Mie Ongklok Udang and Homemade Asian Egg Noodles (Indonesian, Chinese influence)

Here's a dish I tried for the picture, Mie Ongklok!  When you'll see the picture on the blog where I took the recipe from, you'll understand!  Actually, even my pictures look really good!

So how to describe this dish...  It's most likely Chinese inspired.  Fresh egg noodles and pulled chicken, topped with a glossy translucid gravy (flavoured with the chicken and shrimp heads) full of shrimps and celery, and topped with hard-boiled eggs and green onions.  Up to now it still tastes Chinese.  But then you serve it with Sambal Oelek, Kecap Manis (thick sweet soy sauce) and a lot of limes and it becomes Indonesian tasting!  It was a really interesting dish and it looks really festive to me!  You can find the recipe here:  

http://bonitofood.blogspot.ca/2012/01/ifp-mie-ongklok-udang.html

When I made this dish, I realized the quantities of noodles were wrong, the recipe makes way too much gravy, shrimps and toppings, so I doubled the amount of noodles!  I made my own fresh egg noodles Asian style, the recipe follows!

Here's the recipe for Asian style egg noodles.  I don't remember if I wrote it based on someone else's recipe or I just copied it, and I'm not sure where I took it from (I wrote down only the ingredients in a book long before I even thought of making a blog). If you see the recipe somewhere, send me the link so I can credit the author, even though I might be the author!

(makes 4 portions)

-2cups flour

-1/2cup tapioca starch

-1tsp salt

-1tsp baking soda

-2eggs

-a little water, as needed

Mix the flour and the starch with the salt and baking soda (I like to use a whisk to mix dry ingredients well).  Add the eggs and mix well with a fork, then your hands.  Use a little water if there's not enough liquid to hold the dough together.  Flatten the dough to about maybe 2-3mm thin.  I used a pasta machine to flatten the dough and cut the noodles like at the store, but you can use a rolling pin then fold the dough and flour well with starch each fold so it doesn't stick together, and cut really thin noodles (but that requires patience and skills!).

If you have to much noodles or you want to make them ahead, I think they should keep in the fridge more or less a week.  Mix the noodles with starch so they don't stick together, and cook in plenty of boiling water because the starch tends to thicken the water and if there's not enough water, it gets so thick that the noodles won't cook.  If you use the noodles with broth, gravy or a lot of sauce (like the previous dish), I think it's better to make just enough (no leftovers) because these fresh noodles absorb the liquid overnight and become kinda gross :(.

Good cooking!

Nasi Lemak (Indonesian) Coconut Rice Platter

When I saw this recipe in the book Indonesian Cooking by Dina Yuen, it reminded me of Com Tam Suon Nuong, a Vietnamese platter with broken rice, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, a special meatloaf and a pork chop marinated with lemongrass, which is one of our favorite breakfast/brunch meal on the weekend (I even marinate pork chops and keep them in the freezer).  (You can see my post about it with a link to Helen's recipe here: http://sunnysdelights.blogspot.ca/2014/04/com-tam-suon-nuong-vietnamese.html) So yeah, this Coconut Rice Platter seems like an Indonesian version of Com Tam Suon Nuong, even though all items except the cucumber are different. The platter comes with a deep-fried dry-rubbed chicken thigh, candied dried anchovies, rice cooked with coconut milk, cucumber, shrimp crackers and sambal oelek.  I only had big dried anchovies to make stock, and even though I sometimes cook Korean-style candied dried anchovies as a side for my boyfriend who loves them, I admit I'm not that big of a fan, so I substituted the anchovies for medium-sized shrimps with the shells on (to make it a little crispy like the anchovies), but I included instructions for anchovies AND shrimps for you to try the ones you prefer.  So here is my simplified version of Nasi Lemak, Coconut Rice Platter, from the book Indonesian Cooking by Dina Yuen.  Since the platter has many different elements, I thought it would be clearer to separate each element into one recipe.  Hope this helps!

(serves 4)

THE COCONUT RICE:

Wash 2cups of white, long-grain rice then cook as usual, but replace 3/4cup of the water by 3/4cup of coconut milk and a pinch or two of salt.

THE CHICKEN:

For 4 chicken thighs, with skin and bones on:

-3/4tsp salt

-1/4tsp turmeric powder

-1/2tsp garlic powder (CAN'T be replaced by fresh garlic)

-1/4tsp ground black pepper

Wash and dry really well with paper towels so the spices adhere well and the oil doesn't splash when deep-frying.  Rub the spices on the chicken pieces, don't forget to rub some under the skin too.  Let marinate while the deep-fryer (or oil in a wok) comes to the right temperate (somewhere between...  320F and 370F if you want to be exact?).  Deep-fry on both sides for about 10 minutes, drain on paper towels.

THE DRIED ANCHOVIES (or shrimps):

-1cup of TINY dried anchovies, or substitute with a cup of raw small/medium shrimps, without the head and deveined but keep the tails and shells on

-1tbsp sweet soy sauce/kecap manis

-1tbsp sambal oelek

In a pan, add a little oil and for a couple minutes only, roast the anchovies until lightly golden, or the shrimps until pink.  Add the sweet soy sauce and sambal oelek and stir for 30 seconds until well mixed and the sauce gets absorbed a little.

