Musings on Family and Growing Up

As you may know, I recently turned twenty and am about to enter my third year of college. I live and work in Berkeley, about an hour north of San Jose and rarely come home, though I try to sneak in visits as often as I can. To most, this would signify a certain amount of maturity and grown-up-ness, but I can’t help but feel every bit the little girl who would waddle around the house in nothing but her diaper, bumping into coffee tables, falling over and having my mom pick me back up again. On second thought, I still do that, minus the diaper bit

One night not too long ago, I came home to my family and somehow all four of us managed to fit onto my parents’ old queen sized bed – albeit a bit cramped and hazardous as the bed is God-knows-how-old. And we aren’t small people either. We talked and laughed and chatted and giggled just like old times – my dad would chuckle so hard that his tummy would jiggle. And my mom was in a fit of tears. Nhi was having paroxysms of laughter, and I couldn’t help but smile and grin at the happy and fortunate sight in front of me. I love my family, despite being older, despite being further away, despite not being able to hang out and live every moment of my life with them. I love my family – just as much (if not more) as that little girl in the diapers did.
So I guess it’s no surprise that I love coming home. And one of the many advantages of coming home is my mom’s cooking. People grow out of their childhood habits, bedrooms, homes, but never their mom’s cooking. It’s just so nourishing and tempered in so much love that I could never part from it. I use to think that mothers were magical. Every dash of salt or spoon of garlic that went into the pot was like a pinch of love folded into care and whisked with tenderness. I still feel that way. And this weekend my mom made her own take of a rather complicated Vietnamese dish called Mi Quang, which consists of noodles bathed in a savory broth and topped with salted meats, loads of greens, tons of peanuts and crunchy banh trang. I will never be able to replicate any of her amazing Vietnamese dishes, but I did write up a basic skeleton which may help, but VietWorldKitchen and the NYTimes do offer additional instruction.

Mi Quang – Me Hue’s Style

Ingredients
Broth:
Ground beef or pork
Pork bone
Pineapple
Tomatoes

Salted Meats (Thit Rim):
Prawns
Pork shoulder meat (less fatty than the traditional ba roi cut)
Fish Sauce
Onions
Garlic
Store-bought cha lua & cha que
Other:
Rice Stick Noodles
Tumeric/Saffron/Yellow Food Coloring
Green Cabbage
Thai Basil
Mint
Cilantro
Chinese Chives
Toasted and crushed peanuts
Toasted Banh Trang (Sesame Seed Rice Cracker)

General Instructions

In terms of being strategical, the best thing to do first is to get the broth base going. That entails filling up a large pot (>4 qt.) with the bones, chopped tomatoes, cut pineapple (alternately can be canned pineapple with juice). Fill the pot with water so it skims the surface of all these items and allow to come to a boil, at which point you should turn down the heat so the pot simmers. A lot of gunk will start to float at the top from boiling the meat, all of which should be skimmed off the surface. This broth will later be strained again, so a quick skim will be good. Allow to simmer for at least 20 minutes. The meat should start to fall off the bones. The longer the better I say – keep on low heat while you prep everything else.

In the meantime, sauté garlic/onions and chunks of shoulder meat and shrimp in a shallow pot. Once they start to brown up a bit, pour in a few tablespoons of fish sauce and allow the juice to thicken up. Now would be a good time to season with some sugar as well, as the fish sauce is too salty for most taste buds. Once the meat is cooked through, tender and savory, take off the heat and set aside.

Once that is all good and done, all the greens need to be washed and shredded.

Taking the noodles, soak in a bit of tumeric or saffron or even yellow food coloring will work. This will make the noodles nice and pliable as well as give it some color. Soak for about 10-15 minutes or so. Then rinse under cold water again to get rid of the tumeric/saffron taste. You only want color, not flavor.
Now, go back to that pot of simmering bones and remove all the bones/tomatoes/pineapple bits. You can do this by straining it through a colander or just picking everything out. The end product should be a clear broth. Keeping it on low heat, pull little chunks of ground meat into the pot and let it cook. It will look like little meat balls floating in the pot. Your pot will start to get frothy again, so you will have to skim the top again. At some point, flavor the pot of broth with salt, sugar and (gasp) MSG (a teeny fraction of an 1/8 tsp). Once the meat cooks through, it’s time to turn off the heat and assemble. And the pictures tell it all.

Layer a generous handful of noodles into a bowl and laddle a small amount of broth so that it DOES NOT cover all the noodles. Now, layer on the salted meats (with a bit of the carmelized liquid) and the store-bought and sliced cha lua & cha que. Top with chopped cilantro, green onion, chives, toasted nuts, toasted sesame seed rice cracker and a few sprigs of cilantro for garnish. Voilà.

