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The Read List: My Vietnam, Stories and Recipes

Luke Nguyen's cookbook/memoir of his travels through Vietnam is easily the most comprehensive, authentic, and honest guide on the country's cooking ever seen outside of its borders. Working his way from one region of Vietnam to the next, Luke shares his stories and vast personal knowledge of each area, exploring the dynamic differences that highlight Vietnam's colorful regional cuisines. Not just pho and summer rolls like most other books in the same field, Luke actually takes us in-depth onto some of the hidden gems of Vietnamese cooking that I've come to know and love growing up in a Vietnamese household, and doesn't try to change anything or ease up on recipes for the average cook. These are real, honest-to-blog recipes from the source, unafraid to be challenging in favor of authenticity. With its detailed guides, heartwarming stories and eye-popping photos, "My Vietnam" really sets the standard for what a regional/national cookbook is all about, and easily stands as the best I've seen in the genre of Vietnamese cooking. 

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How to Make a Crepe

They look fancy and can appear like a tremendous amount of work, but in reality your basic everyday crepe is a fairly easy thing to do, and actually kind of fun to boot. The recipe is pretty no fail, the only real challenge being the cooking process. You might fuck up the first or second one, but after a few tries you'll be a pro in no time with this recipe.

Equipment 1 standard nonstick saute pan 1 wire rack (not necessary, but extraordinarily helpful) 1/2 cup measuring cup

Ingredients 1 cup all purpose flour pinch of salt 1 tablespoon sugar  1 1/2 cup of milk (or soymilk) 3 eggs 2 tablespoons melted butter The How (Detailed for your benefit) Getting saute pan hot to begin is crucial to getting properly cooked crepes and really the only important step to being a pro. Like you're preheating an oven, set burner to low and let your saute pan warm up while you mix ingredients. Do a wet and dry bowl, whisking flour, salt and sugar in one and the milk and eggs in the other. Combine both, whisk together, then add the melted butter. Batter = done.  Crank heat up to medium and and add some oil. With small piece of a paper towel, spread the oil around the pan even so it coats. Let the pan heat to medium properly, and then test, dropping a little batter in and see if the underside cooks relatively quickly (20 seconds or so). If it is browned and crispy relatively quickly (1 minute or 2), you're ready to go, if not crank heat a touch higher and let it heat a bit more before finally starting. I like to use a nice sized measuring cup to do the crepes. Spoon a decent amount of the batter and pour into pan steadily, swirling to even coat. Once enough batter hits the pan to cover and make a nice round crepe, reserve batter in your measuring cup if left over, stand back and let the magic happen. About 40 seconds to a minute later, you should be able to start pulling at the crepe with a spatula and looking at the underside. Once there's a nice brown coloring, use the spatula to raise the crepe slightly, then use your fingers to flip the crepe and cook the topside for a few seconds. Once it's done, put the crepe on your wire rack to cool. Add some oil to the pan and with the paper towel, once again spread around evenly and repeat crepe making instructions until all your batter is all gone.  Once you've got the recipe down, the world is yours. Sweet, savory, both; have fun with the combinations and find what fits your taste. If not feeling creative, banana and nutella always does it for me. Mmm, banana and nutella.

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Small Stuff: Chai Concentrate

Indian chai. So tasty and complex flavor-wise that you'd think there's no way you could possibly make it. In actuality, it's one of the easiest things in the world to make, and a great budget drink for the cool Fall weather. Drop your pumpkin-spiced coffee and give this recipe a whirl.

Ingredients 4 1/2 cups of water 10 tea bags of black tea (preferably chai tea) 8 cardamon pods 2 anise stars 2 sticks cinnamon 8 cloves 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon orange zest 3/4 cup of brown sugar 1 tablespoon of honey

Note: You can find most of these at a local organic store. Pay by the ounce and save a ton of money. 

Recipe is as easy as it gets. Get the water boiling. Take it off the heat and steep all the ingredients for 15-20 minutes. Strain and keep in a sealed container, refrigerated.  I usually use about 50/50 concentrate with very warm milk. Should be nice and warm to drink. This is usually a very sweet drink, so if you want the whole goods, add a bit of condensed milk to your cup for the full ride. 