THE SHRIMP CRACKERS:

You can use whatever shrimp crackers you want.  In my book, on the picture, it's these colourful ones that are used.  If you're not familiar with this product, it's available at all Asian markets in a box for about a dollar.  You need to deep-fry them at a REALLY high temperature (380-400F).  To know if your oil is ready, throw a translucid tiny cracker in the oil, and in only a couple seconds, it should float and puff up like crazy.  If this doesn't work, wait for your oil to get warmer.  Drain on paper towels.  For this Coconut Rice Platter, right after the chicken is done frying, get the temperature of your oil higher and you can make the crackers really quickly before the chicken cools down.

To assemble, pass a small bowl fast under water and empty it. It prevents the rice from sticking to the bowl (but most of you most likely knew that already!). Fill the bowl with 1/4 of the coconut rice (half a cup), press the rice in the bowl and flip on a plate.  Quickly rinse the bowl and repeat for each plate.  Also place a piece of chicken and a quarter of the anchovies or shrimps nicely on each plate.  Garnish with slices or sticks of cucumber, and serve with sambal oelek and shrimp crackers!

Kwee Tiauw, and my first Lalapan (Chinese, Indonesian)

Still in my Indonesian phase of course!  I like the book I bought, but I feel like there's not enough hard recipes, and if you know me you know I like to make food, condiments, sauces, broths from scratch.  I like complex recipes that teach you new techniques you ever saw before.  I need challenge.  This Indonesian Cooking book is good to introduce someone to basic, simple and quick Indonesian cooking, but I'll need a better (more expensive) book on the subject and I also should explore the blogs available on (praise them) internets!

I like noodles, and my boyfriend probably likes them even more than me.  This recipe is apparently a Chinese dish (even kept its Chinese name) that's so popular in Indonesia that it became a classic.  It's a really easy dish with simple flavours, but if you add some (a lot for me) sambal oelek on top, the flavours all combine together to create an amazing new taste, so if you like sambal oelek, don't skip it! 

Here's my simplified, slightly adapted version of Kwee Tiauw, from the book Indonesian Cooking by Dina Yuen!

(serves 4-6)

-1lb dried flat wide rice noodles, soaked in warm water for 30-45 minutes, then drained

-2 chicken breasts cut into small bite-size cubes

-13 garlic cloves

-3 shallots

-5tbsp kecap manis or thick sweet soy sauce

-2tbsp soy sauce

-3tbsp oyster sauce

-1/4tsp white pepper

-1/2cup water

-2-4 green onions, cut into 1inch lengths

-1cup bean sprouts or soybean sprouts

-some sambal oelek to serve with

In a big wok or big non-stick pan, add 3tbsp of oil and stir the garlic and shallots for 2-3 minutes.  Add the chicken and stir-fry until mostly cooked.

Add the noodles and toss while trying to avoid breaking the noodles (they'll still break, you can't make a miracle like this one happen).

Add the 2 soy sauces, and the oyster sauce, white pepper and water.  Mix well.  Add the bean sprouts and green onions, toss for a minute and it's ready!

Here is a picture of my first lalapan, plate of vegetables accompanied by a sambal and served with Indonesian food as a side dish.  I used cucumber, tomatoes, and blanched string beans and cabbage. It was good but I wasn't impressed by this peanut sauce sambal recipe from the same book as the noodles. The quantities were wrong, I had to add double the peanuts, and it still tasted more of coconut milk and lemongrass...  I feel like I improvised better peanut sauce without measuring in the past.  So I'll come back to you with other sambals and a better peanut one.  It's still nice to have a plate of fresh veggies to munch on throughout the meal :).

Basics to Ramen, compose your own Ramen! (Japanese) Also Soboro Meat, Teriyaki Sauce and more!

You probably know me for trying other people's recipes, but I can cook too!  It's hard for a white girl from Haitian descendant to cook Vietnamese food the first times without a recipe.  You can't reproduce what you've never eaten.  After one year of eating packaged noodles and cheap restaurant every day in our first common apartment, I knew I had to start cooking more.  We used to live in a tiny studio apartment Downtown, with crackheads in the entrance at all hours of the day/night.  I could mostly only cook easy québécois food and French salads and sandwiches (it was my job at a French Café-Bakery-Chocolatier). So we decided to move in a 3 1/2 cheaper and bigger apartment since it was away from Downtown.  I'm really good at reusing furnitures and making up with what we have, my kitchen is like a giant colourful lab, all equipped for Japanese, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai cooking.

So back to the "I'm gonna start cooking" decision.  I'm not sure exactly how it started.  I think I wanted to make onigiri then I started watching Cooking with Dog on YouTube.  After that, I was obsessed that when I have a little spare money, I would buy a Japanese cookbook.  And I did, it was a book from the French-Japanese Laure Kié called "La cuisine japonaise : les bases".  Later on I also bought the other books of that serie, one about noodles and the other about izakaya.  I got Momofuku's book.  I started hanging out at the Korean-Japanese grocery stores and I even found a Japanese (expensive) grocery store where I could find specialized Japanese ingredients and fermentation products (Koji, Nuka bran). I cooked only Japanese and nothing else for about two years!

