Chè Trứng Gà Trà Gừng (Ginger-Egg-Tea Dessert)

I don't know how to beautifully translate Chè to English. Chè is a whole class of Vietnamese dessert; Wikipedia defines it as "any traditional Vietnamese sweet dessert soup or pudding." However, I don't think the description is fully accurate and it definitely does not emphasize how delectable this class of dessert actually is.
This specific Chè brings back memories of me in eating this dessert at midnight in Vietnam when I was little.This one is one of the easiest Chè to prepare. It is semi-comparable to the Chinese Tea Egg, but oh so different.
*This is not my picture! My friends have been complaining that the lack of pictures make them sad, so I found it randomly on the internet, and it is as close as I can get to the dessert I make. Mine is less dark and I leave whole ginger slices in there.

Chè Trứng Gà Trà Gừng (Ginger-Egg-Tea Dessert)
Savor. Devour.

Materials:

· 3 eggs

· 2 tsp jasmine tea leaves (or substitute for black tea if you do not have jasmine)

· 1” knob ginger, sliced into thin slices

· 1.5 tbsp sugar

· 2 cups water

Procedures:

· In a pot, boil the water and put in the tea leaves. Simmer for 5 minutes. Seive out the tea leaves.

· In a separate pot, add enough water to boil 3 eggs. When water is boiling, add eggs and let boil for 10 minutes. Take out, run under cool water, and peel.

· Add the tea to a pot; add sugar and mix to dissolve. Add ginger and eggs and let boil on medium-low heat for 15 minutes, until the egg is a nice brown color. Taste the soup and add sugar as desired.

· Serve while hot. The ginger is there for flavor, not really for eating. You can choose to leave this out while serving.

Bánh Bèo (Literal Translation: Water Fern Cake)

These little dishes can be appetizer or entree, but either way they are delicious. I had a craving for them at 10 pm last night, and as a 24/7 nibbler, I set out to make them. I was lucky that I had some mung bean paste from my bánh cam night two nights ago, which saved the majority of preparation time. This dish is eaten with fish sauce dipping sauce, which is a lighter salty-sweet sauce made from fish sauce. After I was done eating half, I remembered to take a picture. Better late than never, right? I am still getting used to this blogging business.


Bánh Bèo (Literal Translation: Water Fern Cake)
Savor. Devour.

Materials:

· 10 shrimp, headless, peeled

· ½ tsp mushroom seasoning or any msg substitute (can substitute with a bit of salt, pepper, and a dash of fish sauce)

· ½ a cup of peeled mung beans (the ones that are yellow, not green)

· 1 bunch of green onion, chopped

· Rice Cake*: 1 cup rice flour, 1 cup hot water, 1 cup room temperature water

· 20 little deep ceramic plates (like the ones in the picture)

· Steamer

· Optional: fried 1 cm² pig skin pieces (I left this out because I didn’t have pig skin and even if I did, greasy food at midnight is really bad for me), you can substitute this with small croutons if desired

· Sauce: 2 tbsp white vinegar + 1.5 tbsp sugar, mixed until dissolved; add 6-7 dashes of fish sauce and an optional squeeze of lime and mix well. Add chili paste as desired.

** You can substitute the rice cake recipe with ready-mixed banh beo flour found in Vietnamese stores and just follow the directions on the packet. I found that both ways of making gives similar results and are both delicious.

Procedures:

· In a pot with boiling water, add the mung beans and let cook on medium for 45 minutes, until the mung beans are extremely soft. When it is, drain out the water and either hand mash the mung bean into a paste or use a food processor. Add a drizzle of canola oil (olive oil is too bitter and doesn’t keep as long). Let it cool.

· In another pot of boiling water, boil the shrimp. Pat dry the shrimp and using a food processor puree the shrimp. Pour out the water and dry the pot. Put the shrimp back in and using a spoon, mix and separate the bits of shrimp. The texture when finished should be a coarse powder/cotton texture. Let cool.

· Set up the steamer, add a lot of water and leave it on high. This dish needs a lot of steam to cook the rice cake. Once the water is boiling, put in the small bowls/plates and let it steam for about 2 minutes to get hot.

· In a bowl, mix the rice flour with cold water, then slowly add the hot water. Mix well.

· When the bowls are hot, using a ladle, scoop in about 3 tbsp (depending on your bowl size, make sure the rice cake layer is about .5 cm thick) for each cup. Cover the lid of the steamer and let steam for 5 minutes. Take the cups out and repeat until all the rice cakes are made. Let cool.

· While the rice cake is cooling, you can set up a pan with an inch layer of oil, add the pieces of pork skin, and fry until crispy. Drain oil on a paper towel. You can also substitute it with croutons.

· In a small bowl, add the chopped green onions, 1 tsp oil (olive is okay here), and mix well. Microwave it for 1 minute.

· To assemble, you can either remove the rice cakes from the bowl (it is not that sticky to the bowl) by using a knife and running it through the edge of the circle, or eat it straight from the bowl using a spoon. Add a layer of the shredded shrimp, a layer of the mung bean paste, green onion, and top it off with some fried pork skin. Pour on some fish dipping sauce and enjoy!