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Small Stuff: Baba Ganoush

Few things are as satisfying and easy to bring to a party and impress without trying to hard than baba ganoush. Roast, blend, drizzle and sprinkle stuff on top and profit. This one is an inbetween of most versions, opting for both tahini and yogurt to jazz it up.

3-4 medium eggplants 1 lemon 4 cloves of garlic, minced 2 tablespoons Greek yogurt 2 tablespoons tahini 1/8 teaspoon chili powder salt pepper olive oil honey

Preheat oven to 350. Cut the tops off the eggplants and poke some holes in them so they don't implode in the oven. Drizzle some olive oil and put them in for 30-40 minutes, or until fork tender.  Once done from oven, let cool a few minutes until you can handle it with you bare hands. Remove the skin (some pieces are okay) and toss the eggplant and all the measured ingredients along with salt and pepper into a blender. Drizzle a generous portion of olive oil and splash of honey and blend to your liking. I like it rather thin myself. Taste, adjust, and enjoy. If you want to pretty it up, spoon the baba ganoush into a bowl, create in a pool in the center and drizzle good olive oil into it, and then sprinkle paprika over the surface to finish and add a little more heat. 

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The Read List: The Family Meal

Ferran Adria's The Family Meal is kind of what I almost wished 90% of cookbooks were. Though some of the dishes in the book are what some people may consider to be daunting, everything is expertly handled by a photographic step-by-step instruction, carefully holding the home cook's hand from beginning to end. Besides the fabulous three-course recipes Ferran provides, he also has a lot of wonderful, restaurant quality base-recipes for things like tomato sauce, pesto, and stocks that will surely help new cooks find their way. Ferran Adria is considered to be one of the best cooks in the world, if not, perhaps even the best at some points in his career, piloting what was the best restaurant in the world - El Bulli - for over two-and-a-half decades, along the way reinventing the wheel over and over again for modern cooks with his inventive gastronomic creations and epic vision of what and how food should be. The Family Meal takes things back home, however, touching on a wide range of family meals not only related to his Spanish roots, but globetrotting across the world, from East to West, showing his range of knowledge and respect for global cuisine. For the savvy cook, this may not be enough to tickle all of your foodie needs, but if you're a newer cook looking to take the next step, this is the book for you, hands down.

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Roasted Eggplant and Curry Potato Hash

This dish was sort of a happy accident. I had something sort of like it at an Indian restaurant, tried to make it from memory at home and ended up making something almost totally different, throwing separate tasty things I was doing at the time and pulling it magically together into this hearty vegetarian dish. A little sweet and spicy from the garam masala, potato-y and full of textures from the slightly crispy roasted eggplant to the almost raw tomato and a little pop of sweet from the peas, I think it's a pretty comforting way to go any day of the week, and a good CSA basket buster in the fall. 

Ingredients

2 yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced 1 large eggplant, sliced 1/4 inch, salt and let drain for fifteen minutes 1 tomato (heirloom if you can help it, do yourself good!) some frozen peas, defrosted 1/2 onion, diced  1 1/2 tsp garam masala   salt pepper 

Doing it

Preheat oven to 375 F. Olive oil, salt and pepper your drained eggplant slices and throw it into the oven for about 30 minutes, or until golden and crispy on the bottom. When eggplant gets in oven, start some oil in a pan on medium high heat. When oil is hot, throw in garam masala and stir for 20-30 seconds, to let the spice open up a bit. Add potatoes and stir in pan well, coating potatoes in the hot garam. Let it go on medium heat, add oil to pan if looking dry. After a few minutes, add the onion and stir. Add salt and pepper to your liking. From here, cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally and letting the potato soften (potaotes should be nice and soft, but still retaining it's diced shape by the time this dish is done).When the eggplant is golden and ready, bring it out, let it rest a moment, and chop it up. Add to the pan with the potatoes and stir well. After a minute or two, add the tomato and peas, and bring it together until thoroughly warmed. Shut heat off, and let the dish warm for a few minutes before serving.  Serve with rice or naan, and a chutney if you have a recipe you like floating around. Some pickled vegetables would be a nice side as well.

