it's no longer outside my comfort zone but has become a true comfort food in my mind.

Say it with me again..........baaaanh sssssssssssssssssssaaaayyyoww! It's a good, good thing. A classic, even.

Bánh Xèo - 'Sizzling Saigon Crepe' (serves 2 hungry people comfortably)

1/3 lb. shrimp (I bought 1 lb., the remainder was used in the chao tom)
2 T. beer
splash of fish sauce
sugar
1/2 lb. pork shoulder
1/2 C. bean sprouts
1/4 C. brown beech mushrooms

2/3 C. rice flour
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/3 C. beer (use something light in color and taste, a pilsner, lager or similar)
1/3 C. coconut milk, unsweetened
2 scallions
6 T. vegetable or canola oil

For serving:

lettuce leaves
mint leaves
dipping condiment of choice (pickled chili-garlic paste, lime juice, nuoc mam, etc)

Peel and devein shrimp (chef's tip: a cold beer helps accomplish this task much more enjoyably), place in bowl and splash lightly with beer, fish sauce and sugar, mix briefly and set aside. Thinly slice pork shoulder, set aside.

Heat skillet to high, add 2 T. oil and quickly stir fry bean sprouts and mushrooms with a pinch of salt until just soft. Remove from pan, set aside, and wipe out pan.

In a large or medium sized mixing bowl, whisk together coconut milk, turmeric and rice flour. Chop scallions and add to batter. Add beer, whisk lightly just to combine, and set aside.

Add 2 T. oil (you will use the last 2 T. to cook the second crepe) to skillet and heat on high until oil is shimmering. Throw pork slices (enough for one serving, serving size is up to you) in pan and swirl in oil for about 20 seconds, add shrimp (again, enough for one serving) and continue to swirl pan until meat is just cooked. Pour half of batter into pan and quickly swirl until batter forms as large and thin a crepe as possible. When crepe has almost fully cooked (the edges should appear slightly drier and more cooked, while only the very center still looks a little raw and batter-y), spread half of the bean sprout and mushroom filling on one side of crepe, then gently fold other side of crepe over this as though making an omelet. Slide onto plate and listen for the sizzle! Make second crepe just the same as the first, using everything you have left.

To assemble, I recommend picking up each bite wrapped in a leaf of lettuce and a few mint, then dipping in sauce of your choice (fish sauce, nuoc mam, is great here).

Chao Tom - Sugar Cane Shrimpcakes (makes about 12 skewers)

2/3 lb. shrimp
1 tsp. cornstarch or rice flour
1 beaten egg
1/4 tsp. five spice powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 scallion, finely chopped

one fresh sugar cane stalk, cut into 12 equal, skewer-sized pieces

Heat charcoal in a grill (or improvised grilling device of your choice!). Peel and devein shrimp, place in bowl of food processor*, pulse until coarsely chopped. Add all other ingredients, process until mixture has become a sticky paste which is not completely smooth (it should hold together as a paste, but there should still be small chunks visible in the mixture, for texture). Form in equal amounts around each sugar cane skewer, refrigerate until coals have reached their optimum temperature.

( *Instead of using a food processor, you can also use a chef's knife to finely mince ingredients, or a traditional mortar and pestle to grind them together into a paste.)

Grill on a well-oiled grate over coals (this is important, or they will stick badly), turning once, until cooked to your desired level of doneness. Enjoy straight off the skewer, or wrapped in mint leaves and dipped in fish sauce. Chewing the cane and squeezing a little sweet juice out with your teeth after each salty bite is a wonderful idea. Enjoy!

Hot town, salads in the city............

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty, indeed. It's hot here. Summer is cranking up to full blast here in mid-June Phoenix, and everyone's feeling the effects. We're constantly fanning ourselves. My little dog spends most of his time limp on the floor like a steak frying on a grill--I know how he feels. You could, in fact, fry an egg on the sidewalk.......but I wouldn't want to eat it. In fact, there's an awful lot of cooking I don't want to do these days--whether it be on sidewalk or stovetop--but of course we still have to eat, and there's a limit to the number of garden-variety green salads I can eat over and over again. What is the solution? How do we go on without firing up the stove? Is this going to be a cooking blog without any cooking, or what??

My dear readers, let me show you the way.


Mediterranean-style stuffed tomatoes are the answer to everyone's green salad ennui (come to think of it, it solves a few problems with traditional 'tuna salad' as well, mainly that it's not oozing mayonnaise from every pore), as a light and delicious lunch packed with light protein and stunning flavor. Take several fat red tomatoes, carefully remove the stem end and core with a sharp knife and gently squeeze the tomato innards, seeds and all, into a bowl and set aside. This step is especially satisfying, I find. Squeezing things tends to have that effect.