Vietnamese Omelet with Tomato, Onion and Chinese Sausage

Although the name Vietnamese omelet is often misleadingly used for the Vietnamese dish called Bánh xèo, the literal translation of it would be this dish. It is just like an American omelet but with the typical toppings Vietnamese people use. It is a day-to-day dish, usually eaten for breakfast with bread or rice. In the dorms, I leave out the Chinese sausage because I get too lazy to drive to the supermarket, but it is really good with the sausage and if you can get it, I highly recommend it. I posted this recipe, as simple as it seems to me, because a friend of mine, Courtland requested it. If you have any requests for recipes, feel free to contact me and I will either post up a recipe I know is delicious or if I have not made the dish, find and try out recipes until I find the best blend of ingredients and seasonings for you.

Vietnamese Omelet with Tomato, Onion and Chinese Sausage
Savor. Devour.

Materials:

· 2 eggs, beaten

· ½ medium tomato, sliced

· ½ medium onion, sliced

· 1 Chinese sausage link

· 2 squirts of fish sauce

· A pinch of salt

· A dash of pepper

· 1/2 a tsp mushroom seasoning (or any msg substitute)

Procedures:

· Mix the egg and seasoning together.

· In a small pan, boil 1 inch worth of water and roll the sausage in it for 10 seconds. This gets rid that unwanted grease and impurities on the outside of the sausage. Take the sausage out of the water and thinly slice it. If you are in a time crunch, just turn the faucet to hot water and wash the sausage before slicing it.

· In a pan on high heat, drizzle in some oil and sauté the onion for 30 seconds. Evenly disperse the onion. Add in the tomato, evenly around the pan.

· Slowly pour in the egg; rotate the pan to make sure it is evenly distributed around the pan as well. Rotate the pan to do so. Cook for 1 minute.

· Turn the heat to medium and cook until the egg mostly solidifies. Flip the egg over using a wide spatula (if you are as bad at omelet flipping as I am, divide the omelet into two even half circles and flip each respective half at a time). Let cook for another minute until golden-brown.

· This can be eaten with rice or stuffed into a baguette for a quick meal.

Bánh Chuối Nướng (Vietnamese Baked Banana Bread)

This dessert is great for when you have bananas too ripe for eating, milk about to spoil, or baguettes about to harden to rock... or any combination of the above. It keeps for about a week in the fridge and is very delicious! Courtland, this is for you.

Bánh Chuối Nướng (Vietnamese Baked Banana Bread)
Savor. Devour.

Materials:

· 4 medium ripe bananas

· 2 French baguette or any crusty breads (minus sourdough)

· 2 cups milk (any type)

· 1 1/2 cup sugar

Procedures:

· Mix 1 cup sugar with the milk in a bowland stir until fully dissolved.

· Tear the baguette into tiny (1 cm³) pieces and let them soak up the milk

· In a different bowl, slice the bananas in ¼ cm thickness and toss with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar.

· Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

· In a bread pan (6x8 inches) add a layer of bread at the bottom, layer on the banana slices and alternate between the two until finished.

· Bake the bread for 1 hour.

Cá Hấp Cuốn Bánh Tráng (Steamed fish rolled with Rice Paper)

I simplified this dish so that it is both healthier and faster to prepare. Substituting fish fillets in for many Vietnamese fish dishes work really well, and it cuts out the fish preparation as well as the fat.

This dish is a finger-food dish. It is naturally healthy, consisting of a multitude of fresh fragrant herbs (several varieties of mint), romaine lettuce, bean sprouts, and pickled leeks for vegetables, rice paper for carb intake, and fish for protein.

Cá Hấp Cuốn Bánh Tráng (Steamed fish rolled with Rice Paper)
Savor. Devour.

Serves 2

Materials:

· 2 Cod or Mahi Mahi fillets (you can substitute this for any tougher meat fish fillets, I would, for example, not recommend tilapia or catfish because the meat melts in your mouth)

· A pinch of salt and black pepper

· An abundance of romaine lettuce, cut in half, bean sprouts, various Vietnamese mint leaves, and pickled leek

· A steamer (for a makeshift steamer, use a big pot, fill it with 1.5 inches of water, place a ceramic bowl upside down inside the pot and the plate with the fish ready to be steamed on top of the bowl)

· Rice paper

· 1 cup of Chopped green onions

· ½ cup of crushed peanuts

· Olive oil (or canola oil)

· For the mắm nêm (salted and fermented fish) dipping sauce: mince ½ cup fresh pineapple; puree a 6 inch stalk of lemongrass; in a pot, dissolve 1/3 cup water and 1 tbsp sugar, and let cool; mix all ingredients together, adding ½ a lime’s worth of lime juice and mắm nêm concentrate (this can be bought in bottle form in Vietnamese Supermarkets); stir and add rooster chili paste as desired.

*If you cannot eat the mắm nêm (which I will admit has a high sodium concentration), replace this dipping sauce with the fish sauce dipping sauce. To prepare this sauce, use 2 tbsp white vinegar, 1 tbsp water, 1.5 tbsp sugar, and mix until dissolve. Add 6-7 squirts of fish sauce and mix well. Add rooster chili paste as desired.

Procedures:

· Clean and paper-towel dry the fish fillets. Rub lightly with the salt and pepper.

· Steam the fish for 15 minutes on medium-low heat after the water boils.

· In a bowl, put the chopped green onions and 1 tsp of olive oil. Mix well so that the onion is coated in oil. Microwave this for 1 minute.

· Take the fish out of the steamer. Freely spread the onion on top of the fish and top it off with the crushed peanuts.

· To eat, dip the rice paper thoroughly but quickly in a bowl of warm-hot water and place on a plate. In the top middle of the rice paper, add the lettuce and herbs, and fish, and roll the rice paper, folding in the sides, tightly. Then, dip this roll into the sauce and enjoy!