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Ma Po Tofu, Korean Style

This dish holds a special place in my heart as it kind of is my own creation. Drawing from some experiences with Ma Po Tofu I had along with a long glance through the spicy pork and rice cake dish in David Chang's Momofuku cookbook, this is something that's gone through a million versions, until this one that I finally feel comfortable enough to settle on and call my own.  

Ingredients

1 pack firm tofu, cubed 1 pack ground chicken dragon sauce 1/2 yellow onion, diced 1 tsp minced garlic salt pepper sesame oil sugar green onion  fried shallot/onion (store-bought, typically Asian market) Doing It

This dish is all about seasoning by layers, starting with the chicken. Saute the onions in a medium-high pan until fragrant, then add the ground chicken and break it down some. Add the minced garlic, pinch of salt and pepper for seasoning and a very light drizzle of sesame oil. Cook until meat browns, then drain in a colander and clean saute pan.

On medium-high heat, heat some oil and add the cubed tofu. Watch it occasionally, add oil if needed and let the cubes get nice and colored, almost crispy in all sides. Which ready, add the meat back in, along with desired amount of sauce. Add more than you think, because the sauce soaks into this dish very thoroughly. Chop the green onion and scatter on top, along with fried onion. You should have a nice variety of textures along with a lot of flavor from the sauce and seasoned, browned ground chicken, making for a very tasty and filling dish to go with a bowl of rice.

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Small Stuff: Dragon Sauce

Noodles, bibimbap, stir-fries and more, this sauce is a quick go-to for everything in the universe. It's pretty easy if you've got an Asian pantry going on, and still easy if you don't. This variation makes it even simpler, asking for more accessible ingredients when you want it in a hur. The pepper paste you'll have to hunt down at an Asian market, but everything else you should be able to get anywhere.

1/2 cup water 1/2 cup sugar 5 spoonfuls of red pepper paste 1 spoonful soy sauce 1 spoonful rice wine vinegar 1 teaspoon sesame oil Heat the sugar and water first in a medium heat pot until sugar dissolves, then stir in the red pepper paste and turn to low heat. Stir until red pepper paste is incorporated, then add the rest of the ingredients. This recipe isn't exact science, since the end product is up to your taste. From here, taste and adjust to your liking. It may be a bit sweet to your taste, in which case you can add more rice wine vinegar to balance it out. Or you may think it's not sweet enough, in which case adding a bit of honey is a really nice way to balance it out and thicken it. This should produce a small jar's worth, and stays okay in the fridge for a few days.

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"Thinking globally is an abstraction. What the world needs now isn't love sweet love - that's a slogan." What the world needs now, he maintains, is more compassionate local actions. "Shopping at the hardware store owned by a family living in town. Buying locally raised tomatoes in the summer, and locally baked bread. Cooking meals at home. Those are all acts of love for a place."

- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

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Fried Rice Like You've Never Had Before

Some free time in front of a cookbook section recently got me really excited about this overly-elaborate fried rice dish. Pooling from a collection of recipes I've been starring at these past few weeks, it may be the most involved fried rice recipe ever, and yet still a pretty quick and easy dish to make any time of the week. Between the sweetness of the peas with the way it's cooked here, the sweet/salty teriyaki sauce, the crispiness of the rice with how it is grilled in the pan and the bacon that gets infused all over this fried rice dish, it's a special dish that sets itself way over the crappy fried rice that you get anywhere else. Yes, it is that fucking amazing.  

