Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Earnest Summation

Melvil Dewey has shamed me into following through with my long overdue report on Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. 

I made 52 recipes from this superb book.

Here's how they broke down:

Worth the price of the book -- 4*

Great: 11

Good: 23

So-so: 12

Flat-out bad: 3

Here's my favorite line, which comes from the (amazing) recipe for stir-fried beef with french fries: "Carefully add the potatoes to the oil, which will suddenly boil and sound like falling rain."

That's inspired recipe writing. Andrea Nguyen has produced a smart, lavishly illustrated, wonderfully accessible and occasionally even poetic introduction to an extremely exotic and challenging cuisine. You can't appreciate the staggering range and vibrancy of Vietnamese cooking unless you go to Vietnam, but working your way through this book is a start. Definitely a shelf essential. 

*minced pork with lemongrass and shrimp sauce, p. 132. If you make nothing else from the book, make this. 

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: 240 minutes on food preparation

We had a small party last night -- father, sister, bro-in-law, niece -- and I cooked what Owen calls "Vietnam food." I got completely overwhelmed, experienced the desperation that comes when you try to execute overambitious cooking plans and guests are hanging around nervously asking if they can help, drinking their second, third, martinis. You know it's bad when they start eating fistfuls of  the unsalted peanuts you bought for garnish. One of the dishes -- the crepes a.k.a. banh xeo, which my father and I supposedly learned to make in our Hoi An cooking class -- was giving me too much trouble, so I scrapped it midway through. After that, everything came together, though there wasn't quite enough. For once, the kids all wanted more; for once, I could not supply.

Everything comes from Andrea Nguyen recipes. We had: 

-Salad rolls w. hoisin dipping sauce (tasty, though hard to wrap especially when you're overwrought)

-Stuffed squid w. ginger lime dipping sauce (okay)

-Banh xeo (failure)

-Stir fried beef with french fries (hit)

-Garlicky noodles with Maggi sauce (hit)

The last flank steak I cooked from the Richmond New May Wah market was inedibly tough, so for the stir-fried beef, which I've made a few times before, I bought the slightly more expensive $6.99/lb. ribeye. Great. I'm amending the recipe permanently. You serve this beef on top of the fries and it is smashing.

Isabel chose the dessert, Vietnamese coffee ice cream from a super-easy David Lebovitz recipe: Mix 1 1/2 cups strong coffee with 1 1/2 cups sweetened condensed milk and 1/2 cup half-and-half. Freeze in ice cream maker. Very delicious. Recommend.

Today: Uncrustables.

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Banh mi

Hurray! Camera fixed, thanks to clever husband.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can buy a formidable banh mi for $3, which is cheaper than making one at home. BUT. It was still interesting and instructive to assemble one for myself.

I went to Clement Street in S.F. for the ingredients, using Andrea Nguyen's recipe as my guide, starting with puffy Vietnamese-style French bread.

It's not the greatest bread -- the interior is like cotton -- but supposedly that's the idea.

I also bought a pound of yummy barbecued pork

and some cha lua sausage.

Do you see the little "Keep Refrigerated" warning? Well, it wasn't. It was on a shelf near the cash register. I pondered this for a while, then put the sausage in my cart anyway. 

And I bought a daikon radish that looks like something out of Dune

and cilantro, serrano peppers, cucumber.

At home, I cut up the daikon and put it into brine with some carrots.

Then I sat down to read, and fell dead asleep for six hours. Jet lag. When I woke up: dinner time. 

To make the sandwiches, I spread lots of mayonnaise on the bread, sprinkled with soy sauce, heaped with the pickles, cilantro, hot peppers, and sliced cucumber. Meat presented a dilemma. I sliced the cha lua, which was pink and finely textured, like bologna and smelled fine, despite improper storage at the Richmond New May Wah market. I thought: does my schedule over the next few days allow for food poisoning? And yes! It does. But I really hate to throw up, it's almost a phobia. No, it IS a phobia. I gave the $2.99 log of cha lua to the chickens, who scarfed it down. They are all alive and pecking today, so I guess it was okay.