One of our first dates, my boyfriend brought me to Sumo Ramen, a small really hip Japanese place in Montreal's 4x4 blocks tiny Chinatown.  It was my first time having non-packaged ramen, which should be considered a totally different food.  After cooking Japanese for some time, I remembered this delicious miso-ramen I had and decided to make my own.  Of course, that first ramen I had at Sumo Ramen stayed on my mind, and the garnishes are a reflection of it.  After exploring different recipes and topping, I don't need a recipe anymore.  So here I give you a guide for homemade ramen, with different broths, seasoning, noodles, eggs, garnishes and main toppings (protein) so your can choose and compose your own ramen!

HOW TO COOK A RAMEN:------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's how you assemble a ramen.  I'll give instructions for the preparations of the different elements in details following this.

(serves 2)

-4 cups of broth

-ginger and/or garlic

-veggies (I usually use carrot strips, shredded cabbage and bean sprouts)

-shoyu or usu-Kuchi shoyu or soy sauce

-mirin

-toasted sesame oil

-optional: miso, if you're making miso-ramen

-2 portions of noodles

-protein topping(see later)

-garnishes (see garnishes later)

-2 eggs (precision later in this article)

Boil the noodles until cooked, then rinse under cold water.

In a non-stick high pan, wok or big pot, add a little oil on medium high.  Cook your ginger and/or garlic a minute, then add your veggies. Cook and toss until wilted.  Add the broth and bring to a boil.  Season (to your taste or the quantities are there later in the seasonings section) with soy sauce and mirin.  Reduce the heat to low and dissolve the miso through a small strainer if using.  Then just remove from the stove and add sesame oil, mix.

To assemble, put the noodles at the bottom of two big soup bowls.  Add the soup, top with your protein, garnishes and egg.

THE BROTH:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ramen restaurants have that reputation of putting a lot of love and time and passion into their ramen broth.  The best ramen broth I tried was David Chang's in his Momofuku book.  The problem with that broth is that you HAVE to make a lot, otherwise it's not worth it.  Also, it's really expensive since on top of the usual veggies, kombu seaweed and dried mushrooms, he uses a ton of pork bones, and bacon, AND A WHOLE CHICKEN.  It's starting to be expensive...  When I think ramen, I think of a cheap filling meal.  Also it's summer so we're not gonna eat soup everyday, and we're just two so I like to make small amounts of broth.  You have three options now: bones (pork bones being the most authentic traditional one), or I guess you could use dashi, or if you have unseasoned broth in your fridge or freezer, it would probably work.  So you can make your own broth, but if you don't know how, here's how I do my broths.

PORK BROTH:

-Pork bones

-a piece of kombu seaweed

-a couple dried shiitake mushrooms

-vegetables for flavour, I suggest using some of these commonly used in Japanese cooking ingredients: leek, green onions, onions, carrots, ginger (if the broth isn't for ramen, I'd add lemongrass)

-plenty of water

In a big pot, cover the bones with water, bring to a vigorous boil, then drain and rinse the bones well.  This reduces the amount of scum to skim afterwards a lot, plus if your bones were frozen, no problem!

Put the washed bones back into the cleaned pot and cover with water, maybe an inch or two over the bones.  Bring to a boil, then remove from the stove, add the kombu and dried mushrooms and let it steep for 30 minutes.  Remove only the kombu and bring the broth back to a boil, then reduce heat and let is simmer from 2-6 hours, the more the better.  The 45 last minutes, add all your veggies.  Strain and discard everything, then strain again through a fine mesh strainer for a perfect broth!

DASHI:

Dashi is a really quick broth/condiment that is in almost every Japanese food.  Using it for ramen would make it really unauthentic, but still lend a Japanese taste. The soup would also be lighter.  But it is perfect for vegetarians and this is home style ramen so who cares?  Experiment!

-4 cups water

-a piece of kombu

-one handful of katsuobushi (if you eat fish, they're flakes of whole dried smoke fermented bonito fish) AND/OR a couple dried shiitake if you're vegetarian

Combine all ingredients in a medium pot.  Cover and let steep at room temperature for a minimum of 2 hours to maybe 6 hours.

Put the pot on the stove and warm up slowly.  Before it boils, remove from the stove and strain through a fine mesh strainer.  Discard everything. The before boiling temperature is perfect for the kombu and katsuobushi to release their flavour, and the broth should stay clear too if you don't boil it!

ANY BROTH:

Any broth, like leftover pork or chicken broth, preferably unseasoned so we can season it with Japanese ingredients for that Japanese taste, but you can also experiement!

THE BROTH'S SEASONINGS:---------------------------------------------------------------------

For two people, I use 4 cups of broth.  Here is how I season it!  Each ingredient has its best moment to be added, so please follow the "how to cook a ramen" section at the beginning of this post!

-1tbsp mirin

-1tbsp miso

-1/2tbsp soy sauce

-a splash of sesame oil or to taste

This will make a slightly misoed soup.  If you add more miso, you'll probably need less or none of the soy sauce.  Adjust to taste.  Mirin is a little sweet, miso and shoyu are salty.  Sesame oil is nutty.  Your best friend is your tastebuds!

NOODLES:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ramen are generally served with fresh ramen noodles (find them at the Asian market) or sometimes udon.  I also tried homemade pasta (my post on homemade pasta/egg noodles here: http://sunnysdelights.blogspot.ca/2014/04/homemade-egg-noodlespastas-basics.html), thin dried Chinese egg noodles, Korean udon and black rice noodle.  It might not be a traditional ramen but please make this your own and try different noodles!

