Banh Chung

Recently, I learned eating banh chung is a traditionally eaten during the Lunar New Year.  Previously, banh chung was simply something my Vietnamese grandma would always make around the holiday season and sometimes during other parts of the year.  No matter the occasion or time of year, though, I could never get enough of her banh chung.

Her version is a vegetarian one: glutinous rice and mung bean wrapped in banana leaves.  Personally I don’t mind the lack of meat because for me it’s all about the rice.  When you boil glutinous rice for several hours as you do for banh chung, it takes on a unique texture when you eat it at room temperature and the aroma of the leaves comes through.  The texture is almost between that of onigiri and mochi.  Slightly chewy but yielding.

The texture can take on a drastically different profile when the banh chung is flattened and fried in a pan until golden brown.  In this form, the texture is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.  After going back and forth between which preparation I prefer most year after year, I recently came to the conclusion that I prefer the non-fried version.  I find that frying the banh chung kills the subtle flavors of the rice and leaves.

So for my banh chung, I eat it at room temperature.  This time around, I filled mine with leftover pork rillettes from CharcutePalooza that I had in the freezer, and instead of wrapping the banh chung in banana leaves I used lotus leaves simply because that’s what I had in my pantry.

Banh Chung (makes about 3 individual servings)

Mise En Place

1. 200 g glutinous rice, soaked overnight in water and a few drops of pandan extract
2. 200 g mung beans, soaked overnight in water
3. 200 g pork rillettes or some other protein
4. 3 lotus leaves or banana leaves, soaked in warm water
5. Fish sauce

Method (for 1 individual serving)

1. Drain mung beans and place in a pot with enough water to cover.  Simmer until tender and mash, about 25 minutes.  Season with fish sauce and pepper.
2. Drain rice and season with fish sauce.
3. Fold the leaf in half so it is doubled.
4. Place 1/6th of the rice in the middle of a leaf in the shape of a rectangle.
5. Place 1/3rd of the protein on top of the rice.
6. Place 1/3rd of the mung beans on top of the rice.
7. Place 1/6th of the rice on top of the mung beans.
8. Shape into a rectangle by hand and wrap tightly with twine.
9. Wrap again in foil
10. Place in simmering water, weighted down, for about 6 hours.

Pate Chaud: Vietnamese Pork Pie

As challenging and fun making pate en croute sounds, I sadly didn’t have enough time this month to take a stab at it.  Thankfully, English pork pie was offered as an alternative for the September CharcutePalooza challenge.  I didn’t know what an English pork pie consisted of until I read the recipe in Charcuterie.  Once I read the recipe, though, I was completely familiar with it and realized that I’d been making pork pies for the past few years and eating them since childhood in the form of pate chaud.

Pate chaud is essentially the Vietnamese version of a pork pie.  Instead of Western seasonings, the pork is typically seasoned with fish sauce.  Depending on the cook, miscellaneous things like wood ear mushrooms may be added for a crunchy texture.  However, my grandma’s vegetarian version that I grew up on consisted of Morningstar Griller soy meat, mushrooms, peas, carrots, and Maggi (sort of like soy sauce) baked inside a handheld puff pastry shell.  The soy meat never bothered me because to this day I still prefer her version over any meat-based pate chaud I’ve ever tried.

My goal for this month’s challenge was to use the English pork pie recipe and technique in Charcuterie as a foundation and impart my grandma’s influence on it in order to make a respectable pork pate chaud.  Typically my grandma uses frozen peas, but I saw some nice snap peas at the market and had to use them.  Also, my grandma and I usually use premade frozen puff pastry dough, but making my own pastry dough from scratch this time was a good experience.

With the exception of a slightly soggy bottom (probably due to underestimating the amount of water released from the mushrooms) the pate chaud came out pretty good.  The pastry was understandably less flaky than the puff pastry that I’m used to, but it was flaky enough to hold its own.  One regret was not forming the pate chaud into its traditional handheld portions.  This would’ve made freezing and reheating portions much easier.

In all honesty, though, I still prefer my grandma’s vegetarian pate chaud.  There’s just something about the combination of soy meat, mushrooms, peas, carrots, and Maggi that I just love.