Ingredients

cooked rice, preferably day old 1 bell pepper, diced  half of a large yellow onion or whole medium, diced half cup frozen green peas Teriyaki Sauce (click here for recipe) 3-4 slices of bacon, 3 if thick cut - diced cracked black pepper

Doing It

Start with the bacon on medium heat. Cook until just starting to crisp. Add bell pepper, onion, and a good few turns of cracked black pepper. Stir occasionally and cook until nice and soft, with some color if possible. Once finished, transfer to a plate with paper towel to remove some excess bacon fat. Leave saute pan, however, for the rice. We want that bacon goodness.  In another dry saute pan (can do this while onions and peppers are cooking), heat to medium and cook peas (defrost ahead of time or briefly in microwave beforehand) until warmed with some black pepper and pinch of salt for seasoning. Remove from heat once warmed and add teaspoon of butter immediately, swirling peas into melting butter. 

Returning to the bacon greased saute pan, heat it back to medium high heat. Take the rice, and using as much as you got, cover the pan with the rice, firmly packing the rice in to really get as much touching the hot pan. Let sit in the pan for 1-2 minutes, allowing rice to caramelize and crispify (we're calling that a real word). Add the peas and bacon/onion/pepper mix to the pan and gently fold it all together. Finally, get the teriyaki sauce out and add as much as you like. I like to keep it light to let all the flavors come out. Fold everything together once more and eat up.

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Small Stuff: Teriyaki Sauce

A lot of people run out and buy some brand teriyaki sauce at the store and start drizzling it on everything. Well, if you're one of those people, stop it. Here's a bit of a modified recipe from Ferran Adria's The Family Meal for teriyaki sauce that'll blow your socks off and make you forget that bottled junk ever existed. 

1 tablespoon chopped lemongrass 1 teaspoon chopped ginger  1 cup low sodium chicken broth 1/4 cup soy sauce 3/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup honey 

Add all the ingredients to a pot a bring to a simmer on medium. Let go on medium, medium low heat for about fifteen minutes. Check to see if it fits your taste. If it's a bit too sweet, add some more soy sauce to balance it out. Vice versa with sugar or more broth. Once it fits your taste, strain. You can leave it in the fridge for about a week, or forget about it for awhile if you throw in the freezer. 

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The Read List: This is a Cookbook

Fried grape salad with hazelnuts and blue cheese. Cheesy polenta with fried egg. S'mores with bourbon-maple marshmallows. A DIY for making bacon. A DIY for making bacon. I've only had an hour with it, but This is a Cookbook by the Sussman's has already given me dozens of cooking ideas to explore and play with. Not the kind of summer-y, light and floaty recipes that the average cookbook provides, but as the title of the book suggests, recipes that have some real weight and flavor - things that you actually want and will make at home the second you gaze upon them in the book. There's a good degree of easy-to-challenging recipes for the avid cook, and best of all a lot of base recipes for things like bread, pizza and various sauces that you can dive into any night of the week for a quick meal. The boys have a real connection with the food truck revolution in particular, and talk a lot about recipes from friends in the business, which may be why it appeals to me so much as someone who is obsessed with what's been going on in the mobile eats world. It's a color, creative, and well-written book that's sure to inspire a few new dishes that you may not have thought of otherwise. 

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Summer Squash and Tomato Tart w/ Balsamic Caramelized Onions and Honey-Goat Cheese

Roasting squash has pretty much been my go-to thing all summer long. It brings out the sweetness and gets the squash nice and tender like I like it, so this tart was almost a no-brainer thing for me to do. For this recipe though, I caramelize the squash a bit in a pan beforehand, and toss in some balsamic caramelized onions to fancy it up. The end result was a pretty tasty, almost pizza-like tart that was devoured in a hurry.  