GARNISHES:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inspired by Sumo Ramen, here are the garnishes I can't skip on my ramen!  They're all replaceable or optional.

-sesame seeds

-fresh or canned corn kernels

-nori seaweed, a piece or in thin strips

-enoki mushrooms, sometimes I put shimeji too

-sliced green onions

-an egg, precisions following

You could also use any kind of blanched greens, I've seen that before.  If you're doing a modern-experiemental dish, throw some eggplants (gross!) or something, the ramen is your canvas!

THE EGG:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The egg is a REALLY important element of the ramen.  The usual is a hard-boiled egg cut into 2.  You could also top the ramen with a sunny side-up fried egg, why not?  You could use a poached egg (I'm not really good at making them), or like me, an Onsen Tamago or hot spring slow poached egg.  I tried so many different instructions for Onsen Tamago and even though on the pictures and in the videos it works, it never worked for me, until I found David Chang's tips and I make the perfect Onsen Tamago every time! You can also top asparagus and donburi with these eggs.  They're like a poached egg, with the yolk all runny.  

Onsen Tamago:

-as many eggs as you want.  They'll keep in their shell in the fridge for a day of two.

-a big pot

-little sauce plates, one for each egg to rest on, they must not touch the bottom of the pot

-a thermometer

In the big pot while carefully monitoring the temperate, bring plenty of water to 140F.  Drop the sauce plates at the bottom and with tongs place an egg on each plate.  Put a timer for 40 minutes and check on your thermometer often to make sure the temperature stays as close to 140F the whole cooking time.  After 40 minutes, transfer the eggs to a bowl of water and ice or under running cold water.  Keep in the fridge.  When ready to use, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for one minute, then crack open on top of your ramen or other dish.

DIFFERENT MAIN TOPPINGS:---------------------------------------------------------------------

You can use anything you want, here are some of my favorite!:

-Kanikuni (fake crab sticks) pulled appart

-Slices of Chinese BBQ pork

-gyoza or dumplings

-shrimps

-a teriyaki chicken leg, sliced in a couple pieces.  (Teriyaki marinade: 2/3cup mirin, 1/3cup shoyu, 2tbsp saké, 2tbsp sugar, some ginger juice, without the pulp)

For volcano ramen like on the picture under, I used this recipe from JustBento/Just hungry for Soboro meat and modified it to make spicy meat, it tastes soooo Japanese! Even though exceptionally I'm almost copying her recipe here, please go see the recipe on her website for a bunch of suggestions on how to use Soboro meat, here: http://justbento.com/handbook/johbisai/basic-meat-soboro

Volcano meat:

-1lb ground beef

-1 to 2tbsp sesame oil

-2 stalks finely chopped green onions

-1 chopped garlic clove

-2tbsp chopped ginger

-2tbsp sugar

-2tbsp saké

-3tbsp oyster sauce

-1tbsp soy sauce

-3tbsp gochujang (korean fermented chili paste)

To a pan, add sesame oil and stir-fry all the veggies until softened.  Add the meat until well cooked.

Add the sugar until melted.

Add saké and stir for a minute to evaporate.

Add everything else and let it cook until most of the sauce is absorbed, mixing frequently.

CONCLUSION:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Home style ramen can be made any way.  If you read all this article, I hope your learnt something and might try it someday.  Please send me images if you do, either here on the blog or on my Facebook page, Sunny García.  Have fun!

Shahjahani Murgh (Indian)

Maybe this will surprise you, but I'm not a stranger to Indian cuisine.  As with all my phases, my Indian phase lasted maybe four months where I would cook 2 different curries and serve them with rice and one of the many Indian flat breads, or some appetizers and chutneys and raita, and this EVERY day.  I love really spicy Indian curries that makes your nose leak!  By the way, Indians call "curry" everything in sauce, it doesn't need to contain "curry powder".

(I posted the best, most authentic butter chicken and a tandoori marinade before, see here: http://sunnysdelights.blogspot.ca/search/label/Indian)

When you think curry, you probably think bold and spicy flavours.  This Chicken Shah Jahan doesn't fit in this category at all.  It is creamy and contains a lot of different spices like other curries, but it's not spicy at all (there's no chilli in any form in this curry) and has very mild but complex aromas.  It's a really subtle but delicious dish.

I took this recipe from the book Cuisine Indienne by Manju Malhi.  I have some really good cookbooks written by foreigners to the country where the recipes are from, but I usually trust, lets say, an Indian cookbook written by an Indian lady, I know it has more chances of being authentic, it's all about authenticity with me!  Anyways, in the book, they explain that Shah Jahan was the emperor who ordered the construction of the Taj Mahal for his favourite wife, Mumtaz-i Mahal.  This dish was created for him.  If that curry was made for an emperor, it has to be good for me, no?

You might be scared with all the spices, but just find a small Indian market, Indian people are usually really nice and happy to see non-Indians interested in their food!  They'll help you find whatever you need, and spices are like 2 to 4 dollars each. Once I asked a store-owner for some spice, he told me to wait, exited his shop and came back with the spices I needed, but since he didn't have them, he bought them for me from a near shop.  He also gave me a bag of fresh curry leaves on the branch for free.  Each time I go there I'm received like a friend! When I started my Indian cooking phase, my boyfriend bought me two books, I went through all the recipes and made a list of all the spices, seeds and powdered version.  It cost me a total of $30-40! Also, Indian cooking only requires a pan, and maybe a coffee grinder or small food processor to grind your own masalas.  It's a really easy, often quick and cheap cuisine.  And curries are essentially always cooked the same, first whole spices and onions, garlic and ginger, then meat/lentils/peas/paneer, then cream or yoghurt if used and powdered spices.  That simple. 