Next, you spoon into the freshly excavated tomato cavities a sharp and well-balanced mixture of tuna, kalamata olives, fresh cilantro and minced red onion. Finally, you top it with a crunchy cap of buttery, toasted bread crumbs (okay, you will have to use your stovetop for sixty seconds to make these, but it's worth it) and drizzle over top a homemade tomato-olive oil vinaigrette. It's tasty, it's fast, it's healthy, and it's so much easier to look forward to than tucking into yet another bowl of green leaves!


Oh yes. My feelings on salad. Did I mention that I get what I like to think of as 'salad fatigue'? I can't help but think, during the salad days of summer, of Jeffrey Steingarten's hilarious 1997 essay 'Salad, the Silent Killer,' in which he debunks the myth of the 'healthy salad' by cataloguing all the various toxins, mutagens and carcinogens lying in wait in the depths of our bowls. In addition to which, he adds, these salad eaters with their 'heads bowed, snouts brought close to their plastic wood-grained bowls, crunching and shoveling simultaneously' are unfeelingly keeping him from his dessert (read the entire essay here). He was kidding. I think. It's hard to tell, it's Steingarten!

I eat big bowls of green leaves (sometimes the traditional lettuce but not often, if we're going to eat bowls of leaves around here we like to stick to things that I think of as having more nutrition, like spinach, cabbage or arugula) and various vegetables dressed in homemade vinaigrette pretty often. It's tasty. It's virtuous (well, except on those days when bacon or sauteed chicken livers manage to sneak themselves into the bowl). It's also extremely boring, and I get fatigued with my big bowls of salad faster than I ought to admit, but I'm admitting it now. But there is hope! There is a light at the end of the salad tunnel, my friends, and it is THIS SALAD:


.......which has two wonderful things going for it. First, that it is plainly not made of boring green leaves but of vividly orange scraps of carrot and other wonders peeking out from underneath, herbal flecks of green, salty white glints of feta cheese. Second, that it is a recipe from the Smitten Kitchen blog (originally posted here), and it's just nearly impossible to go wrong with a recipe from Deb's kitchen. That woman knows a gem when she sees it, and her 'Carrot Salad with Harissa, Feta and Mint' is a summertime gem indeed.

This salad is earthily sweet in the way that good raw carrots often are, balanced perfectly by the sharp tang of lemon juice and crumbled feta cheese. The mint, parsley and blend of spices in the dressing give this dish a fantastic North African flavor, and the swell of heat lurking in its depths (how spicy you make this is, of course, up to you) give it real authority, as well as helping you to cool down on a sweltering day. I never expected to have my mind blown by a carrot salad--a bowl of shredded carrots, come on!--but I bow before this recipe. My mind was blown. Salty, sweet, juicy, spicy, crunchy, earthy with spices.....and it was fantastically simple to make! Thirty minutes after having eaten it for the first time, still full from that first bowl, I was nonetheless craving it again.

Come to think of it, I'm craving it now.

I think it's time for lunch. No cooking required.



Mediterranean Stuffed Tomatoes

(serves 2 comfortably for lunch)

4 ripe, round tomatoes
2 cans water-packed tuna (this actually made slightly more tuna salad than we could stuff into 4 tomatoes, but your mileage may vary. We were happy enough to scrape up and eat the leftovers straight from the bowl)
2 tablespoons sliced kalamata (or other variety) olives
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons minced red onion

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed
splash of balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1 tablespoon butter (or olive oil, or a mixture of both, whatever suits you)

Carefully remove the stem end and core from each tomato with a sharp knife, leaving the bottom intact so that the tomato form a 'bowl' shape. Gently squeeze the seeds and water from each tomato into a mixing bowl, set aside. In another bowl, combine tuna, olives, cilantro and onion. Spoon this mixture into the 4 hollow tomatoes.

In a food processor or blender, blend the 'tomato innards' with olive oil, garlic, and a small amount of balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper to taste, until well pureed.

Finally, in a small skillet, heat butter or olive oil over medium high heat. Add bread crumbs, stir to coat thoroughly. Cook briefly until bread crumbs are toasted to a light nut brown color, then remove from heat immediately. This takes very little time (maybe a minute or two, maybe less, depending on the kind of bread), so keep a close eye on it.

Drizzle stuffed tomatoes with the vinaigrette, then top each with a sprinkling of butter bread crumbs. Enjoy!