I any case, I used only barbecued pork in the sandwiches, and they were fantastic. The sine qua non of the Vietnamese sandwich is not the meat. You could use almost anything -- leftover roast chicken, steak, duck, pork belly, even lamb, probably fish. It's the crunchy, spicy pickled vegetables and fresh herbs that make a banh mi a banh mi.

Miss Saigon

I was trying to load my last pictures from Vietnam, of my father and me at the Rex Hotel rooftop bar. We had a swell time at the Rex, drinking draft beer, eating peanuts and trying to figure out which couples were legitimate and which involved hookers, as at least one definitely did. But right after we took the pictures I dropped the camera and it no longer functions, not even enough to yield its photographs. My husband will have a fit when he reads this, as he contends I should not be allowed to own a camera. He may be correct.

The photo up top is from earlier in the trip. The laundry wasn't all that cheap, but I will vouch for clean, nice, and fragrant.

Anyway, we're home. The grass is always greener and all that. The last few days in Vietnam, I pined for home -- for the garden, the puffy blue sofa where we watch TV (pitiful), my kids (so very much), turkey sandwiches with lettuce. Now that I have most of it back (minus the kids, who are still with their intrepid New England grandparents), I miss Saigon. Everywhere we went in Vietnam had charm, but Saigon is special. You should watch this video if just for 30 seconds, because it's a very fine representation of that wack city. Early on, my father and I threw ourselves into the traffic, walking many blocks during the day, at night, in the blistering heat, in the rain, after a few drinks, stone sober, always scared out of our minds. The last day, we took taxis. It seemed too sad to die right before we were going to get to go home.

But the people who handle that traffic with nonchalance and elan, they're awe-inspiring. The way a Saigon native saunters into an onrushing horde of motors scooters while talking on a cell phone, wearing stylish shoes, and carrying a small child has to be one of the coolest sights in the world. 

As for the suburban garden I longed to return to: what a bummer. Still no ripe tomatoes and something has been eating my pumpkins, scooping out all the flesh and turning them into little tureens. Rats? The big fat chickens? If I had a camera, I'd take a picture. No eggplants, not a one. No melons. Snails have shredded the chard leaves into lace. A lot of squash, and that's thrilling. Just thrilling. I sat around in Vietnam pining for a garden full of zucchini. 

It's still great to be home. 

Pleiku: The reason for this whole trip.

My father remembers Pleiku, Vietnam circa 1967 as a village of a few thousand residents where one frequently encountered Montagnards in loincloths. No more. Today, Pleiku is a chaotic city of 300,000 fast on its way to replicating the speeding motor scooter insanity of Saigon. Above: Pleiku as of yesterday, photographed from the 8th floor of the swell Hoang Anh hotel. 

 

This is as close as we could get to the MACV compound where my father lived and worked when he was in the Army:

Behind the wall is a Vietnamese military installation and on the wall, as everywhere, is a portrait of Ho Chi Minh. When the driver slowed the car so we could take pictures, a soldier shouted at us. We felt very important.

I would say it was a huge disappointment that we couldn't get closer to the MACV compound, as this was one of the original focal points of our trip, except I have never seen my father happier than he was yesterday, finding old landmarks (Artillery Hill??), eating pho, and talking about the War with our unforgettable Pleiku guide, Mr. Cham. There's so much to say about this journey, I have so many thoughts and feelings, but my smart-ass food blog seems like a truly inadequate forum. Maybe I'll figure out a way to write about it here, but meanwhile. . . 