So here is the recipe for Shahjahani Murgh from the book Cuisine Indienne by Manju Malhi.  There is so many good chefs on YouTube and the internet, incredible authentic resources on the internet if you are interested in Indian cooking (luckily most Indians speak a good English, so it's easy to find real Indian food!).  If you are interested, I thought I'd post a list of all my resources for all different ethnic cooking I've been into since I started cooking seriously, 3-4 years ago (I still have a long post to write about Ramen today, so maybe the resources will wait tomorrow).

(serves 2-3)

Masala (is it the good term, I think masala is a spice mix...?)

-3 bay leaves

-3 black cardamom pods

-4 green cardamom pods

-1 cinnamon stick

-4 cloves

-1/4tsp cumin seeds

-10 black peppercorn

-2tbsp ghee or butter (to make a ghee replacement if you're motivated, melt a couple spoons of butter and remove the scums, there you have it, clarified butter!)

-1 onion, finely chopped

-3 garlic cloves, finely grated or puréed 

-1tsp peeled ginger, finely grated

-1/4tsp salt

-1/4tsp white pepper

-400g chicken breast in cubes

-4tbsp cream (I use fat 30%)

-10 saffron strands, Spanish and Iranian preferred to American of course (mixed and resting in the cream while cooking the rest)

-100ml water

-2tbsp almond powder (I grind almonds with skins in a coffee grinder)

-some fine ginger matchsticks for garnish

In a warm non-stick pan, on medium-high, melt the butter or the ghee and add the masala ingredients.  Roast a couple second until aromatic, then add the onion, the garlic and the ginger and stir-fry for 3-5 minutes. Add the chicken cubes and cook for 10 minutes (at this stage the chicken should be white, but it might not totally be cooked in the center, that's fine).

Make the almond powder rain over the chicken, mix and cook 2 minutes.  Add the salt, the white pepper and the saffron cream and water and cook 2 more minutes or until the thickness of the sauce is to your taste.  Top with ginger strips and serve with basmati rice (and maybe a lentil curry or some aloo gobi perhaps)?

Kroeung Khmer Chicken (Khmer)

This isn't the first time I tried this recipe, but now I remember why I liked it so much and I'm totally sold out to Khmer cuisine (pronounced ku-mai I think, it's Cambodian cuisine).  If any of you have any good resources (blogs, recipe database, I know a couple YouTube channels) or books that can be found or ordered in Canada about Khmer cuisine, please share with me!

This recipe is a cambodian curry including lemongrass, coconut milk, fish sauce, kafir lime leaves and everything I like.  Like for Thai curries, you have to make a paste first, then the rest is pretty easy.  I had such a hard time making the paste with finely chopped ingredients in a bowl with a stick blender!  It's my birthday tomorrow, so last weekend I went to my mom's and my step dad (who asked my boyfriend what I'd like) bought me my first food processor and it's amazing!  Can't wait for the next time I'll make this chicken curry, it'll be so much easier! But let's go back to these recipes, they are from the book Ginger and Lemongrass by Leemei Tan, a really amazing book if you want to discover a little of all Asian cooking (including India!).  If you try this curry, you won't regret it!  Let's start cooking!

(serves 4)

Kroeung Khmer (curry paste), mix all together in a food processor or mortar:

-1 seeded red chilli, I used a bird's eye but it wasn't really clear which one you should use

-4 garlic cloves

-5 shallots

-white parts of 2 lemongrass stalks

-2cm fresh turmeric, or 1tsp turmeric powder

-2cm galangal

-3 kafir lime leaves

And then...:

-1 recipe of Kroeung Khmer (jthe one you just read before this, if you're not following haha)

-1 small onion, roughly chopped

-600g chicken legs or breasts, deboned, without skin, and cubed into bite-sized pieces

-2 kafir lime leaves

-1 carrot, cut in pieces

-150g/5 1/2 oz. green beans, cut in 2"/5cm lengths

-400mL coconut milk

-2tbsp fish sauce

-1tbsp cane or brown sugar

Cook the onions with a little oil in a large NON-STICK pan on medium/high until translucent.  Add the Kroeung Khmer paste, and roast for about 10 minutes, mixing every once in a while.  

Add the chicken and kafir lime leaves and cook for 5 minutes.  Add the carrots and green beans and cook for 3 more minutes.

Pour in the coconut milk, bring to a boil, then add the fish sauce and sugar and mix well.  Simmer for about 10-15 minutes on low, or until the beans are cooked and the sauce has thicken.  Serve with rice!