Kitchen Gadgets

steel saute pan baking sheet cooking spray or parchment paper 

Ingredients

1 sheet puff pastry  2 summer squash, sliced  3 plum tomatoes, sliced 2 yellow onions, sliced 2 ounces goat cheese   honey  balsamic vinegar butter salt ground thyme pepper Fresh basil, chiffon (optional) 

Doing It

Preheat oven to 375 and prepare the puff pastry sheet onto a baking sheet. You can use either parchment paper or some spray to keep from sticking. In a good steel saute pan, heat some oil on medium-high and get the onions cooking with a sprinkle of salt on them. As the pan starts to brown and the onions start to turn color, give them a good turn constantly and turn down the heat to medium. Hit the pan with some balsamic vinegar to pull the flavors and deglaze the pan a little. Keep bringing the temp down every few minutes and keep tossing the onions until they're nice, soft, and caramelized. (Process should take roughly thirty minutes.)  I like using steel saute pans for onions since it really gets a nice color going and allows for some tasty ideas with the deglazing process. The balsamic is definitely one of my favorites.  In another pan, add a couple tablespoons of water to a medium-high heat pan and add the sliced squash, cooking until the rawness is just out. Let it cook on medium heat with a sprinkle of the thyme, salt, and pepper until the squash takes on some color. 

Let the vegetables rest for a few and start assembling the tart. First, take goat cheese and mix in a tablespoon of honey, some of the basil chiffonade, and a touch of cracked black pepper. Mix well and spread an inch in all-around the tart. We want to make a pie-like crust at the end here, hence the inch. Top the spread with the caramelized onion, and the assemble rows of squash and the fresh tomato. For the tomatoes, slice and drizzle some olive oil over along with a pinch of salt and pepper to season. Once everything is on, pinch the puff pastry crust in a bit to create kind of a pie or pizza crust. At this point you can brush it with a beaten egg to get that golden color. Throw the tart into the oven for about thirty-five minutes or until golden. Let it rest a few minutes out of the oven, chop it into six to eight pieces, pretentious it up with the rest of the basil chiffonade and enjoy.

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The Read List: Momofuku

David Chang's Momofuku kind of changed my life as a cook at home. Unlike other fancy New York cookbooks, this one has a lot of accessible recipes and great ideas on how you can layer flavors to make something really ordinary taste just fucking great. Though there are some challenging things that you'll probably never touch on (frozen foie gras anyone?), there's a lot of great small recipes such as Asian sauces, pickling ideas, sexy ramen ideas, and more that I've constantly referred back to for dishes beyond this book. There's also a lot of interesting fusion ideas between American and Asian cooking, like his shrimp and grits which ramps up the classic with some of his special ramen broth in the grits to send it over the top. Like he often says in the book and in real life, at the end of the day he just wants to make something tasty. And damnit, it all really is.

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Fire Roasted Tomato Soup

Simple enough that anyone could do, but clever enough that it sets itself apart from the usual and looks really fucking fancy, this fire roasted tomato soup is a pretty nifty pantry recipe to have on a cold, gloomy day. I basically took a glance at this recipe from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks and ran with it, adding my own touch here and there to jazz it up the way I like it and make it slightly pretend Asian-y with some sriracha.    

Ingredients 

1 medium onion, diced 2 1/2 teaspoons curry powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/4 teaspoon sriracha honey 1 can fire-roasted tomatoes 3 cups water   Serves 4. 

Doing It Heat some oil in a medium-high heat pan and throw in the onions with a sprinkle of salt to get them going. Once the onions start losing their color, add the curry and cumin to open up their flavors for about 30 seconds. Pour the entire can of fire roasted tomatoes into the pan, along with the three cups of water. Season with some salt and pepper to your liking. Add sriracha to your liking (no more than a half teaspoon in my opinion, don't die), stir and let the pot simmer for about 10 minutes on medium heat. Take a taste at this point and see how you feel about it. If you want it a little sweeter or if it is too tart or spicy for your taste, add a squeeze of honey to balance the flavors. I like it sweet regardless, so I usually add a bit. Let simmer for a few more minutes, then take it to the food processor or blender (hand blender works too) and get it pureed to your liking.  I prefer this as Heidi proposes, over some brown rice with some toasted almonds and a dollop of yogurt. You can drizzle some good oil over the top to get that kind of Italian fancy shit going, or do as I did and be hipster-ish with a drizzle of some honey on top for both nice effect and an extra bite to the dish. The combination of the nutty rice, toasty almonds, creamy tang of the yogurt with the sweet and spicy tomato stew along with the occasional pop of honey here and there, really special.