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Freezing
cha gio (fried imperial rolls)
Make a double
or triple batch of the Vietnamese classic, cha gio, and freeze them for
another day. The technique I learned from my mom is to fry them until
they're set but not fully or deeply browned. Drain the rolls and let them
cool. They'll soften up and that's fine. Then put the rolls in small plastic
zip top bags (I've fit 4 in a quart-size bag) and then freeze them. When
you're in the mood, or when guests are coming, thaw the rolls and let
them come to room temperature. Blot them with paper towel to remove excess
moisture and then put into a small pot, wok, or high-sided skillet. Pour
in oil to cover and then heat over medium heat. After the oil gets boiling,
watch the rolls, rotating them as necessary to crisp and brown evenly.
The total frying time depends on how brown your rolls were to begin with.
Drain and let the rolls cool for about 5 minutes before cutting them up
and serving with the usual lettuces, herbs, and dipping sauce. You'll
notice that defrosted and refried rolls actually keep their crunch for
a long time -- a bonus to the time-saving method.
Cutting
calories when coconut milk is needed
Anh Tran of Berkeley, CA, writes that instead of using tons of coconut
milk in curry, her mom adds a mixture of nonfat yogurt and skim milk.
She mixes it well, and then adds the dairy mixture to the curry once it's
removed from the heat and just before serving. Anh admits that it's not
as sweet or creamy, but certainly healthy!
Ellen added
this tip: "For a lower fat version, use coconut essence (not artificial
flavour) mixed with evaporated milk (you can use skim). I have found coconut
essence in Caribbean stores.There is some loss of flavour, but the resulting
fat loss is worth it!" If you're wondering about how 'unhealthy'
it is, get the skinny on coconut milk.
Handy
substitute for coconut milk
In an effort to eat more healthily, my parents are constantly looking
for ingredient substitutes that don't compromise too much of the Vietnamese
flavors they love. One of their latest things is using evaporated milk
instead coconut milk. My mom has put it into chicken curry and coconut
cassava cake. There's a slight loss of flavor but it's not bad!
Toast
roasted peanuts for a flavor boost
Unlike old-fashioned Vietnamese cooks,
I don't dry roast raw peanuts. Instead, I conveniently buy roasted, unsalted
peanuts from a health food store or specialty market and keep them in
the freezer, where they stay fresh. Sometimes, the peanuts can have a
flat taste. To add depth, I toast them in a skillet over medium heat for
a few minutes -- until they are slightly glistening and a few brown spots
appear. Then I immediately transfer the peanuts to a bowl to cool completely.
Otherwise, they may continue toasting and end up burnt.
Freeze
chiles and galangal
If you grow or buy chiles, you know you'll have to have a fair
amount on hand. Keep them frozen in a zip-top bag and they'll be fine
for months. For an investment like galangal, cut the large piece it into
1 to 2-inch chunks and freeze them. Frozen galangal is easier to chop
and there's just a slight loss of flavor.
Grinding
spices
Use an electric coffee grinder just for grining spices for the freshest
flavors and strongest aromas. I grind small batches of black pepper and
keep it in a jar on my kitchen counter. Avoid pre-ground spices whenever
you can. (My exception to this rule is white pepper, which I like super
fine and purchase at Chinese markets where there's a fast turnaround.)
Buy the seeds (cumin, coriander, etc.) and grind them yourself. Use a
dry brush to sweep away the ground up spices. After each use, clean the
grinder by grinding a bit of raw rice in it and discarding the powdery
rice.
Keeping
tofu fresh for a long time
Anh also adds that her mom, a vegetarian just like her, extends the shelf
life of tofu, esp. silken tofu, by keeping it refrigerated and changing
the water everyday. Her mom replaces the old water with boiling water
each time she changes it.
Revitalizing
a tired or old banh trung (Tet rice cake)
Some people let their Tet
sticky rice cakes sit around and get dried out. Others, like my mom, makes
12-16 banh trung a year and keeps them frozen for us to enjoy year round.