 

Pate Chaud Meat Filling

Mise En Place

1. 675 g pork, freshly ground
2. 100 g peas, diced
3. 100 g carrots, diced
4. 100 g shiitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
5. 5 g black pepper, freshly ground
6. 80 g mushroom-pork stock, reduced slightly more than normal and chilled
7. 40 g Maggi, European version with red top is preferable

Banh Bot Chien: Vietnamese Fried Rice Flour Cake With Pancetta

I may be in the minority here when I say this, but I don’t like bacon as much as most other people do.  I don’t swoon over it, and I’m envious when I hear someone exclaim “everything’s better with bacon!” because I wish I enjoyed something so much that it made whatever I was eating instantly better.  As an outsider looking in, bacon is the MSG of meats.

It should come as no surprise then that I’ve always preferred my breakfast eggs with sausage because I enjoy the spices typically found in breakfast sausages.  Bacon always seemed like a crunchy strip of salt to me.  So when I learned that the second CharcutePalooza challenge would be pancetta, a cousin of bacon, I was somewhat deflated.  However, I saw this as a chance to give salt cured pork belly a shot at winning me over as my preferred egg accompaniment.  Immediately, I knew the egg dish that I wanted to make: bot chien, or Vietnamese fried rice flour cake.  This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve used an Italian ingredient for a Vietnamese dish.

Bot chien is by far my favorite savory egg dish.  Sadly, I was only introduced to it a few years ago at Tan Tan Restaurant in Houston.  The first time I had bot chien, I loved it so much that I angrily asked my mom why we never ordered it in the past or why she’d never made it at home.  According to her, bot chien is a rarity in the States and to some extent Vietnam.  She reminisces about having to hunt down bot chien vendors in dingy back alleys of Saigon for an afterschool snack.

Essentially, bot chien consists of fried rectangular pieces of steamed rice flour cake bound together by eggs and topped with fried shallots, dried radish, and raw scallion.  It’s served with a side of soy sauce mixed with vinegar for dipping to which I usually add some Sriracha, sambal oelek, pickled pepper, or old dry mom sauce to (David Chang recently declared old dry mom sauce as the best sauce on No Reservations, and I couldn’t agree more).  The resulting bite is a symphony of texture and flavor.

You get sweet and sour from the dried radish, salty and sour from the dipping sauce, sweet from the fried shallots, savory from the egg, bright and pungent from the raw scallion, and spicy from the hot sauce or pickled peppers if you’re so inclined.  If that wasn’t enough to seal the deal, you get crispy from the fried rice cake and fried shallots, crunchy from the dried radish, spongy from the egg, and slightly chewy from the inside of the rice cake.

I thought it would be worth mentioning that I used black radish and pickled them with some carrot in place of dried radish.  I saw black radishes at the market and had never used them before, so I thought I’d give them a whirl.  They turned out to be very similar to daikon in flavor and got the job done well.

The process of making the CharcutePalooza meat of the month was again very simple and straightforward: salt and season, wait a while, rinse, hang, wait a while, enjoy.  One thing that I found funny was the presence of nipples on my pork belly.  I’ve worked with pork belly many times in the past, but only noticed the nipples this time.  However, upon closer inspection, it looks like the pork belly I used for thit kho also had nipples.

My spare bathroom paired with a humidifier was once again used as the meat hanging area.  Due to unforeseen time constraints, I decided to make the flat version of pancetta as the time required to hang is considerably less than that of rolled pancetta.

For my bot chien, I substituted the crispy fried shallots with crispy fried lardons of pancetta.  The rendered fat from the lardons was used to fry the rice cake and eggs and added an extra layer of flavor.  As for the actual pancetta, I could distinctly taste the garlic, thyme, bay leaf, and pepper that went into the cure.  This wasn’t simply a piece of salt disguised as meat like I was accustomed to.

Overall, I would say the pancetta itself and the bot chien with crispy fried pancetta were both great successes.  The pancetta turned out much better than I expected.  It’s climbed up to the number 2 spot on my breakfast meat list and bumped up bacon’s spot in the process as well.  Thanks to CharcutePalooza, I see nothing but a bright future with pancetta in my life.

Steamed Rice Flour Cake

Mise En Place (makes enough for at about 4 bot chien)

• 113 g rice flour
• 25 g tapioca starch
• 1 Tbsp. oil
• 414 g (1.75 C) water
• 2 g salt
• 2 g sugar

Method

1. Mix all ingredients and place into a heatproof vessel such that the depth of the slurry is about half an inch.
2. Steam over medium heat until a toothpick comes out clean, about 45 minutes.
3. Let the cake cool and firm up.