This wasn’t meant to be an easy dish, but I hope the pictures helped inspire you enough to go out and look up methods to make this dish on your own. It’s delicious, I swear – and though my mom does not do it the authentic way, her cliffnotes version is amazingly tasty. And like I said earlier, filled with love and comfort that only a mom can provide. So this ends my slightly sentimental entry, but I hope you have enjoyed another glimpse into another day in the life of. Until soon readers!

Forever thankful for family,
AnhD

And the early morning after….

The morning after Pie Day Friday that is! Friday night I was invited to my friend Annie’s place for a weekly event christened Pie Day Friday – where all the food prepped and served must be in pie form. Wouldn’t you say that’s a brilliant idea? Just imagine all the endless food possibilities? Shephard’s pie, pot pie, the vegan/vegetarian form of any of those, curry pies, then your fruit pies, custard pies, pizza pies, oh my mouth is watering just from listing all of those. I recently made an apple pie which would have been perfect for the occasion if Kari and I had not already scarfed down the entire 10-inch thing in under 2 days. Oops. So instead, I contributed in presence and rootbeer floats… which eventually turned into whiskey and beer floats anyway. Don’t start to judge – I was a lonely girl on a Friday night… and it beats coming home to an empty apartment as all the apartment-mates were home for the weekend. It also beats coming home to forced silence and having to think about things that I didn’t want to think about. It’s amazing how the company of others, even strangers and newly made friends, can be the cure to contemplation and solitude. And of course whatever Annie put in my drink also helped.

Crumb Top Apple Pie
source: Pie by Ken Haedrich

So I have to first say that my pie pastry kicks Jimmy’s pie crust’s butt – well, if it had a butt anyway. However, this filling is a bit tart. I liked that for Jimmy/Jessica’s pie, they hand dipped each slice of apple in cinnamon-sugar. That’s definitely a trick I could pick up from them to sweeten up the apple. The crumb topping is most excellent, and if you decide not to sweeten the filling, you can sweeting the crumb topping, just for contrast. The cornstarch really helps to fill in the spaces between the apple slices, so it looks absolutely beautiful when you cut into it. Delicious. All my notes/comments are in [brackets].

Basic Butter Pie Pastry
a must have in your repertoire

Ingredients
1-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes [I froze mine 20 mins before use; the colder the better]
1/2 cup coold water

Directions
By hand: Combine flour, sugar, salt in large bowl. Scatter butter into bowl and cut butter into flour mixture until broken into the size of small peas/crumbles. Sprinkle half the water over the mixture and continue to fork/cut to dampen the mixture. Add the remaining water and continue to combine, toss, mix, fork, whatever your preferred method is. But try to use your fingers as little as possible, because the heat is supposedly not good for the dough. And don’t over work the dough… I’ve heard that it kills that flakey texture you want in your pastry.

Now once thoroughly combined, try to pack your dough into a ball. If it doesn’t pack well (too crumbly), then add a tiny drizzle of cold water and work it in with your fingers. Once packed, knead the dough ball once or twice and then flatted into a disk about 3/4″ thick. Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate overnight or at least an hour before rolling.

Pie Filling

Ingredients
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
5 peeled, sliced Granny Smith apples
1 tbs fresh lemon juice [I used 1 whole lime juice]
1/4-1/2 cup cornstarch
*I also used 1/4 tsp ground clove + 1/2 tsp cinnamon; I just love the spiciness esp when mixed with with apples

Crumb Topping

Ingredients
6 tbs unsalted butter
1-1/4 flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions

If you refrigerated the dough overnight, remove from fridge and allow to warm up a bit (<20 min) before working with it.
Flour your counter top and roll the pastry into a (about) 13-inch circle. I don’t have a rolling pin, so my old POM glasses will have to do. Place the dough over a pie tin/pan and tuck the edges in without stretching it. With the left overs, I make a ridge for the pie crust. Freeze for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 400*F.

In another bowl, mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Set aside. In another bowl, combine apples and lemon juice. Sprinkle 1 tbs of the sugar-starch mix over the coold pie shell. Arrange a first, single, compacted layer of apples into the shell. Sprinkle another spoonful of sugar over the apples. Lay a second layer of apples over the first and sprinkle again with the sugar-starch. Repeat until you have used up all the apples. you should have something like 4-6 layers of apples. Place the pie in center oven rack and bake for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make crumb topping by first melting butter. Pour melted butter over the combined flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon and mix well. Using your fingertips, rub mixture until it forms damp crumbs. Set aside.