In the past, she reheated them by steaming or microwaving. During the
2004 Tet season, she pulled out a frozen one from 2003 to do a taste comparison
with a new 2004 cake. It dawned upon her that perhaps she could boil her
previously frozen cake back to life, mimicking the orginal cooking method.
When her experiment worked, she reported back to me, saying, "It's
just like new!" Guess what? I tried it and Mom's right.
Here
are her reheating/revitalization instructions that will work for new,
tired, or previously frozen banh trung:
Fill
a 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven ⅔ full of water. Bring it to a rolling
boil. As the water is heating up, wrap the banh trung up in heavy duty
foil, tie it like you would a gift with cotton string, and then boil
the package for an hour. Keep it submerged in water by adding more boiling
water, as needed. When the hour's up, take the banh trung out and let
it cool for 1 to 2 hours before eating.
Forming nice bundles of bun (thin rice noodles)
For dishes like bun cha Hanoi (grilled pork Hanoi style with herbs and
noodles), you have to display small, pre-portioned mounds of bun noodles
for people to conveniently pick up. A visitor from Jax, Florida suggests
using a pair of chopsticks and rolling a portion of noodles into small
attractive clumps which can be nicely displayed on a pretty dish. As they
say in Vietnamese, a trick like this one is a sign that a cook is "kheo"
-- that is, careful, measured and skilled.
Microwaving shrimp chips
Heating up the oil to fry
shrimp chips sometimes seems to take forever. You stand there waiting
for the oil, all the while fantasizing about eating the puffy, crispy
chips. One visitor reports that her mom heads for the microwave to make
her chips. Pretty nifty. (Note that in my experience, this works best
with thinner chips, not the thick Indonesian krupuk variety.)
Transporting fish sauce bottles
When bringing home your bottle of fish sauce (or any other kind of condiment),
avoid laying them down in the bag or in your car. The bottles are seldom
packaged with tight seals and can leak.
Avoiding seeds when cutting limes and lemons
Seeds are hard to remove once a lime or lemon has been cut into wedges.
Viet cooks traditionally do not cut through the center of fruit, where
most of the seeds congregate. Instead they efficiently cut off-center
caps and discard the center core. The variety of limes commonly sold in
the States are often devoid of seeds, so this practice has become obsolete.
However, if you're using Mexican or Key limes, which have the 'true' lime
taste but come with seeds, this trick will come in handy. (Contributed
by Ms. Thuy Mac.)
Eyeing flavor in dipping sauce
When is your multipurpose fish sauce dipping sauce (nuoc
cham) close to perfection? It's hard to tell for the novice. After
more than half a century of cooking, my mother looks for color to gauge
her dipping sauce. When it's a light honey or amber color, she knows she's
close. Aim for a bold, forward finish because most likely, you'll be dipping
food that includes lettuce and herbs, which are unsalted and require an
extra flavor lift at the end to heighten the eating experience.
Keeping stinky foods fresh longer
Vietnamese cooks traditionally keep stinky staples such as fish sauce
(nuoc mam) or shrimp paste/sauce (mam ruoc/tom) in the kitchen
cupboard. Regular usage means a quick turnaround for such ingredients,
which after all, are salted for long-term preservation in the first place.
For cooks who don't regularly cook Vietnamese food, such ingredients should
be kept in the fridge where they'll last longer. Odors are usually not
an issue because the ingredient normally comes in a glass jar or bottle.
New crop rice
Every year, bags of jasmine rice labeled "new crop" have extra
tags or instructions telling cooks to use less water to prevent the rice
from getting mushy. Well, sometimes no matter how low you go with that
water level, the rice still cooks up gummy. Even worse, you're stuck with
a 25 pound (or 50 pound!) bag of raw rice that you know won't cook up
to perfection. You don't dare throw the bag out-that would be sacrilege.
What to do? My mom's solution is to mix this new crop rice with regular
long-grain rice that she buys from Costco or mainstream supermarkets.
She uses a 1:1 ratio, which works every time I've found. The rice cooks
up normally, and though you've got to keep extra rice around, the foundation
of your meals is not spoiled.