This is a burial house in a muddy and beautiful Jarai village near Pleiku:

and this is a pig being crawled upon by puppies: 

and this is a scary-looking jackfruit:

 

and this is a good-looking Vietnamese chicken:

Also! I found honey. Pleiku honey. Phung, our "main" guide (the guide situation is complicated in this part of Vietnam), warns that it might not actually be pure honey, but I think it, is based on where I bought it (fancy shop) and what I've read about Vietnamese apiculture. If there's any unadulterated honey in Vietnam, it's very likely from Pleiku. I wrapped the bottle in three hotel laundry bags to bring home and would rather leave my suitcase behind than that bottle of honey. I hope there aren't rules about carrying honey into the U.S.

We're in the touristy coastal town of Hoi An, now. It's crazy hot and we're taking the afternoon off from breakneck touring. I'm reading A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan, a book that deserves all the prestige prizes it won, and probably a few more. I should get back to reading now, so I can finish before 2010.

Another excellent book, as I've said before: Novella Carpenter's Farm City. I have a short review here. I also loved her recent blog post about visiting New York City. 

I'm no Anthony Bourdain

But I tried. 

Half-hatched eggs a.k.a. baby eggs a.k.a balut a.k.a. duck embryos are widely on offer here in Da Lat, the pleasant highland town in central Vietnam where my father and I arrived yesterday. 

At my request, our guide, Phung, took us to a small, homely restaurant at the entrance of which sat enormous trays of shelled sea (lake?) creatures and one steaming cauldron of eggs. Phung ordered. Three large, warm eggs, accompanied by saucers of  lime, chili-salt and herbs, appeared at our tiny plastic table. The proprietress neatly tapped open the shell of one egg with a spoon, exactly like my mother used to prepare a soft-boiled egg for toast-dipping.

I was told to sprinkle said egg with the chili salt, sip out the juices, then take a bite of the contents. Sort of like eating an oyster, with the sipping-eating order reversed. 

Sipping wasn't half-bad. The egg liquour tasted like a thin, savory soup.

Then  I shut my eyes and took a bite.

Not the best shot of this historic moment, but it will have to suffice.

  

The flavor of the egg? Quite nice. Like chicken with zesty spice.

The texture? Extremely challenging, clotted and clumpy. There were a lot of differentiated parts, and when I dared to look more closely, a lot of differentiated colors: gray, black, white, gold.

 

The concept? You don't need me to tell you that the concept, to a typical Westerner, is absolutely revolting and the egg, therefore, was inedible. 

In the middle of this whole escapade I realized it was probably rude to go into a restaurant, order the specialty of the house, take pictures of oneself choking down a tiny morsel, pay, and depart. I don't approve! But the proprietress seemed more amused than irritated. I bet she's seen this before.

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: XOXO Tipsy Baker

My new miniature Nikon point-and-shoot is great, though there's something bizarre about the perspective in the photograph above. Those are Andrea Nguyen's currant cookies and they look enormous, but were actually tiny. You don't expect to find such a fantastic cookie recipe in an Asian cookbook. These were delicate and chewy, much loved and all gone in under an hour.

Here's a picture Husband took the other night of Isabel and me:

We were watching Gossip Girl and he stood blocking the set, experimenting with the new camera during a crucial scene. Sweet -- he loves us! -- but irksome.  Some scheming girl was texting some other scheming girl and there was about to be a debauched party where everyone wore absurd, slutty dresses and got drunk and betrayed their best friends (or something like that) and we really wanted to see what happened. It's an awful show, which is not to say it's unwatchable. I think we watched the whole first season in three nights.

Anyway, the other day Isabel ran in to get a Gossip Girl disc from the video store and one of the young clerks said, "Your parents let you watch this?" She said, "Yeah, I watch it with my mom." Isabel reports that the clerk shot her a "weird" look and said, "you have a cool mom."

I pondered this. I think that what he really meant by "cool" was "permissive." Permissive in the way of those "hey dudes, come chill at our house, I've got a full bowl and I'll join you" Marin County moms who buy matching Abercrombie bikinis for themselves and their daughters.* Then they sit around together painting their toenails purple and giggling knowingly through Gossip Girl.