After 30 mins., remove pie from oven and reduce to 375*F. Dump the crumb topping over the pie and spread evenly. Tap the pie tin gently. Return pie to oven, rotating pie to get an even brown. To prevent bubbling over/spillage, slide a baking sheet just below the pie tin. Bake until juices bubble and thick, about another 5 minutes. If top browns too quickly, simply tent with aluminum foil for the last few minutes of baking.
Remove pie and allow to cool for at least 1 hour before serving. I find that the flavor just gets better the longer you wait – like the next day. Delicious.

This was a much-inspired pie recipe, but I’m sorry to say that this entry was not. After watching endless hours of Gossip Girls, all creative faculty has been lost, and I’m not too sure when I will be able to recover it. I wonder how the great geniuses of our time overcame writers/creative-block. da Vinci could not have been bubbling forth with inspiration all the time. Nor could IM Pei or Imogen Cunningham, right? Well, I am praying that a lightning bolt strikes me soon, because I just feel soo dull and not inspired/God-touched.
So, please send me your muses fellow foodies and perhaps this spell will be over soon. On another note, this weekend (to reiterate) is Wicked Weekend and I am ecstatic about that. School starts next week to my horror and the days until I start to neglect the blog are numbered and inevitably nearing. But that is another day, today I am just going to enjoy the present and this pie. Yum.

Fare thee well!

AnhD

Monday is just another morning…

Tuesday I only feel like living
Dancing along to every song
Liassez moi danser!

It really is just another day, albeit I did wake up on the right side of the bed and I’m in a good mood. Nothing has been going on in my life, and thus I don’t feel particularly inspired to write anything worth reading. But I do want to share a quick and easy Salsa Recipe that I picked up from Mr9 not too long ago, when we did Verde’s (third? fourth?) going away party. I’ve posted a recipe similar to this before, but now I have the pictures to do it justice.

Quick Oven Roasted Salsa
courtesy of Mr9 and lots of trial/error
The ingredients listed below are definitely adjustable according to what you like in your own salsa. More heat? Then I say, more peppers. Need more liquid? Add more tomatoes. Want sweetness? Use red onions. It’s as simple as that, and is a perfect staple in the fridge especially to top off tortilla chips or tacos – the ultimate snack for long TV marathons (more about that later).

Ingredients
4 large tomatoes
8 red/green bell peppers
2 jalepenos
2 large yellow onions
2-4 cloves of garlic
cayenne pepper
paprika
red chili flakes
apple cider vinegar
salt & sugar, to taste

Directions
Wash your veggies! With the salmonella scare and what not, it’s a good thing to wash everything. Duh.

After washing.

In an oven (alternatively, can be done on the grill), broil all the vegetables until you get nice charred bits. Yes, if you are worried about cancer, the flavor makes it well worth the slight increased risk of a tumor. I swear. And you actually eventually peel the worst of it off anyway… if you want… Make sure you rotate the veggies to get an even browning.

Before.

After.

Once removed from the oven, allow veggies to cool before further handling. You can choose to remove the worst of the burnt bits, or leave them on for that smokey flavor found in the best salsas. I left most of mine on. Lots of liquid will be oozing out of these veggies, especially the tomatoes, so you can drain them a bit as well, or your salsa might resemble soup…

Roughly chop all the veggies, removing the stems/seeds from the bellpeppers and jalepenos. Or you can leave the seeds if you are brave. Completely up to you. Place the chopped veggies in a food processor and quickly pulse each vegetable to your desired consistency. I like chunky bits of bell pepper left, so I pulse these separately.

Ready for the chopping.

Place all the now-processed veggies into a large bowls. Start by adding 1 tbs. apple cider vinegar, 1 tbs cayenne pepper, 1 tsp paprika and 1 tbs salt. Mix well. From there it’s all about test-tasting as you go. I also added a handful or so of red chili flakes. In the end, I was a bit too liberal with the vinegar, so ended up adding 2tbs of sugar into the bowl as well. No big deal. You learn to fix and test taste after every addition.

Adding the spices.

The final thing. Now I gotta go buy tortilla chips…

So just a short and sweet entry for today. Like I said, I’m in need of a muse. The last few entries have been re-posts as I’ve been too lazy to really try anything new. But perhaps that will change in the upcoming days. On deck, I have an entry about Pie Day Friday (thanks Annie!), as well as a post on an easy stir-fry from when I was craving mom’s cooking last weekend. Kari and I made terrone recently, but sadly there are no pictures. There will most definitely be more candy making in the kitchen as we bought not one – but TWO candy thermometers for that very purpose. Also, I am leaving for SoCal this weekend. Can I say, orchestra seats for Wicked at the Pantages?!? I am ecstatic and very excited. Pictures and stories will follow. But until soon!

Insipid (someone help cure me!),
AnhD