Bun Vit Xao Mang and Nuoc Mam Gung (Vietnamese) Duck and Bamboo Soup and Ginger Dipping Sauce

I decided to start choosing meals for the whole week and do groceries according to the menus because we're a little broke lately.  It also helps not wasting any vegetables or meats your forget at the back of the freezer.  Anyway, one of my menu was a duck and bamboo soup.  As my boyfriend and I were searching for dried bamboo at the Asian market (ran by Vietnamese people), a man placing products offered to help us.  He asked me what I was gonna do with the bamboo, I told him a soup.  He spotted the duck in our cart and he knew instantly which soup I was gonna cook!  He said "But how do you know about this soup!?" And I told him I've been cooking Vietnamese for 2-3 months now.  He was so really proud!  Yaaayyy!  He brought me in another row and suggested I bought vacuum-sealed fresh bamboo in brine, that my soup would be much better.  When we left, my boyfriend told me he thinks that man was the owner!  I should get an easy, steady job there maybe, with air conditioning for the summer...

Turns out the duck soup recipe calls for both dried and brined bamboo (I overlooked the brined one). I only used the fresh brined one, but I included the instructions if you want to use only the dried one, or both.  So here is my simplified version of Duck and Bamboo Soup from the book Vietnamese Street Food by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl!

(serves 6)

Broth:

-2 chicken carcasses

-1 duck

-4cm piece of ginger, roughly sliced

-6 green onions

-2 white parts of lemongrass, bruised

-1tsp salt

-1tsp sugar

Seasoning

-1 1/2tbsp fish sauce

-3cm ginger, thinly julienned

Toppings:

-6 portions (600g) rice vermicelli

-120g vacuum-sealed bamboo, drained, boiled for 15 minutes, then rinsed in cold water, dried and thinly sliced

-(optional) 60g dried bamboo, soaked overnight then boiled for an hour, then refreshed and drained, cut into 1 1/2" pieces

-some basil

-some mint

-4 green onions, thinly sliced

-fried shallots

-Nuoc Mam Gung (ginger dipping sauce), recipe follows

In a large pot, add the chicken bones and duck and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, skim the scums, then add the other ingredients on the broth list and lower the heat.  Simmer for an hour, removing the fat and scums regularly.  After an hour, remove the duck, let it cool before cutting with a cleaver or simply deboning it like I did, and let the broth simmer an extra hour.

Prepare all your toppings, the ginger dipping sauce, and cook the rice vermicelli.  After a total of two hours, strain the broth, discard everything.  Put back on the stove in a clean pot, add the seasonings and bring to a boil.  

To assemble the dish, place a portion of noodles at the bottom of each bowls (it makes enough for 6, but you can also just keep the extra broth in the fridge or freezer for later and adjust the toppings amount, it's just me and my boyfriend here so that's what I did, made lunches, kept extra broth for sides of soup during the week), top with the duck, bamboo, herbs, and finish with green onions, shallots and a spoon of dipping sauce.  Bring the dipping sauce at the table for your guests to adjust to their taste.

GINGER DIPPING SAUCE:

-120mL fish sauce

-1tsp sugar

-2cm ginger, peeled and cut into tiny, tiny thin strips

-3 garlic cloves, chopped

-1 long red chilli, finely chopped

Mix the fish sauce and sugar until well combined, then stir in everything else.  You can use any leftovers on rice, or as an alternative to the classic nuoc-cham...

Bun Thang, AKA Combo Soup (Vietnamese)

This combo soup's picture reminded me of ramen (like Japanese big ramen bowls) with its different toppings.  Also, my boyfriend is picky with his vegetables and this version doesn't have much, which I knew would please His Carnivorousness!  I really enjoyed this soup, the broth was like the one of a GOOD wonton soup at the take-out, subtil but refined!  I even used leftover broth and boiled some gyoza in it with julienned veggies (gyoza are the Japanese dumplings, I always make a lot and have them in the freezer!). The day I was gonna make this soup, I checked Helen's Recipes' channel on YouTube and this soup was her new video recipe!  Her version is different though, but you can still watch it and encourage her, she's so skilled and cute!  Here's the link!  

http://youtu.be/jSG_Fn7Lz1M

Helen says that this soup is made after festivities, when there's a lot of leftovers of different meats.  I don't care that it's spring, I still wanted a good, gigantic soup.  Here's my really simplified, slightly modified recipe for Combo Soup, taken from the book Vietnamese Street Food (as usual lately!) by the lovely couple of Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl!

(serves 2-3)

Broth:

-3 shallots, chargrilled on all sides for a total of about 5 minutes, then black spots washed away

-1.5kg pork bones

-1/2tsp salt

-about 3tbsp dried shrimps

-1tsp sugar

-1/2tbsp fish sauce

-1 small chicken breast, with bones if you can

Toppings:

-2 eggs, whisked and cooked into thin omelets, then piled up and thinly sliced the way you like (I like to roll the omelets before slicing, it makes cute spirals)

-2-3 portions of rice vermicelli, cooked

-3-4 cooked shrimps per bowl

-100-150g Cha Lua (Vietnamese ham made with pork and shrimp paste) or ham, thinly julienned*

-2 sliced spring onions

-cilantro or parsley

-fried shallots

-1 lime, cut into wedges

*I used regular ham because I was craving it, sliced it thinly, pan fried it then piled the slices and thinly julienned them.  Cooked ham tastes salty, like bacon or bologna!  Don't worry, it doesn't really affect the saltiness of the overall soup.  Let's start!

Put the pork bones in a pot, cover with water, then bring to a boil, strain the bones and rinse them good.  Put back into the cleaned pot, cover with water again, add the salt and bring to a boil again.  Lower the heat to simmer, and add the shallots, dried shrimps, sugar and fish sauce, simmer for 2 hours.  Throughout the simmering, remove scums and fat often.

