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Bánh Tét
Happy Lunar New Year! A lot of Asian cultures celebrate the new lunar year and see it as the most awesome holiday of the year. Yesterday marked the new year and year of the snake. For Vietnamese people, we celebrate with a giant feast that features a bunch of different foods. My awesome parents sent me a traditional dish called Banh Tet, a log of rice cake stuffed with mung bean and roasted pork, and wrapped inside banana leaves:
Ga Nuong
Ga Nuong is Vietnamese grilled chicken, and something that is my version of comfort food. It’s normally found on the streets of Vietnam in skewers being grilled over charcoal. I tried to make a simple marinade and fry the chicken at home in an attempt to mimic the great sweet and salty chicken. It’s usually paired with either rice noodles and shredded lettuce + beansprouts, or over rice; either way, accompanied by nuoc mam aka fish sauce (recipe here) for dipping. The Ga Nuong turned out pretty well – I liked the marinade, although if you can grill it instead of frying it, that’s definitely the way to go.
In the picture, you can see I ripped off a piece of the skin – couldn’t help myself.
Warm Potatoes and String Bean
Steven and I were watching Chuck Hughes the other day and fawning over him. I noticed that I had a few of the ingredients that he used in his warm potato recipe and decided to adapt it. It’s really simple to make and requires only a few ingredients. For being as simple as it was, it’s a great idea for a light supper dish and it’s too bad a certain friend didn’t come over to try it!
Ingredients: (serving is for about 5 bowls like size of the picture above)
- 1 1/2 pounds of red gold and yukon gold potatoes (my bag of mixed potato also had an All Blue potato tossed in)
- Salt
- 4 hardboiled eggs
- 2 canned anchovy fillets, minced
- 1 1/4 tablespoons grainy Dijon mustard
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
- 1/3 cup olive oil, plus a splash for sauteing
- 3 cups of green beans
- Salt n Pepa
- 1 cup of mushrooms
- half an onion
Directions:
- Make some hardboiled eggs
- Bring a pot of water to boil, add salt, then boil the potatoes for 25 minutes and the green beans for 3-4 minutes (shock them in ice immediately after).
- While everything is boiling, you can saute some onions and mushrooms. I like my potato salad with a little bit of a bite, which I think the onions do add. The mushrooms are aslo just another sweet component. Just cut the mushrooms and onions thinly and saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes.
- As the food boils/sautes, prepare the dressing. Whisk the mustard, garlic, vinegar, sardines, and olive oil together until it’s well blended. Season with salt and pepper.
- When the food is done cooking, just mix into the dressing and serve warm.
Thoughts: I really like this kind of comfort food as like a late supper snack. It’s warm, fresh, and filling without feeling like it’s too much. I think there can be some improvement with the dressing, but I don’t know where. Steven said he liked it – especially the mustard, whereas Arthur thought the mustard was quite strong. For the ease and simplicity of it though, I really like this recipe. Let me know if you have any thoughts about it!
Monte
Victor
tadv3
Happy Noms 