Banh Canh Cua - Crab Noodle Soup

Even though I have already posted a recipe for Banh Canh Cua, this version is more authentic. The other version is like a quick fix, this version will take some time but it's definitely worth the extra effort.

The other day I went to our local supermarket looking for ingredients to make dinner. I wasn't really looking for any specific ingredients, kinda hoping something would jump out at me. As I was walking through the seafood section, I notice a sign, "wild caught stone crabs". They were running a stone crab claws special for $7.99 a lb. There were around 4-5 five claws per package and each package ran around $7-$8. I knew this is what I have to make for dinner, so I grabbed five packages with the largest claws.

After coming home, my sister-in-law looked through our freezer outside and dug up two dungeness crab parts. We use the meat a couple weeks ago to make Tamarind Crabs, and save the head with all the eggs for later use. There was no other option, these ingredients screamed Banh Canh Cua.

Instead of buying premade noodles, I wanted to make the noodles from scratch out of rice and tapioca flours. Again this took extra time but it's really not hard. It taste so much better than the premade noodles. The broth is a little tricky because I use some left over ingredients and then frozen stone crabs. The frozen stone crabs are already cooked so it's not going to give off a lot of crab flavor. Using mushroom will also give sweetness and lots of flavor to the broth. If you do not have access to stone crabs just use two whole dungeness crabs. On some occasion, Costo sells whole frozen dungeness crab for around $10 each.

For this recipe, I'm going to list what I did with my ingredients (5 lbs of stone crabs claws and 2 head parts of the two dungeness crabs). Since most people will not have the heads of two dungeness crabs laying around, I'm also going to list the procedure if you were going to use two whole dungeness crabs. I'll try not to sound confusing but please let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy!

Noodle:

3 cups of rice flour

2 1/2 cups of tapioca flour

1/2 cups to the side

boiling water

a big bowl

wooden spoon

rolling pin

1. Sift together 3 cups of rice flour and 2.5 cups of tapioca flour.

2. Slowly add boiling water a little bit at a time to the flour mixture. With a wooden spoon work the flour and boiling water together. You want to add enough water to form a dough that you can knead and then flatten.

3. Once you have achieve a texture where you can mold the dough, split the dough into smaller balls (about the size of racketball).

4. Use the rolling pin to flatten the dough balls and then cut the flatten dough in half. With a knife cut the half sheet of dough into 1 cm strips.

5. Store the noodle in a container and sprinkle tapioca flour in between noodles so it doesn't stick together. The additional tapioca flour will help thicken soup later too.

Broth:

2 lbs of pork neck bones

5 lbs of stone crabs

the hard shell and it's content to two dungeness crabs

1 teaspoon of of minced shallots

1 teaspoon of minced garlic

cooking oil

4 cup of mushroom quarters

salt

rock sugar

mushroom seasoning

fish sauce

green onions

cilantro

1. Steam the stone crab claws and save the liquid that is produced. Let the claws cool.

2. Preboil the pork bones with a good amount of salt. Re

move the pork from the dirty liquid and rinse under cold water.

3. Transfer the pork bones in a big pot filled with water. Let bones simmer in water up to 2 hours.

4. If you are using dungeness crabs, you want to remove the hard shell and scrape as much of the yellow content from the shell. You then would want to steam the crab meats and save the crab liquid for later.

5. Add the dungeness shell I just cleaned out into the broth. Add all the liquid produce from steaming the crabs.

6. Taste the broth with salt, rock sugar, and mushroo

m seasoning.

7. Heat up some cooking oil in pan and fragrance the minced garlic and shallots.

8. Add the head/egg content of the two dungeness crabs to the garlic and shallots. Sauteed the egg content until fragrance.

9. Add the content to the broth, which will give the broth some color.

10. Add the mushroom.

11. Taste the broth with additional fish sauce if needed.

12. Crack the claws and remove the meat.

13. Rough chopped the green onions and cilantro for garnish.

14. Like the previous recipe, you should prepare each bowl individually. Whenever you want to cook up a bowl, transfer the broth to a separate pot. Once the broth comes to a boil add the noodle and then turn down the heat. Make sure you stir the noodle around with a spoon or it's going to stick to the bottom. The noodle and extra tapioca powder will thicken the broth so add additional broth if needed.