After 2 hours, add the chicken breast and continue simmering for 20 minutes.  Fish out the breast, let it cool then slice it thinly.  Strain the broth, put in a clean pot and bring to a boil.

To assemble, start with a portion of rice vermicelli at the bottom of each bowl, then place the shrimps, Cha Lua or ham and chicken.  Top with the herbs, green onions and shallots. Serve with lime wedges on the side!

Chicken with Green Peppercorns (Vietnamese)

This chicken dish was simple and elegant, and made a perfect Sunday night meal.  This post is my last for today, so excuse the short intro.  I finally found green peppercorns (in brine) and I've been waiting to make this dish!  I bought a whole uncleaned chicken by mistake and it was gruesome haha.  So here's the recipe, simplified from the book The Food of Vietnam by Luke Nguyen.  You can also see him cook this dish in a peppercorn field here:

http://youtu.be/KPfgYx5sYEU

(serves 4-6)

Marinade for a whole clean chicken, cut into quarters, weighing about 1.5kg:

-25g lightly bruised (with a mortar and pestle) green peppercorns (I bought mine in brine)

-1tbsp chopped garlic

-2tsp salt

-1tsp sugar

-25g green peppercorns on the branches

-1tbsp chopped garlic

-1tsp salt

-1tsp sugar

-2 tomatoes, in 2cm cubes

-1-2 carrots, in 1cm cubes

-1tbsp annatto oil

-about 2 litres of young coconut juice

-8 peeled whole shallots

-1/2 an onion cut into big wedges

-4tbsp fish sauce

-rice or baguettes for serving

Mix the marinade ingredients and rub the chicken carefully with it, putting peppercorns under the skin too.  Marinate for an hour or more.

In a big wide pan or a high, large saucepan, fry the garlic and peppercorns with 2tbsp oil for a couple second, until fragrant.  Add the chicken pieces and slightly brown on both sides.

Add all the other ingredients and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 40 minutes.  Serve with white rice or baguette.

Spicy Chicken and Noodles Soup (Korean)

The weather was getting warm in Montreal, then spring arrived with its cold rain and worms (I fear worms).  Yesterday was cold so we opted for a hot and spicy soup.  This one by Aeri Lee, my boyfriend and I really like!  I think yesterday was the third time that I made it. What I like about this soup is that I can make it with whatever vegetables are in the fridge, so it's always kind of different.  The broth is really easy to make.  Yesterday was the first time I made this soup with a chicken BREAST (as suggested in the recipe) and even though it made a leaner soup, I suggest using whole legs (with bones and skin), about 2-3, for a richer, deeper broth and fatter meat. I also cook the noodles to my taste, cool and drain them, then put them at the bottom of the bowl, which is easier to serve that if you were to put the noodles directly in the soup (don't worry the hot soup with warm them up).  I like to replace some of the gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes) and chilli oil with fresh green chilli peppers that I add at the end with the green onions, which add a delicious taste and aroma. Except these points, I mostly follow the recipe, which lends a spicy, chickeny noodle soup!  Here's the recipe at Aeriskitchen.com:

http://aeriskitchen.com/2010/06/spicy-chicken-noodle-soup/

Under is a picture of last time I made this soup.  Here's a list of veggies Aeri doesn't use in her recipe that I've enjoyed and suggest for this soup:

-sweet potatoes (Japanese purple ones or orange yams)

-potatoes

-kabocha (Japanese pumpkin)

-yu choi (add the stems with the other veggies, the leaf sections at the end with the green onions)

-leeks (replace some or all onions)

-enoki or shimeji mushrooms (because they're long and all the other veggies are julienned, but regular mushrooms would still taste good)

-edible chrysanthemum leaves (put leaf sections in the soup closer to the end)

...

Any combination will be good!

Canh Ga Chien Mam (Vietnamese) Vietnamese Fried Chicken Wings in Fish Sauce

Yesterday was Friday night, and nothing screams more WEEKEND than indulging in some deep-fried foods!  Also, almost each time I ask my boyfriend to pick what he'd like me to cook, his first choice is fried chicken.  Since I'm in a Vietnamese cooking phase, I still had to try these Vietnamese classic deep-fried chicken wings dipped in fish sauce.  

These chicken wings are crisp and really juicy.  You deep-fry them and transfer them one by one directly from the oil to the concentrated nuoc-cham.  Really tasty, pungent and smelly!  My only advice is to fry them longer than in the recipe so they're REALLY crisp before you soak them in fish sauce. And as usual, I took the recipe from the talented Helen, queen of the Vietnamese Kitchen in Germany!  Recipe here:

http://danangcuisine.com/recipes/recipe-63-canh-ga-chien-mam-fried-chicken-wings-in-fish-sauce/

Here I served the wings with Vietnamese tomato rice, cucumbers with sesame-peanut salt, corn cobs with butter, salt and Nanami Togarashi.  That rice is so good that I made it two days in a row, you can find my post from yesterday about it here:

http://sunnysdelights.blogspot.ca/2014/05/com-sot-ca-chua-vietnamese-red-or.html

Lemongrass Chilli Chicken Skewers and A Vietnamese-Style Salad (Vietnamese)

Our friend Shannon that we haven't seen since last year, if not before that, came over with her boyfriend Ben (that we still hadn't met) and we had a good day getting blasted and watching cartoons and music videos!  I really wanted to cook for them, and bold move, I tried new recipes!  I adjusted the Lemongrass Chilli Chicken skewers recipe here based on what I thought of them that night.  I served them with a Vietnamese inspired salad and some spring rolls.  Here are the recipes!