Blecch! No.

It is true, though, that aside from verboten Judd Apatow movies, I'm lax about my kids' exposure to pop culture. I could run myself down for having lower standards than almost anyone I know, but I run myself down altogether too much. I respect strict standards but I also respect my standards. Why else would they be my standards? I remember being twelve. I knew the difference between Dallas and reality. I had no trouble understanding that I was never going to have hair like Charlene Tilton or a body like Victoria Principal, and that to sleep with, then shoot, your brother-in-law was profoundly unwise. Did crap 1970s TV change me in any fundamental way? Wouldn't I be richer, more successful, and better groomed if it had? Is crap contemporary TV all that different?

For the last home-cooked Vietnamese dinner for some time to come, I served panfried rice noodles with beef and vegetables. Delicious and popular. And healthy. Look at all those cancer-fighting colors:

On the side, some deep-fried tofu simmered with scallion which had, to quote Andrea Nguyen, "a chewy, almost meaty quality:"

I loved it. "Terrible," Husband said. Kids did not touch. I've given up on the tofu fight. Again, something wrong with the perspective in the photo. Need to read the manual.

Today, my children leave for a month in New England to visit their paternal grandparents. This would ordinarily be a fallow time for Tipsy Baker, but I have a special cooking plan in store for the next week. Details to follow.

*I've never actually met one of these women. I think she's a suburban myth.

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Use your words, Tipsy Baker

No camera to document our kooky 4th of July party. 

Guests: 8 Americans, 4 Guatemalans, 1 Frenchman. Age range: 2 to 97.

Topics of conversation: tennis, chickens, haircuts, my sister's pregnancy weight gain, my sister's (rightful) sensitivity about discussion of her pregnancy weight gain, The Proposal. We're deeply thoughtful people.

Menu: 

-stir-fried beef with Chinese celery (C -- too much celery, flank steak like leather)

-pork riblets simmered in caramel sauce (B+)

-cellophane noodles with crab and black pepper (A-)

-honey roasted duck legs (A)

-quick steamed buns (A+)

-grilled corn with scallion oil (A)

-banana cake (B)

-grilled bananas with coconut sticky rice (B+)

Tiring to cook? Oh yes.

Owen planned the menu, per my shaky new theory that if he's more involved in the process of producing a meal, he will be more inclined to partake. We sat down with Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen and he picked out what looked appealing based primarily on photographs. He was particularly enthusiastic about the cellophane noodles with crab as there's a pretty picture of the dish on page 237.  I flinched because cooking and picking Dungeness crab is labor intensive and, in July, expensive, but why should I always get to call the shots? I bought a crab ($15), boiled her, cleaned her, and extracted all the meat. Dinner came around and Owen was off playing with his cousin. When he finally came to the table he requested the noodles. They were all gone.  That's how good they were.

I think Owen chose two banana desserts because Isabel hates bananas. The banana cake: damp, dense. Not like banana bread at all, as you don't puree the bananas you just slice them and mix them with a very scant batter and bake until the banana flavor is intensely concentrated in a flat, wet, brown cake. Curiously popular. I was not personally a fan. 

The grilled banana with coconut sticky rice -- exciting and exotic. You simmer glutinous rice with coconut milk and sugar until soft and gluey, spread it on a banana leaf, top with a wedge of banana, wrap like a tamale (Owen did this part), and grill. The banana collapses and melts into the rice, you unwrap the packet and eat the sticky, yummy confection with rich coconut sauce. It sounds complicated but, if you have access to an Asian grocery store and a barbecue, isn't. I thought this was fantastic, albeit unusual. 

The real revelation, however, was the quick steamed bun recipe, which you can find here. You know those pillowy, bone-white rolls you get when you order Peking duck? These were them. Take Pillsbury biscuit dough, pat it out into little rounds, fold into half-moons, steam for a few minutes and you have fluffy, tender Chinese buns. A really cool trick.