Banh Bot Chien

Mise En Place

• 100 g steamed rice flour cake cut into 1 inch by 2 inch rectangles
• 55 g pancetta lardons
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• Handful of diced scallion
• Your favorite pickled condiment
• Soy sauce
• Vinegar
• Your favorite hot sauce (optional)

Method

1. Crisp lardons in a pan over medium-low heat.  Set aside, leaving the rendered fat in the pan.
2. Fry both sides of the rice cake over medium-high heat until golden brown.
3. Add eggs to the pan, agitating slightly to distribute the egg.
4. Flip the bot chien once the bottom has coagulated enough.
5. Plate the bot chien and garnish with the pancetta lardons, scallion, and your favorite pickled condiment.
6. For the dipping sauce, mix soy sauce, vinegar, and hot sauce (optional) to taste.

Banh Khoai Mi Nuong: Vietnamese Yuca Cake

I’ve noticed that I’ve been cooking with banana leaves more than usual recently.  Between the tamales, the banana sticky rice, and now the banh khoai mi nuong (baked Vietnamese yuca/cassava cake), I’ve finally depleted the stockpile of banana leaves that was sitting in my freezer.

Vietnamese yuca cake is by far one of my favorite sweet banhs of all time.  For the longest time, I had no idea this banh was made from yuca.  I always thought it was made primarily from mung beans due to it’s yellow color and sometimes grainy texture.  In actuality, I wasn’t too far off because some renditions of the banh do call for some mung beans, but the main ingredient is of course yuca.  Having been exposed to more foods made from tapioca starch and yuca over the years, I can safely say that the banh’s slightly chewy texture is distinctly that of yuca.

However, my favorite thing about this banh is the deep, rich coconut flavor that you get from it, as there is nothing to really get in its way.  In fact, the yuca does wonders to highlight the coconut milk and vice versa: the coconut milk makes the yuca shine.

Grating and squeezing the moisture out of the yuca was interesting.  After letting the expelled moisture sit in a bowl for a while, I noticed that the yuca’s pasty starch that was squeezed out settled to the bottom of bowl.  I’d made tapioca starch!  At least I’m pretty sure I did.

 

The recipe I followed was cobbled together from a couple recipes and my own personal taste and intuition:

• Grate (or perhaps puree?) 2 lbs of yuca and squeeze moisture out
• Combine yuca with 14 oz sweetened condensed milk, ~7 oz coconut milk, and 2 egg yolks
• Salt to taste in order to bring out the coconut flavor and balance the sweetness
• Optionally line pan with buttered banana leaves
• Fill pan with yuca mixture
• Bake at 350 F for 1 to 1.5 hours, until golden brown

 

I’m actually on the fence about the grating method.  Whenever I buy this banh from a bakery or a grocery store, it seems like the yuca has been pureed, which gives the cake a smoother texture on the top.  I prefer the smoother texture because sometimes the browned tips from the grated yuca can add an unpleasant hard texture to the banh.  Moreover, I sometimes find inedible, woody pieces of grated yuca in the banh.  Typically, I’m all for a mingling of textures, but not in this case.  The inside, though, comes out nice and yuca-y in texture with a slight chew and no signs of stringy, grated pieces of yuca aside from the woody pieces every now and then.

Banh Tet Chuoi: Vietnamese Sticky Rice with Banana

Out of all the different iterations of sticky rice wrapped in some type of leaf, whether it’s lotus leaf or banana leaf, perhaps my favorite sweet version is Vietnamese sticky rice with banana wrapped in banana leaf.  The sweetness of the sticky rice plays well with the coconut milk that it is cooked in.  This infusion of coconut flavor into the rice combined with banana creates a great flavor profile that can be found in a few other types of banh and che: most notably for me is banh chuoi nuong (Vietnamese banana bread).

Another thing that I love about banana sticky rice is the fragrance.  The banana leaves give off a great leafy aroma and the sticky rice is fairly fragrant, almost akin to basmati rice.  Not only do the leaves give off a grant fragrance, but their leafiness is also imbued into the rice itself. 

