Orange Juice: An Ode to Mom

Without Mom's attention to detail, D. and I found ourselves with a mix of regular and blood oranges, making for a reddish-orange and slightly more tart juice.

"Geez, Marie... I'm dying. Do you have any orange juice or a vitamin C supplement?"

My suitemate wanted to make a last-ditch effort to fight a cold that was, from the puffy eyes and runny nose, clearly beating her. I couldn't say no, so I opened the mini-fridge in my dorm room and pulled out a water bottle that was filled with orange juice.

"What's with the Arrowhead bottle?" she asked.

"From my mom. Just drink it."

Read more...

Ginger Honey Chicken

What can be keeping me from blogging, you ask? Applications are done, we're eating at home more than ever, and with all of the cooking, there definitely has to be something to write about.

Well, there is. However, there's a huge time-sucking obsession that's superseded blogging and taking good pictures of food. Some of you may have heard of it... hell, some of you may be as obsessed as I've become.

Battlestar Galactica. The current version.

Don't worry, Star Trek, you're still my first love.

Since we're really late in jumping on the bandwagon, we've been watching the last 3 1/2 seasons on DVDs via Netflix. D.'s folks gave us all of the seasons for Christmas, which sped things up in time for us to start watching the last 10 episodes of the series. The last 10 episodes ever. Thus, I eagerly await every Friday evening until the last episode airs, after which I'll be beside myself with grief and withdrawal.

Anyway, continuing on the cooking-whatever's-in-the-pantry/freezer trend, we decided to take some of the ingredients from the curry mee to my mother's recipe for ginger honey chicken. My disclaimer to this recipe is that my mother didn't give me the measurements and these estimates have worked for me. Play around and adjust the taste to your liking.

Ginger Honey Chicken
(Recipe courtesy of Mom, amounts are rough estimates)

2 tablespoons oil (any kind works... I prefer olive)
1 cup young ginger, cubed
1 cup chicken thigh, cubed (breast meat is fine)
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1/4 cup light soy sauce (use more if necessary)
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
pepper
2 tablespoons dark or mushroom soy sauce (for color only... add gradually and stop before the sauce becomes too dark)
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon cornstarch mixed into 1/4 cup water
scallions, chopped into 2 inch pieces for garnish

Heat olive oil and toast ginger cubes until fragrant. Add chicken and cook until mostly done, then add garlic. Add light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, pepper. Stir well and gradually add dark or mushroom soy sauce for color. Once a caramel brown is reached, stop. Add chicken broth. Taste sauce, which should be smooth and not too salty. There should definitely be hints of oyster sauce and it should not be dominated by the soy sauce. Mix cornstarch in water and slowly dribble into the sauce to thicken. Add honey, stir, and add scallions. Toss everything thoroughly until scallions wilt.

The sauce should showcase the sweet young ginger and the soy sauce should be balanced, made richer by the honey. Adjustments can be made to the amounts at any point.

Up next: What do you do when you have extra carrots?

Visit to LA: Banh xeo and Kee Wah Bakery

Some tidbits from our recent visit to LA. Mom made banh xeo again (yay!) and, this time, sent some batter home with me. I don't know why she wouldn't just tell me how to make the stuff, but maybe this is a test to see if I can fry the suckers up correctly. Now, these pictures are from Mom's, but I will post on how mine turned out after I've had a chance to make them.

The key to a perfect crust, she insists, is using a few drops of oil on a very hot pan. Too much makes the banh xeo greasy, too little probably would lead to an overly brittle shell that would break upon folding.

Another highlight of our visit was Kee Wah Bakery in Monterey Park. I love this little Hong Kong-style bakery and its selection of buns and cakes. During the Moon Festival, they make mooncakes, too. Yum.

The bun cases:


My favorite buns, custard and the "piggy buns" (pictured), although Kee Wah's have a milk powder custard instead of coconut.

If only we had bakeries like these in San Diego.

Kee Wah Bakery
729 W. Garvey Ave.
Monterey Park, CA 91755

The Mom Series: New Year's Dinner

I had to write a special post for the Hainan chicken and rice, but that wasn't all we had for New Year's. Here's the rest of them. We start with the celebratory sun neen fan or New Year's Meal. I honestly don't know much about this, but it has a bunch of things that are considered delicious, lucky, or both. Mom starts by braising pork hocks and tongue until the meat is fork-tender.

In a wok, she cooks up a mixture of shittake mushrooms, dried oysters, snow fungus, and fat choi. I do love snow fungus and fat choi.