 

I lost track of Owen during all of this -- I think, in the end, he only ate ribs, which he would have eaten anyway.

How do you solve a problem like Owen's eating habits?

Not his manners. The manners may be hopeless.

Those pictures are from our recent vacation. Throughout the trip, Owen ate like a starving grizzly confronting a salmon run. He out-ate us at almost every mediocre diner we visited, demolishing ribs, pancakes, scrambled eggs, french fries, baked potatoes, bacon, gallons of root beer. And when he was done with whatever he ordered, he devoured our leftovers. In between meals, in the car, he kept busy with tortilla chips, cocktail peanuts, and cinnamon Altoids.

Wow, I thought. Finally. He's growing up, getting an appetite. Boy, it's going to be fun to cook for you when we get home!

So, we got home. The other night, I made a beef stew from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. It was stupendous; recipe here. You braise chuck in a rich sauce of onion and tomato, with a little lemongrass, star anise, and 5-spice powder for flavor. Chunks of carrot go in at the end. Served with bread. Nothing weird. Like "regular" stew, but zippier. Isabel -- the world's daintiest eater -- loved it.

Owen: I hate soup. Why did you make soup? You know I hate soup.

Tipsy: It's not soup, it's STEW.

Owen: I hate stew, too. And cooked carrots. You know I don't like cooked carrots.

Tipsy: Okay, you can go to your room.

Seeing an opportunity for family drama, instead, he went to the computer. Tipsy then had to put down her fork, lay down law. Husband played good cop, annoying Tipsy because there should be no good cop in such a negotiation. (Right? Please tell me I'm right.) Dinner disrupted, possibly ruined. 

We long ago gave up trying to force kids to eat anything. (I don't know how my parents pulled it off, because I can't figure out the mechanics.) Unfortunately, it's not enough that Owen doesn't have to eat what he doesn't like, he's furious and insulted that I even cooked it. He will actually get up in the morning and say first thing, "What are we having for dinner?" No matter what I answer -- unless it's pesto pasta -- he gives a massive groan and responds with either: "I hate X," or, "I like X, but I don't feel like X today." He'll drag the grievance on and on if he gets so much as a nibble.

I am really loath to pander to his tastes. And if I did, I'm pretty sure it would backfire. What I cook, by definition, is objectionable. 

Why? 

Maybe I have pushed too far. This is possible. I am an extreme cook and have, on occasion, betrayed his trust. Two words: bacon salad. For this, I am sorry. 

But the comedian husband also plays a role. For dessert the night of the beef stew, I made Nguyen's almond jelly with lychees, jackfruit and strawberries. Is it helpful to the cause that husband loudly referred to the lychees as "eyeballs?" 

I have three possible solutions: 

1. Enlist Owen in the cooking. Maybe then it will seem less hilarious and cool when male role models who stockpile Good n' Plenties make side-splitting remarks about the dishes.

2. Ask him what he wants and basically just make that.

3. Grimly wait him out. One day he will come around. Isabel did. She eats almost everything now, including eyeballs.

I am leaning towards #1. In fact, am suddenly filled with excitement about this new tactic. 

P.S. the yummy almond jelly dessert looked a lot like this borrowed photograph, but without the maraschino cherries. I first tasted this dish at a Chinese restaurant when I was a child and it's one of my favorite things, though it involves an appreciation of almond extract.

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: What would Tami Taylor do?

So, Tyra's going to University of Texas, Tim and Billy bought a longhorn steer, Coach got fired, Matt did the wrong "right" thing. We're done with the Friday Night Lights dvds as of last night, thank GOD. Dillon, Texas has seemed more vivid to me lately than my own life, which is pathetic, and I have begun using Tami Taylor as a guide for my behavior, which is fine, since she's awesome, but hopeless since she's an extraverted TV character and I'm an introverted human being. Yesterday, I drove six hours and spent most of the time in a reverie about the Panthers, which is just sad. Very good thing it's cold turkey until 2010. 