Colors
in a dish
To ensure that a dish looks appetizing, include ingredients of different
colors, namely red, orange, green and yellow.
Measuring large quantities
I come from a family of seven and when we were young, my mom made large
quantities of food to save money and time. In doubling or tripling recipes,
she'd end up having me measure numerous tablespoons of fish sauce, corn
starch, sugar, tapioca starch, water, etc. for one dish. We didn't cook
according to American measurements so 4 tablespoons were never converted
to a quarter cup. So, we just multiplied and I was left to measure. To
make sure I didn't lose count, my mother made me count out loud. Good
training for a young cook.
Storing dried shrimp
Those orangey dried salted shrimp pick up a terrible ammonia odor when
left to sit too long at room temperature. Put the bag in a plastic Ziploc
bag and store in the fridge. They keep for a good 6 months that way.
Making
Vietnamese coffee
To get extra flavor from the coffee you brew, grind the beans extra fine
and don't use large machines to make a small amount. For some reason,
the flavor is not as intense. Her little four-cup coffee maker yield inky
stuff that stands right up against the strong flavors of the sweetened
condensed milk that's mixed in. The beans she uses? Dark roasted anything.
If you want, Café Du Monde from New Orleans is particularly good.
So are brands sold at Vietnamese markets.
Keep cooked noodles from clumping
Invert a cup or rice bowl at the bottom of your strainer or colander.
Pour in the cooked noodles and rinse with cold water. The cup/bowl prevents
the noodles from gathering at the bottom, cooling as a clump and sticking
together!
Working
with lemongrass
Freeze sections (4-5 inches long) of lemongrass for long-term use. Remember
to trim the ends and remove any loose and unsightly outer leaves first!
You'll find the defrosted lemongrass is easier to cut up. It retains most
of its flavor. Better yet, freezing breaks down the fibers, making the
lemongrass a breeze to chop. For minced lemongrass, roughly chop up each
section and let your food processor or mini chopper go to work!
Jeannie Pham says
Hello! I'm a young vietnamese (student at Berkeley) and have stumbled onto your blog looking for a recipe the other day. I love reading all of these compiled tips and your entries 🙂
Long live Vietnamese food!
Andrea Nguyen says
Hi Jeannie, Thanks for visiting and liking the contents! Feel free to share info and thoughts.
Ha Nguyen says
I love the advice and recipes you have to offer! Thank you so much!
new york hotel says
Hey,thanks for the information. i always have so asian ingredients in my kitchen. never now when you use it. since i moved in nyc i've been eating more and more asian. i adore it , so delicious!
feet fetish says
thanks for the info
I want to know how much time is used in the preparation of cha gio (fried imperial rolls)
dental health center says
the idea of avoiding calories in coconut milk is very healthy thanks for the suggestion
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Among these “Vietnamese” foods, I like Vietnamese Coffee a lot, it’s good for health. Thanks for providing good tips, and also for sharing an useful article.
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רופאי שיניים says
Rice mature normally, and even if you keep the rice in more around the foundation of your meals is not ruined. Thanks for sharing this one.
מדביר says
The variety of limes commonly sold in states that are often seedless, so that this practice has become obsolete. Thanks for this one.
ויזה לארה"ב says
This article is great. I think the main problem in america today is that people do not cook their food at all, and when they do they only think they cook it, cause no one really buys a chicken today and make it in the oven, or eating whole wheet.
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Limes are sold in a variety of general, often do not have seeds, so this practice is outdated.
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Andrea I'm a huge fan of coconut milk. I think that it's super good for you. Just make sure the milk your getting didn't contain carrageenan. This stuff will give you bad digestive problems.
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Kimberly says
Hello there!
So I’m trying to learn from my mother in law who has been living with my husband and I and when she teaches, she uses “mot muon canh” “mot muon cafe”. Do you have any idea how to convert those measurements to American tsp and tbsp?! Thank you!
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That's respectively, a tablespoon and a teaspoon. But next time you go visit her bring a set of measuring spoons. Or send her a set and make her measure for you against her spoons! Seriously.