Inspired by the Lemongrass Chilli Chicken (post here: http://sunnysdelights.blogspot.ca/2014/04/ga-xao-sa-ot-and-goi-du-du-vietnamese.html) I made these Lemongrass Chilli Chicken Skewers!

(makes 10 medium skewers)

-500g chicken breast, sliced thinly across the grain

-3/4tsp sugar

-1 white part lemongrass, finely chopped

-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

-1 long red chilli, finely chopped

-1 1/2tbsp oil

Mix everything together nicely except the chicken, then add the chicken to the marinade and let rest in the fridge a couple hours to overnight.

Soak your skewers in cold water for 30 minutes if using a BBQ or grill.  I used a ridged pan so it's not necessary.  Fold the meat back and forth on the skewers, then grill without using any extra oil.

For the salad, I was inspired by a traditional wedding salad on DanangCuisine.com, but I turned out quite different:

-some shrimps, boiled, shelled, cleaned and sliced in half along the "spine"

-some pork belly (I grilled thin slices of pork belly that I marinated using this recipe: http://danangcuisine.com/recipes/recipe-43-bun-cha/)

-some veggies, julienned (carrots, cucumber, lettuce, herbs, red cabbage, daikon, lotus...   Anything you have)

-some herbs

-some fried shallots and peanuts to top

Dressing:

-equal amounts of fish sauce, sugar and lime juice

-some chopped garlic and thai red bird's eye chillies, to taste

Mix the dressing until sugar has dissolved.  Mix everything for the salad together.  Toss by hand with some dressing little by little until to your taste.  Plate and top with additional peanuts and fried shallots.

I also made some Vietnamese deep-fried spring rolls that I served with some lettuce leaves, herbs and nuoc-cham, post here:

http://sunnysdelights.blogspot.ca/2014/05/cha-gio-vietnamese-vietnamese-spring.html

Ga Xao Sa Ot and Goi Du Du (Vietnamese)

So tonight we had Lemongrass Chilli Chicken and a Green Papaya Salad with rice.  Even though I used Luke Nguyen's recipe for the chicken, I saw Helen's video (from Danang Cuisine) and she says it's one of her favourite ways to eat chicken.  I'd say it's a sweet dish, not just because it has a sweet taste but because the lemongrass and coconut juice gives it a sweet personality!  The papaya salad on the other hand is a little sour, fragrant because of the basil, fresh and crunchy.  I wasn't sure I liked it at first, but now I'm hooked!

First, here is the recipe for "Lemongrass Chilli Chicken" from the book " The Food of a Vietnam" by Luke Nguyen!

(serves 4 - I made only a half recipe on the picture)

Marinade for 500g deboned and skinned chicken:

-3tbsp fish sauce

-1 1/2tbsp sugar

-2 white parts lemongrass, finely chopped, half reserved

-4 garlic cloves, finely chopped, half reserved

-2 long red chillies, finely chopped, half reserved

-3tbsp vegetable oil

-250mL young coconut juice

-1/2 onion, cut into wedges

- coriander or parsley sprigs for presentation

Mix together the fish sauce, sugar, half of the lemongrass, half the garlic and half the chillies in a bowl, then add chicken and marinate 2 hours to overnight.

In a wok, heat oil on medium and cook what's left of lemongrass, chillies and garlic until fragrant (about a minute) then turn to medium-high and toss in chicken until there's no more pink.

Add onion and coconut juice, cover and cook for about 7 minutes, until the sauce is half reduced (keep some juice, it's so good on your rice), then plate and decorate with the herbs.

As suggested, I served it with rice.  I cook 1 cup of rice, I fill one cup with jasmine rice, then remove 2tbsp and replace them with 1tbsp black forbidden rice and 1tbsp cargo thai red cargo rice.

I also served it with this easy green papaya salad that I improvised from watching many videos!

(serves as many as you'll make)

-some shredded green (not ripe) papaya

-some shredded carrots (just to add colour, like a rotisserie coleslaw)

-some thinly sliced basil

-some peanuts

-some garlic chips

-some fried shallots

-red chilli, finely chopped (I used a long red chilli so it's a little less spicy than a bird's eye chilli since my chicken dish was also full of chilli)

The sauce:

-3tbsp fish sauce

-3tbsp rice or white vinegar

-2-3tsp sugar

(To shred the papaya and carrot, Vietnamese either use a special tool I didn't find today or, you can use a sharp nice and kind of hit the papaya vertically along the height, do a lot of cuts, then use a vegetable peeler and it makes long nice strips.  Repeat until you have enough papaya.  That's the technique I used on the picture, except I only had a half papaya so the strips are short :( .)

Mix the sauce so the sugar is dissolved.  Toss the papaya, carrot, basil, peanuts, garlic chips and shallots together with your hands.  Add dressing a little at a time, mix with your hands and test.  When it's to your taste, plate with your hands again (apparently the hands action is really important!) and top with chillies, more shallots and more peanuts.  Voilà!