Up top is an opo squash, bought from the Chinese market. It looks sort of like a pear but tasted vaguely like zucchini and made a pleasant, easy soup when boiled with fish sauce, water, and a tiny amount of pork shoulder. My one complaint is that in her opo squash soup recipe Andrea Nguyen does not call for peeling the squash, as even after extra-long cooking, the skin was too crunchy, like the rind of a gourd. The recipe is here, and I recommend it, though would also recommend peeling the squash.

On the side, I served Nguyen's crispy fried eggplant which was delicious, especially dipped in nuoc cham.

I told the children the fried eggplant was fried potatoes, but in a harried way so I could pretend it was an absent-minded slip, should the fib be detected. No one figured it out, and the kids enthusiastically ate the fried eggplant. This is wrong. Tami Taylor would not tell such a lie.

Two caramel sauces

On the right, the caramel sauce from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, a bittersweet syrup the color of Kikkoman that you make by melting sugar and letting it gently burn. You use this sauce in savory braised dishes known as khos. I've made two khos in the last week, and they were both wonderful.

 

1. beef kho. Nguyen's recipe calls for rough flank, which is not the same as flank steak. Rough flank is a gnarled and gnarly and very cheap cut available at Chinese markets. There's a reason you have never heard of rough flank: the morsels of exquisite meat are sandwiched between thick layers of white membrane that I had to cut with shears. You hack your rough flank into smallish pieces, tie it into bundles, braise for a few hours in caramel sauce, then struggle to serve and eat with a modicum of decorum. The ratio of edible protein to gristle and other tissue was low, but I have to agree with Nguyen that the meat we did eventually excavate was "exceptionally flavorful." It was like pot roast except beefier, the flavors somehow condensed. If you want to try this yourself -- and though I've done a poor job selling, it was good! -- the recipe is here.

2. salmon kho with galangal. I've never before used galangal, which is sold at Asian markets and looks like this: 

You slice it into a pot with salmon, pork belly, and caramel sauce then cook the dish for an hour or so. This kho is fun because you don't have to worry about overcooking the fish, you actually want to overcook it so that the salty-sweet sauce impregnates every melting bite.

It was sort of sad to turn precious salmon into just another sloppy stew -- part of what makes salmon special is its creamy shell-pink color, tidiness, and overall delicacy -- but the results were ambrosial. Recipe is here.

Now for the caramel sauce on the left. This is the salted butter caramel sauce from David Lebovitz's Sweet Life in Paris, a wicked concotion of sugar, cream, butter, and salt. Lebovitz recommends slathering the stuff on buckwheat crepes, which was delicious, but it would also be tasty on ice cream, crackers, toast, waffles, spoon.

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: A long catch-up post

Owen is psyched about Vietnamese food.

Last night, I made the rice noodles with Chinese chives, shrimp and pork from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, a handsome dish that I regrettably neglected to photograph. This whole entire bunch of monster chives went into the noodles:

Beautiful, no? Sadly, eating them was like eating grass, albeit very flavorful grass. Noodles get a B+

 

Another B+: Nguyen's poached chicken with Kaffir lime leaves. (Kaffir lime leaves: the intensely -- intensely -- fragrant foliage of a citrus tree that produces a gnarled green fruit. I bought a Kaffir lime tree last month, and it is thriving in a giant pot on our patio; you can also find the leaves at Asian markets.)

 

But even strewn with the lime leaves, the chicken was exceedingly plain -- poached chicken could be a synonym for plain -- and it was much improved when dipped in nuoc cham, as is everything. If you've never tasted nuoc cham -- lime juice, sugar, fish sauce, chilies -- you need to make some right away. Here's Nguyen's recipe, which gets an A+.

A couple of David Lebovitz desserts to report on: 

Monday, I made his dainty floating islands from The Sweet Life in Paris.