The braised hocks and tongue are placed in a platter, then the above mixture is poured over it.

Next was the steamed tilapia. Yu, or fish, has the same sound as the word for "luck". Mom's mise en place:

The fish is topped with fresh scallions, cilantro, and seared ginger. The sauce is a simple soy sauce mixture. 2 parts soy sauce, 1 part water, a small amount of sesame oil (one to two squirts from the bottle), and freshly ground pepper. Heat the mixture until it boils, then pour around the freshly steamed whole fish.

Mom makes a beautiful fried glutinous rice. It's rich with soy sauce, duck sausage, pork sausage, dried shrimp, scallions, and cilantro.

I can't even begin to imagine how to make this. I believe the rice is steamed, then stir-fried with the other ingredients. Somehow, she keeps the texture perfect. The grains of rice are sticky, but firm. It's not gooey or chewy. I'd probably make a sloppy mess if I tried making this dish.

It reheats really well and I know this because I'm eating the leftovers as I write.

Mom, knowing D. doesn't like seafood, moss, or fungus, made lemongrass pork chops for him. Marinaded with soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic, lemongrass, and sugar, the chops are fried in a little bit of oil.

Lastly, we had soup. Beef broth made that morning with beef bones with the addition of lotus root slices and chestnuts.

It's light, but very flavorful. The lotus root gives the soup a hint of sweetness. It's typical of brothy Chinese soups.

The Mom Series: Hainan Chicken and Rice

This is the signature dish in my family. This is one I associate with all big family meals and it's one my favorite dishes. It starts with copious amounts of ginger and garlic, finely chopped with a food processor.

Fresh chicken broth is made by poaching whole chickens. This was the first of three that Mom fit into the pot.

The rice is the best part of the dish. Generous portions of ginger and garlic are toasted in hot oil. Freshly washed rice is added and the grains are cooked until translucent.

Instead of water, the fresh chicken broth is used to cook the rice. Pandan leaves and lemongrass stalks are placed in the broth and the rice is cooked as usual in the rice cooker.

The poached chicken is cut into smaller pieces and served with a garlic/ginger dipping sauce.

Just for fun, I'm including a video of Mom going to town on the chicken. There's a wide range of boning and carving knives out there, but all she needs is her trusty meat cleaver.

The Mom Series: Ca Kho To

Our weekend in LA started with lunch with the parental units. This is one of those "simple, but so very good dishes" that my mother makes. She had prepared two pots and saved one of them for lunch. I believe it's called ca kho to in Vietnamese, but we always called it kho yu. "Yu" is Cantonese for "fish" and "kho" means "to braise" in Vietnamese.

Traditionally, it's done in a clay pot, but my mom opts for Corningware. I think it's the ease of cleaning factor. It's a recipe that varies from region to region in Vietnam and every family does it their own way. Epicurious has a recipe that's close to my mother's.

Ca Kho To

Mom doesn't make a separate caramel sauce. She usually mixes the sugar with the fish sauce and uses a soy sauce/water mixture. Her method goes something like this:

• Heat oil and toast shallots and ginger
• Add fish and cook lightly on both sides
• Add fish sauce and sugar (1 part sugar to 2 parts fish sauce), stir and coat fish with mixture
  
• Add soy sauce/water (1:2 water: soy sauce), braise fish until fully cooked
• Season with pepper, top with scallions and cilantro

This works with 3-4 1-inch cross-section slices of catfish. Amounts for ingredients can be varied to taste.


Since this was prepared in advance and reheated, Mom stirred it to heat the fish thoroughly. In doing so, she buried the scallions and cilantro before I took this photo.

Up close, the catfish has a gorgeous brown color and falls off the bone.

Fresh fish is an absolute must for this dish, regardless of the method/recipe used.

The Mom Series: Banh Xeo

Banh xeo are Vietnamese-style crepes made of a rice flour batter. They're supposed to be delicate and crunchy, filled with mung beans, pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts.

The materials are laid out by the stove. The pan is hot and the crepes must stay thin, so everything needs to be added swiftly and smoothly.

The batter, which is made with rice flour. The final product is actually yellow, but there are no eggs in the batter. It's also very thin, keeping the shell crispy and not doughy.

In the pan, the mung beans need a while to cook or else they will be hard. The extra time crisps up the shell, with the moisture from the mung beans and bean sprouts keeping the shell from burning. Also, the moisture keeps the shell pliant enough to fold. The dish should be crispy, but not so much so that it breaks when folded.

