vietnamese – Abstract Gourmet

To cure what ails: Hu Tieu Bo Kho

Soup is great to cure a lot of things. I’ve been having a lot of it lately. The Vietnamese are smart people… they recognise the power that a good soup can have, when extrapolated to it’s natural conclusion, the meal in a bowl.

For a while now I’ve been appreciating the comfort that a steaming bowl of ph? can deliver. The combination of thin slices of beef, mint, chilli, bean shoots, rice noodles… all mingling together in a well crafted stock, creating an experience that totals more than the sum of it’s parts.

Along the same lines then, I present to you “Hu Tieu Bo Kho”. Hu Tieu is a type of rice noodle, Bo means beef, and kho literally means braised, but more specifically refers to a style of thicker soup in which meats are cooked. So what you get when you put them all together is a lovely rich soup full of chunks of tender beef (brisket or chuck seem to be popular), with carrots, bean sprouts, and some of the other typical pho accompaniments. The soup is flavoured with star anise, lemongrass, and five spice, and seems to vary in consistency and intensity amongst my beloved top end of William Street ‘Little Vietnam’ area restaurants.

I could eat this every day of the week… such is the simple joy it brings.

You can find this one here:

Vinh Hong Restaurant
2/399 William Street
Northbridge
Phone: (08) 9227 1899

Red Lantern Whispers

Pauline Nguyen is a remarkable woman. A refugee, runaway, restaurateur, and now a writer. If you’ve yet to come across her book “Secrets of the Red Lantern”, then stop reading my drivel now and go find a copy. It’s an inspiring and emotional story of Pauline’s family history and the importance and significance of food to help overcome issues of displacement and as a form of healing to sooth the pain of isolation.

Woven throughout the beautiful fabric of the book, are most wonderful recipes for dishes that should inspire even the most stingy of cooks to embrace the freshness and herb loving decadence that is Vietnamese food.

Pauline of course runs Red Lantern restaurant in Surrey Hills (that’s Sydney sorry folks), with her partner Mark Jensen and brother Luke who look after the kitchen, and introduce and explain the recipes for the book.

Sharon and I were lucky enough to meet Pauline during the Perth Writers Festival, and even luckier to share a meal at a local Vietnamese restaurant with her. Carefully observing and absorbing as much as we could to gain as much valuable insight into what makes great Vietnamese food, or more importantly, what makes bad Vietnamese food.

From what I can gather, it’s all about freshness of ingredients, abundance of flavours, and an intermingling of textures. Many dishes are packed full of fresh herbs, with tangy dipping sauces, and a mixture of textures at all stages of the crunch spectrum.

My first few efforts at making things from the book have been interesting… There were some severely dodgy looking rice paper spring rolls, and my nuoc cham is gradually becoming quite decent. I’m yet to get into vegetable pickling, but that can’t be far off either.

My one of instant favourites however has been the simple yet very satisfying Bun Bo Xao (I looked for the special characters and couldn’t find them).

It’s a simple dish made by stir frying thinly sliced beef marinated in fish sauce, with some lemon grass and onion, and serving it over the top of a rice vermicelli salad, with lots of fresh mint and perilla (if you can find it). Then a good splashing of nuoc cham over the top, and you’ve got an excellent all purpose dish for a quick lunch or lazy dinner.

Thanks must go to Pauline for her inspiring book, and for just being a genuinely cool person to hang out with :)

Vietnamese Caramelised Chicken

Sometimes I have good ideas. Sometimes I get inspiration from other people. Sometimes my good ideas lead me to find inspiration, and it’s all one happy little coincidence. So after geeking around the web recently I came across a nifty little thing called Meebo. Meebo is a site that lets you embed your own little message window into the browser, so visitors can talk to you while they’re visiting your site. Which i thought was a relatively novel idea, although I figured it would be a waste of time.

Imagine my surprise then, when not long after setting it up, long time reader, first time instant live chatter Brad decided to mosey on by the site and give me an awesome recipe for the now obviously titled “Vietnamese Caramelised Chicken”.

According to Brad it was made by his brother recently, but he was going to do one better by remaking it with some additions. After taking a quick look at the recipe, I figured it could just about fit the often eclectic mix of ingredients I had in my fridge at the time, and so I printed it out and headed home to make it that very night.

The recipe from Brad, in it’s elegant simplicity is shown below. With the stuff in brackets being my own modifications.

VIETNAMESE-STYLE CARAMEL CHICKEN

1 TBSP RICE BRAN OIL (I used peanut oil)
4 SKINLESS, BONELESS CHICKEN THIGHS (I used two chicken breasts)
2 CLOVES GARLIC, SLICED
6 BROWN SHALLOTS, THINLY SLICED (I used one big onion)
1 TSP DRIED CHILLI FLAKES (I used a bunch of chilli powder)
6 TBSP SOY SAUCE (I basically splashed a whole bunch of soy sauce into the pan)
2 TBSP BROWN SUGAR
1/2 zucchini, sliced
handful of coriander, chopped

Heat the oil in a pan and brown the chicken in 2 batches, Remove the chicken and set aside. Add the garlic, shallots and chilli to the pan and cook over a gentle heat until soft and golden brown. Return the chicken to the pan and add the soy sauce and brown sugar. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, remove the lid, turn up the heat and cook, stirring until the chicken is coated and the sauce has reduced to a sticky syrup.

Serve on steamed rice with a squeeze of lemon or lime over the top.

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For a very simple video of the process I went through to make it, check this out

So the result was great. Succulent chicken and a thick slightly sweet sauce that came together as the brown sugar was absorbed into the soy sauce. The coriander gave it a fragrant lift, along with a splash of apple cider (the new Pipsqueak brand from Little Creatures) that just felt right at the time.

Here’s to serendipity bringing great ideas your way soon. And if you haven’t checked out the actual website in a while, stop by soon and say hello, I promise to try not to freak you out :)