Thit Bo Xao Dua Chua - Beef Sauteed with Pickled Mustard Green

My mom makes the best dua chua (pickled mustard green), I swear i'm not bias! I have eaten others and it never compares to my mom. It always lack one of the following; texture, color, or taste. Good dua chua must come out crunchy, if there is no crunch when you bite into it something went wrong during the pickling process. The color should be yellowish green, like an olive green. Finally it should taste sour and not too bitter. She knows I love her dua chua, so every time I visit she has a tub for me to take home.

There are a lot of different ways to use dua chua in Vietnamese cooking but my favorite is to sauteed it with beef. A while ago one of my reader asked me to post a recipe on canh dua chua (pickled mustard green soup). I will get to that recipe the next time I have access to my mom's dua chua.

For this recipe you want to use a fatty cut of beef with a little bit of tendons, I like to use beef chuck. Not only will it give the dish more flavor but I just love the chewy texture with the crunchy mustard green. During Lent I also like sauteing pickled mustard green with squids, I will save that for a future post.

I have to say there's something very addicting about dua chua. The dua chua give a sourness to your dish that is very pleasing to our taste buds. The liquid that is produce from the pickled mustard green and beef marry together and become this wonderful sauce. I can seriously just eat the sauce alone with white rice and you can still taste the beef and pickled mustard green.

Ingredients:

1 lb of beef chuck cut into thin strips

2 cups of pickled mustard green

2 medium tomatoes (cut into smaller chunks)

4 stalk of onions (cut down to 1 inch)

2 teaspoon of minced garlic

2 teaspoon of minced shallots

fish sauce

sugar

cooking oil

1. Marinade the beef with the garlic, shallots, and 3 tablespoon of fish sauce for about 30 minutes.

2. Heat up cooking oil in a pan/wok.

3. Once the pan is hot enough add the beef and stir. You don't have to cook it all the way through but enough to brown the outside.

4. Add the pickled mustard green to the beef and add 3 additional tablespoon of fish sauce.

5 At this point there should be a lot of liquid produce in the pan by the beef and pickled mustard green. Let the beef and pickled mustard green braise in the liquid on medium to low heat for about 10 minutes.

6. Add the tomatoes and let it cook down.

7. At the very end add the green onions.

8. Enjoy with a bowl of rice!

Ga Kho Gung - Chicken Braised in Ginger and Caramel Sauce

Ga Kho Gung is a dish that brings a lot of laughs to my family. My mom goes to work really early in the morning and she usually wake up extra early to prepare lunch in advance for my the rest of the family. On occasion when she doesn't get the chance to cook in the morning my dad becomes the cook for that day. Even though my dad has great taste in food, he cannot cook. Whenever I come home after school and see fried eggs and boiled green beans on the dining room table, I know my dad made lunch that day. Sometimes it's edible, other times it's not. My dad likes to flavor his cooking with only one ingredients, salt. My mom and I always have a good laugh anytime my dad cooks.

One afternoon I came home from school to a huge pot of ga kho gung. It was incredibly good! When my mom came home from work I complimented her pot of ga kho gung. She, however, did not make the ga kho that day. We both thought for sure it cannot be my dad, but who else could it be? The next day, I praised my dad on his ga kho. It made him really happy to hear that both my mom and I love his ga kho. When I came home after school that day, my dad had made another pot of ga kho. Again it was delicious. The next day I told him again he did a great job on this chicken. After school of that day, again there was another pot of ga kho. My dad made ga kho FIVE days in a row! Even my brothers, who never really have much to say about food were getting tired of chicken. That weekend we had an emergency family meeting with my dad. No more ga kho please! My dad learned a valuable lesson that day, less is more. Recently, my sister-in-law reported that my dad had pulled another ga kho week at home. It made me laugh but that's my dad!

The process to make Ga Kho Gung is very similar to Thit Heo Kho. You basically braise the chicken in the same caramel sauce and then add ginger. The ginger turn the caramel sauce into a totally different flavor. This is a great recipe if you like spicy food, adding chilli powder to the chicken elevate the flavor even more.

Ingredients

1/2 chicken (fat trimmed , chopped into smaller chunk with the bones)

1 small knob of ginger (julienned)

1 shallot (minced)

sugar

fish sauce

mushroom seasoning

black pepper

onion powder

chicken broth or water

chili powder (optional)

1. Marinade the chicken with the minced shallot, 4 tablespoon of fish sauce, 2 teaspoon onion powder, 2 teaspoon of mushroom seasoning, and 1 teaspoon of chili powder. Let chicken marinade for an hour or so.