The finished product, which is cut into pieces and wrapped with lettuce and herbs. Then, it's dipped in nuoc nam, or fish sauce. Mom's version has lots of lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, chili, and shredded carrots.

Here's a video of Mom making it. It's all in the wrist. The shrimp and pork slices are sauteed first. Then, the batter is poured on and swirled to maximize coverage. Any holes are patched with a little pour of batter. Lastly, the mung beans and bean sprouts are put on top. The lid is put on in the end to steam the beans and sprouts.

This dish is near-impossible to find and the restaurants that carry it usually don't do it well. I'm glad I can get them at Bistro Mom.

The Mom Series: Goi Cuon

Goi guon are better known as Vietnamese shrimp spring rolls. They're filled with cold and cooked rice noodles, herbs, lettuce, pork slices, bean sprouts, and shrimp. Mom had the ingredients organized on the table, ready for wrapping.

In process:

The finished product:

Mom's favorite touch is a stalk of chive wrapped in the roll. Chives found in Asian markets are much more mature and thicker than those found in American stores, so the stalks look almost like scallions. They add a crunchy and mild touch to the roll.

D. gave me an awesome new camera for X'mas and it takes videos, so here's one of Mom wrapping a spring roll. The key to spring rolls are neatness and tightness. The shrimp is laid down first and this is a typical practice. With the shrimp showing through the skins, the roll is identified as goi cuon. If it was grilled pork (nem nuong) or shredded pork (bi), leaving the primary ingredient visible helps "label" it. After the shrimp, the pork is laid down, then the lettuce (Mom used two small leaves in this case), vermicelli, bean sprouts, and herbs. The materials are laid towards the top third of the circular rice paper wrapper. The sides are folded in, a chive stalk placed at the base of the pile of materials, and everything rolled snugly. The roll needs to be tight, but not so tight that the skin breaks. There's nothing worse than a loosely wrapped roll, which falls apart when you bite into it.

Look for these videos to pop up occasionally, as they're part of an archive of my mom's recipes and dishes. No need to turn on the sound, because there's no narration. You might, however, pick up random conversation.

The Mom Series: Pho Ga

Chicken noodle soup, in any country or culture, is comforting. The Vietnamese version shows off a rich stock with minimal additions. There's a variety of ways to make it, but Mom's version is simple and straightforward. She poaches a whole chicken and adds some chicken bouillon to the stock. The poached chicken is carved and served alongside the noodles. I've seen recipes that use herbs and/or aromatics (onions, etc.), which are absolutely required for pho bo (the classic beef pho), but Mom prefers simplicity. It's a very simple stock and the bouillon makes it richer. We're not talking about a ton of bouillon, either.

And the chicken:

Poached chicken normally doesn't sound very appetizing, but if it's pulled out at the right time, it's very moist and flavorful. Mom likes to roast or poach, but poaching has the side effect of good chicken stock. Garnishes include an onion/scallion/cilantro mix and blanched bean sprouts.

The dipping sauce for the chicken is finely diced ginger and garlic (food processor needed) seared with hot oil with fish sauce and sugar to taste. Then, chicken stock is added to the mixture and reduced slightly.

As a side dish, we had pate a choux, which is technically the term for pastry dough (the type used to make eclairs). In Vietnamese food, it's the name of a flaky pastry bun filled with a pork meatball. The pork is spiced with peppercorns and onions.

The Mom Series: Typical Dinner

My mother is a fantastic cook. She's so good that I will indulge in some daughterly hubris and say that "fantastic cook" is a fact, not opinion. Obviously, I have a lot to learn from her. If I'm going to write a blog about everything I eat, I'm going to have to write about the best food I've had: Mom's home-cooking. Hence, this kicks off "The Mom Series". Hi, Mom!

This December 27 dinner is a classic example of a weeknight dinner. When I lived at home, we'd eat meals like this daily.

Napa cabbage cooked down in a hot pan with a little chicken broth. Then, vermicelli and dried shrimp are added. Fun note: the cabbage was from our CSA box.

Steamed whole tilapia, topped with scallions, flash-fried ginger, salt/pepper, and soy sauce.

One of my favorite childhood dishes, egg fried with shrimp and onions. The dish is topped with scallions and goes fabulously with rice and Maggi sauce.

My mom also made my favorite soup, a broth made with chicken and a variety of Chinese herbs. It has a pungent and very slightly bitter flavor. I love it, although it is an acquired taste. I'm not sure what the herbs are, specifically, but they look like seeds, pods, and branches. Yum.