 

Not so lovely to look at, but lovely to eat -- foamy, crunchy, creamy, sweet. For a more cunning presentation of the same recipe, check this out. 

Finally, last night, following a reader's recommendation I baked the fresh ginger cake from Lebovitz's (excellent) first cookbook, Room for Dessert.

Moist and fiery with a crunchy crust, this was by far the best gingerbread I've ever eaten, probably because it contains a full quarter pound of fresh ginger. That sounded like a lot of grating, so I threw the peeled ginger in the food processor which did the job nicely in seven seconds. Even my finicky husband said the cake was "unbelievable," which is unbelievable. You can find the recipe here. 

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: steak & corn

If you noticed a small crack in your glass coffee carafe at 5:30 a.m. would you go ahead and make your coffee in it anyway? 

Just wondering.

I've cooked a lot from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese  Kitchen over the last few years, and since I'm going to Vietnam next month, this seemed like the moment to delve deeper.  

Last night I made Nguyen's recipe for pan-seared beef steaks in which you briefly marinate strip steaks in soy sauce, garlic, and black pepper, then cook them in a hot skillet. These tasted exactly like non-Vietnamese steaks, which is to say, my family tore into them like a pack of ravenous dingoes. Something about rare meat. I can guess what it is.

On the side, we had Nguyen's grilled corn with scallion oil. Nguyen: "One of my most vivid memories is of our cook, Older Sister Thien, squatting and fanning the small charcoal brazier on which she grilled corn on the cob. As the corn cooked to a charred chewy sweetness, she brushed on scallion oil made with home rendered lard. The aroma and taste were heavenly. "

I should have used my home-rendered lard! Nguyen's Americanized version calls for you to parboil the ears, grill until slightly charred, then brush with oil in which you have fried some green onions. 

I almost burned the house down, but the corn -- smoky and succulent -- was worth it.

Dessert: David Lebovitz's ace chocolate chip cream puffs. He calls for covering them liberally with pearl sugar which I did not have. Lacking other options, I covered them with large-crystal green sugar and the results were delicious but dead ugly.  To make chocolate chip cream puffs, you can follow the recipe Lebovitz has posted here and when the batter is COMPLETELY cool, add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. He doesn't specify in the blog post, but you should use a full 1/2 cup of large-crystal sugar to top these puffs. And don't bother with the egg glaze. Phenomenal.

The Sweet Life in Paris: Cooking fish is hard, fromage blanc is easy

In the recent comments (thank-you very much!) there were a lot of votes for tackling the fromage blanc souffle from David Lebovitz's Sweet Life in Paris. I've never actually tasted fromage blanc and given your accounts of its tastiness and scarcity, decided to see if it would be hard to make at home. 

It isn't. I tried Emeril's recipe, the first one that popped up on the search engine, and it took about 10 minutes of so-called "active" time. You slowly heat milk with buttermilk and lemon juice until curds form, drain off the whey, and there's your cheese. It doesn't differ all that much from homemade ricotta, except it was smoother and slightly more delicious, maybe because I added the optional cream. I always add the optional cream, a personality trait and perhaps a problem. Tomorrow night: fromage blanc souffle.

I also baked Lebovitz's lemon-glazed madeleines, the recipe for which is here. 

Pretty. Lebovitz's innovation is to "swathe" each madeleine in a "puckery" lemon glaze to ensure that they are as moist as the madeleines at his favorite Paris bakery. I haven't actually tasted one yet, am trying to wait until after lunch.

In other news, I've decided it's silly to rush through the remaining dishes I want to try from Paris. Like, what's going to happen if I don't keep to a schedule? I'm going to have to fire myself? So I'm going to start cooking from the next book tomorrow -- Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen -- and we'll just have a few days of overlap. Vietnamese entrees, French desserts.

Also, this interesting story by Joel Stein made me want to buy both the books he mentions and brew some cherry bounce.