2. Heat up a pot on medium heat.

3. Once the pot is hot, add 2 tablespoon of sugar. Let he sugar melt and caramelized.

4. Add all content of the marinaded chicken to the caramelized sugar. Make sure every pieces of the chicken is coated with the sauce. The caramel sauce should give the chicken some color.

5. Add enough liquid to the pot to braise the chicken (enough liquid to barely cover the chicken). I like using chicken broth or you can use water.

6. Add the ginger and turn the heat down a bit to let the chicken simmer in the liquid.

7. Let the liquid reduce into a rich sauce.

8. Once the cooking process is done, top some black pepper on top.

Serve with white rice and enjoy!

Thit Ga Ham Khoai Tay Ca Rot - Chicken Soup with Potatoes and Carrots

Yet another dish that takes me back to my childhood. This soup is the epitome of Vietnamese comfort food. The broth is simple and clean, flavor by the sweetness of the vegetables and bones. I love eating this soup when I'm feeling under the weather, it make you feel like everything is going to be alright.

This soup is quite versatile because you have a lot of choices for ingredients. For the meat you can use chicken, pork, or beef. I prefer using pork neck bones but I had some left over chicken from another dish. You can also use ground beef or pork instead of bones. Choices of vegetables can also varies depending on your taste or whatever you have available at home. My mom usually makes it with potatoes, carrots, and sometimes beets. Beets has to be my favorite, it's incredibly sweet, but unfortunate beets are not on my weekly grocery list. For this recipe I used carrots, red potatoes, and cauliflower. Play around with the ingredients, you really can't go wrong with this recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1/2 chicken
3 red potatoes
3 carrots
1/2 cauliflower
1/2 an onion
cilantro
salt
rock sugar
mushroom seasoning
fish sauce
black pepper
water

1. Rinse your chicken and remove some of the fat if needed.
2. Place the chicken in a pot, add about 5 quart of water an half the onion. Add half a tablespoon of salt and let the pot come to a boil. Remove the excess scum from the pot. Once the scum has been removed, turn down the heat to medium heat until chicken get cooked.
3. Wash the vegetables and cut them into desired size. I like my vegetables pretty chunky so it doesn't overcook as easily.
4. Throw in a quarter size chunk of rock sugar and a couple teaspoon of mushroom seasoning to he broth.
5. Once the chicken is done, remove from pot and let it cool enough to handle.
6. Taste the broth with 2 tablespoon of fish sauce and a couple dash of black pepper.
7. After tasting he broth throw in the carrots first and then potatoes. The vegetables should be soft enough to eat but should still have texture. Throw in the cauliflower at the very end.
8. Last minute tasting with more sugar and fish sauce if needed.
9. Serve with chopped cilantro and more black pepper.

Dau Hu Nhoi Thit Sot Ca - Tofu Stuffed w/ Pork in Tomato Sauce

I love tofu in every form; soft, firm, extra firm, fried, and so on. One of my favorite recipe is Dau Hu Nhoi Thit Sot Ca. You stuff fried tofu with a minced pork mixture. Next you pan fried the stuffed tofu and then braise it in a tomato sauce. It's one those dish that appeared every week in my family, I can never get tired of it. I recently receive a couple request for this recipe and I'm glad to do it.

Ingredients:

2 packs of fried tofu (makes 16)

1/2 lb of ground pork

1/2 a cup of dried wood ear fungus

3 tomatoes

2 green onions

oil

salt

fish sauce

sugar

black pepper

mushroom seasoning

onion powder

minced garlic

chili powder (optional for spiciness)

1. Soak the wood ear fungus in warm water until soften, rinse it well before using. Once it has soften, mince

the wood ear fungus.

2. Combine the ground pork and wood ear fungus and taste it with some salt, black pepper, onion powder, and mushroom seasoning.

3. Wash the tofu before cooking and then tow

el dry.

4. Cut your tofu in half so you'll have one side with the white side exposing.

5. Make a split in the middle on the white side. Use a small spoon to carve some of the white part out to create a small pocket. This will make it easier to stuff the pork mixture.

6. Stuff the tofu with the pork mixture.

7. Cut your tomatoes into smaller chunks

8. Chop you green onions.

9. Heat up oil in a large pan (big enough to fit all your tofu). Once the oil is hot enough add the tofu, and pan fried all side of the tofu.

10. Once the tofu has been lightly seared on each side, remove from pan.

11. Add another tablespoon of cooking oil to the pan again. When it is hot enough add the tomatoes.

12. Add 3-4 tablespoon of fish sauce, 1 tablespoon of sugar, chili powder, and a couple fish of mushroom seasoning. Stir the dry ingredients into the tomatoes and fish sauce.