To prepare the banana sticky rice, the rice must be soaked for at least a couple hours (overnight even) before cooking.  I’m not really sure why it needs to be soaked, but if I had to take a guess it’s probably because the rice is steamed rather than boiled.  Soaking the rice before steaming may give the rice the proper moisture it needs to soften when cooked. 

Pandan

Oh how I love pandan. I grew up with many pandan-flavored desserts without really knowing what pandan was until a year ago when my mom handed me a couple bottles of pandan extract. I always wondered why some Vietnamese desserts were colored green. Well, the answer to that is pandan.

Its aroma and taste are floral, leafy, and tea-like, with the taste being much more subtle than the aroma. Pandan has a real affinity for coconut and vanilla flavors. Almost a year after receiving the pandan extract from my mom, I finally got to making my first pandan dessert a few weeks ago: Vietnamese pandan banana bread. More on Vietnamese banana bread (bánh chuối nướng) in the future, as it's one of my favorite things to eat ever. However, this past weekend, I made a pandan chiffon cake. A disclaimer: I suck at baking and sometimes it utterly scares me.

My first step towards pandany goodness was to buy a tube pan. I'm not sure why having a tube pan is so critical (from what I've read) for a proper chiffon cake. Perhaps the unique distribution of heat caused by the inner cylinder helps for a fluffier and lighter texture? Also in terms of hardware, I should point out that I accidentally left my coffee/spice grinder at the Lincoln Park Community Shelter when I volunteered there a couple months ago to prepare dinner for the guests. Hopefully it's still there by the time I cook dinner there again in December. I needed the grinder to produce some caster sugar, which is finer than regular granulated sugar. Instead, I just used my food processor which did the job just fine.


Taking Michael Ruhlman's advice from his book Ratio, I made sure to get all my other mise en place locked down and organized. I think the main concern here was to prevent as much air loss from the whipped egg whites when they are sitting around waiting to be folded into the batter. Creaming sugar and egg yolks and then adding in coconut milk, oil, and the pandan extract was uneventful.


I don't think I beat enough air into the egg whites. I always have problems telling when I have stirred egg whites versus soft peaks versus stiff peaks, which is just one of the many reasons baking scares me. More on this later.


After folding in the egg whites and putting the batter in the pan, I crossed my fingers and put the pan in the oven. But, after about 20 minutes I smelled some burning. I opened up the oven and saw this:


It's hard to make out, but the top the cake had a crack in it like cakes and bread sometimes get. I honestly thought the top of the cake had exploded and some batter fell to the bottom of the oven directly onto the heating element. It wasn't until I was washing the pan did I realize that the batter probably leaked out from the bottom of the pan. The tube pan is actually 2 separate pieces: the outer circumference and then the inner tube which also consists of the bottom of the pan. I ended up having to poke the charred cake out of the oven with a wooden spoon.

Once the cake is baked, it needs to be cooled upside-down. I think the reasoning behind this is to allow the air expand and ensure that the weight of the cake doesn't deflate itself.


The wine bottle worked great...until 10 minutes later when the weight of the cake (the recipe I followed turned out to actually be a double up of yet another recipe) and probably the fact that the pan is nonstick made it slip out of the pan.


:( I ended up having to cool the cake on a cooling rack and there were 2 big cracks in the cake. I forgot to take pictures of the cake once I ate it, but the top half of the cake was super fluffy and light as a chiffon cake should be. However, the bottom half was super dense and super eggy. I'm not sure if this was due to underbaking the cake, not whipping enough air into the egg whites, or the cake falling out of the pan while it was cooling. The taste was mostly of coconut and vanilla, with a hint of pandan on the finish. This is what I love most about pandan: it is so subtle and delicate yet there is no doubt that it is there.

As for pandan desserts that I grew up with, it was pretty much anything Thai or Vietnamese that had green in it:

Thai lod chong nam ka ti (pandan rice noodles with coconut milk)

Vietnamese bánh bò nướng lá dứa ("baked pandan cow cake"; yes cow cake and more on that in the future). Photo via http://www.flickr.com/photos/riceandnoodles/

Vietnamese bánh xu xê ("husband and wife cake"). Photo via http://www.flickr.com/photos/riceandnoodles/

Vietnamese bánh da lợn ("pig skin cake," but looks like the photo has a more American-friendly translation of "green leaf cake")