P.S. - If these recipes don't help to cool you off, you can always try what my little dog does when the heat is just too much! Stay cool out there, readers.......... :)

(Originally posted 8/4/09)

Two dishes: Lamb ragu with fettucine, chèvre & fresh mint; Poulet sauté à la crème (from JULIA!!!)

This is a slight variation on a beautiful dish I had in Portland's Northeast section, at an awesome little place called Lovely Hula Hands. Their version included fresh fava beans, which was a nice touch but slightly harder to get my hands on in Phoenix in July. Too bad. My lamb ragu was made by simmering ground lamb in red wine with baby portabellos and local onions from my friend's dad's garden, and a variety of subtle spices including cumin and cinnamon. Simmer it for a long time, to the sticky, falling-apart-goodness stage. You'll know what i mean when you get there. The garnish is a nice soft goat cheese and the mint, of course, is from my own garden. This is a dish a bit more suited to a slightly chilly, drizzly Portland evening than a steamy July night in the desert, but if you want to crank up the A/C, pretend it's cold outside and eat a hearty meal, I suggest you try this one. It's worth it!

Extreme culinary closeup!!

Poulet sauté à la crème....My first foray into 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' by the great Julia herself! While I wouldn't say I have yet mastered the art, this dish was satisfyingly easy enough for a first try. Next time we'll tackle lobsters or soufflés or the famously scary Oeufs en Gelée!! but for now, this was enough of a start. Lovely herbed sautéed chicken legs and thighs--in butter! Oh Julia!--under a sauce made by deglazing the pan with white wine and adding shallots and cream. There's nothing about that that could be anything but good. Egg noodles on the side, mostly as a vehicle for that wonderful sauce. And simple steamed asparagus spears because really, one can't have too much decadence all on one plate and survive, can one?? Always good to have something simple, green and healthful. Oh my god was this good. We will be returning to Julia very, very soon, don't you worry.

(Originally posted 6/9/09)

Mike and I made an amazing discovery last night, Vietnamese pork sandwiches (banh mi)......or as they will henceforth be referred to in this household, 'The Indisputed King of All Sandwiches, Period.' Want one? I do, too.

Grate 1 large carrot into a bowl. Add a large handful of shredded cabbage and some thinly sliced red onion to make Asian slaw. Toss with rice wine vinegar and a splash of sesame oil, add salt and pepper to taste. Wash & chop the following herbs: cilantro, basil, mint. Peel & slice cucumber, set this & herb mixture aside to garnish sandwiches. Slice pork thinly (we used regular pork chops...roughly, 1 chop = 2 sandwiches, or 1 sandwich if you're really hungry, so plan & adjust amounts of everything else accordingly), season with chinese five spice powder. Add vegetable oil to a hot pan and add 1 chopped garlic clove and some chopped shallot. Saute for a minute or two until golden then add pork slices. Make sure pork keeps moving and cooks evenly; add a sprinkle of sugar and soy sauce while cooking. Set pork aside.

On sliced baguette, spread a very thin layer of mayonnaise on one side. Squirt as much sriracha (Asian red chile) sauce as you dare over top of this. Add sliced cucumbers, cooked pork slices, and a few heaping spoonfuls of asian slaw in that order. Place another slice of baguette on top. OMG YOU HAVE JUST MADE THE KING OF ALL SANDWICHES. It is juicy, spicy, salty, crunchy, soft and sweet all at once. Enjoy!

(1/22/10 - A quick aside to the readers....I'm going to be re-visiting the highlights of the food posts from my older blog as a way of kick-starting Orange & Salt for the time being. All original dates of posting will be stated, just for your information. As you were.)



Easter roast lamb with goat's cheese & mint, tiny roasted farmer's market onions. (Originally posted 4/12/09)

So, we cut way back on meat, right? Only twice a week, and usually small bits of lean meat when we do have it, not a full-on roast like this one. But it was Easter! And sometimes you just...........well, look at it!! This is from a Gordon Ramsay recipe. It's leg of lamb, bone removed and butterflied, rolled around crushed mint leaves, goat cheese and slivered garlic. Tie the roast--and yes, in fact I do know how to properly tie a roast WHERE IS MY MERIT BADGE DAMMIT??--and stick rosemary where you can under the twine, place in hot oven, roast for proper amount of time depending on weight, let rest, slice, enjoy! The tiny onions on the side are these little gems we found at the farmer's market on saturday. We tossed them in a little olive oil, salt & pepper and let them roast next to the lamb. they were so sweet and lovely!

Just another few detail shots, in case you missed how good this was. THIS WAS GOOD. So, so good.