13. Add the tofu and let it braise in the tomato sauce on low-medium heat. Make sure all side get the opportunity to braise into the sauce.

14. Braise the tofu until the sauce has reduce a bit and add the green onions at the very end.

Enjoy!

Ca Tai Chanh - Vietnamese Style Ceviche

My first ever ceviche experience is through the Travel Channel. Every time Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmern travel to any places near water, they always get to eat the most amazing ceviche. Yes I know we can't possibly experience what they experience with their taste buds but it was still a beautiful experience with my eyes.

The Midwest is probably the last place you would ever find ceviche but I lucked out. I went to lunch with a friend at this Peruvian restaurant in a shady area of town. Yelp boast it was the best ceviche in town but I took it with a grain of salt, we do live in corn country after all. The ceviche arrived on a huge plate, and still the shrimp, squid, and fish were spilling every where. I knew I would love it just by looking at it and I did! It was so amazing, I can't imagine how even more amazing it would be to have ceviche made fresh right out of the water.

I wanted to recreate the ceviche I had but of course with a Vietnamese twist. This is a great dish to beat the summer heat, enjoy!

Ingredients:

sushi grade tilapia or cod

sushi grade octopus tenacles

shrimp (I bought already cooked cocktail shrimp)

red onions (thinly sliced)

cilantro (rough chopped)

Vietnamese coriander (rough chopped)

2-3 lime

fish sauce

sliced habanero pepper (or whatever you like)

crushes peanuts

fried shallots (hanh phi)

1. Cut the tilapia into flat pieces.

2. Squeeze enough lime to cover the fish and let the fish cook in the lime juice.

3. Thinly sliced the octopus.

4. Add the octopus and shrimp to the lime juice with the fish.

5. Drain about half of the lime juice from the seafood mixture.

6. Add two tablespoon of fish sauce to the sea

food mixture.

7. Add the sliced onions and pepper, toss thoroughly.

8. Right before serving add the cilantro and coriander.

9. Top off with peanuts and shallots.

Che Ba Mau - Vietnamese Three Color Dessert

Che Ba Mau meaning Three Color Dessert; consist of YELLOW

mung bean paste, GREEN agar strips, and RED beans. It looks and taste pretty similar to Suong Sa Hot Luu but there are some differences. We use red beans in Che Ba Mau and a different type of agar. Suong Sa Hot Luu uses a grass jelly agar which has a really distinct grassy taste and a dirty pondgreen color. You can make your own agar strips but to save time I just buy a can of agar called Suong Sam, it's lime green in color and has a lighter taste than grass jelly. Finally we usually sweeten Che Ba Mau with condense milk. I like faux pomegranate seeds so I like to include it in my Che Ba Mau as well.

I have to admit Che Ba Mau is pretty time consuming and tricky to make. Making the red beans and mung beans can be a nightmare. You have to cook it on really low heat over a long period of time. I've burned quite a few batch over the years. I recommend soaking the mung beans and red beans overnight.

Ingredients:

1 can of Suong Sam agar

2 cups of red beans (soak in water overnight)

2 cups of already peeled and split mung beans (soak in water over night)

1 can of coconut milk

condense milk

rock sugar

faux pomegranate seeds

finely crushed ice (prepare with a blender)

1. Rinse the red beans in water until the beans no longer makes the water cloudy.

2. Boil 5 cups of water in a pot and throw in a medium size rock sugar. Drain the red beans and pour into pot. Cook the red beans on low heat for around 2 hours or so. Once tender, drain and set aside for later.

3. Prepare the mung bean paste (refer to my Suong Sa Hot Luu entry for cooking instruction).

4. Prepare the faux pomegranate seeds (refer to my Suong Sa Hot Luu entry)

5. Slice the Suong Sam agar into strips.

6. Heat a can of coconut milk in a small pot and add 2 tablespoon of sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved, let cook for later use.

7. Prepare the crushed ice.

8. In a bowl, spread some mung bean paste at the bottom of the bowl. Second add agar strips, next the red beans, and then the faux pomegranate seeds. You can prepare these bowls ahead of time and store in fridge.

9. Before serving, add the condense milk to the bowl and then top off with some crushed ice. Finally drizzle the condense milk at the very end, depends on how sweet you like it add as much as you like.

Mix and enjoy!