Category Archives: Recipes

Noodles, Shrimp, Vegetables, Vietnamese

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

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What is the difference between a spring roll and a summer roll?

A spring roll is a roll filled with meat and vegetables, wrapped in a skin usually made from wheat flour, and fried crispy. You commonly find it served with a thick, sweet-sour sauce. King Eggroll in San Jose has built a thriving business on the quality of its spring rolls.

A summer roll is a roll filled with meat and vegetables, wrapped in a skin made from rice paper, and uncooked. (The Vietnamese name, gỏi cuốn literally means “salad roll”.) It is served with a hoisin-peanut dipping sauce. Most Vietnamese take out places, like Huong Lan on Tully Rd., sell various kinds of summer rolls.

Of course, if you have the ingredients, you an assemble them at home yourself. Here, we used shiso, mint, and Thai basil leaves plus rice vermicelli noodles and bean sprouts. Cooked shrimp was the protein of choice for this one. There are lots of choices for different ingredients – use your imagination!

The real trick is in the wrapping. The rice paper sheets are very delicate once they get wet. You quickly dip the skin into a bowl of warm water then immediately move it to the assembling plate. Layer the ingredients, then gently wrap and roll.

To make the dipping sauce, I mixed some hoisin sauce, some chunky peanut butter, a little sesame oil, some water to thin it and some sriracha chili sauce for spiciness.

Annie is much better than me at wrapping summer rolls. Once, in order to save time, I piled a bunch of dry rice paper skins on a plate and poured water over the whole bunch to soften them. Of course, I got a soggy mess, especially with the bottom skins that sat the longest in the water. Good thing these skins are relatively inexpensive! Now, I just leave the wrapping to her.

Aloha, Nate

Italian, Tomatoes

Gazpacho

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So I was standing there, chopping veggies to make chopped salad (see previous example here), and wondering what to do with all that reserved tomato juice I had saved from the salad plus the lomi lomi salmon. Suddenly, a word popped into my noggin: Gazpacho! Oooh, I hadn’t had *that* in a while.

I like tomato-based soups, and gazpacho is one of my favorite variations of tomato soup, with that spark of spicyness from the raw garlic. A chilled soup would go along great with the chopped salad. So I went over to Epicurious and found this recipe

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Gazpacho-239209

It’s a pretty simple recipe, but one ingredient that was new to me was smoked Spanish paprika. And what do you know, we actually happened to have a package of that, that we purchased at the Penzey’s Spices store in Houston!

This was one of the best gazpachos I’ve made. It’s not too spicy, as I held back on the pepper and the raw garlic. That smoked Spanish paprika made the dish, I thought. Our friend raved about it, saying it was better than the one he had tasted in Italy that got him hooked on gazpacho in the first place.

This recipe is a keeper. I’m gonna make it again soon (of course, using only Annie’s homegrown tomatoes)!

Aloha, Nate

Egg, Malaysian, Noodles, Pork

Hokkien Prawn Mee

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When you talk of Hokkien Mee, you have to qualify yourself: do you mean KL-style Hokkien Char Mee, or Penang-style Hokkien Prawn Mee? The two couldn’t be more different. KL-style means thick, yellow noodles braised in a thick, dark soy sauce with pork, squid, fish cake and cabbage and, if you’re lucky, some crispy pieces of lard. Enjoy it with some pickled chile peppers for a spicy-vinegary kick.

Penang-style Hokkien Prawn Mee is a soup-noodle dish, using both egg and rice noodles. The broth is made from lots and lots of prawns, plush pork and / or chicken bones. The noodles come laden with prawns, fish cake, pork, and crispy fried shallots.

Annie adapted this Hokkien Prawn Mee recipe off of the Rasa Malaysia website. She made a stock from shrimp shells and pork bones with some rock sugar for sweetness. Egg and rice noodles go on the bottom, followed by shrimps, pork, and a hard boiled egg. Ladle on the rich broth (great, unctuous mouth-feel with little bits of pork fat floating in it), then top with fried shallots. Serve with a spoonful of chili sauce made from blended chiles, shallots, garlic, and oil.

Our shrimp stock is not as dark as Rasa Malaysia’s because we used mostly shells and not enough prawn heads. Next time, more heads!

Aloha, Nate

American, Egg, Pork

Sweet and Savory Biscuits

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When I was growing up, we used to always have a can or two of Pillsbury biscuits in the fridge. They were just so convenient – just pop the can (always a lot of fun to see how far you could peel back the label before the internal pressure split the cardboard), lay out the biscuits on a tray, and bake them in the toaster oven. We would eat them with our spaghetti dinners, sopping up the sauce.

Annie recently had a little inspired moment with a can of Pillsbury biscuits. After baking, she split them, spread on some Nutella, added sliced strawberries, then topped with fresh whipped cream. At first it tasted weird to me because I felt the biscuits should have been served with something savory. But actually the slightly salty, buttery biscuit flavor went very well with the sweet fillings.

This is more along the lines of what I was thinking of making with those Pillsbury biscuits: ham, egg and cheese. I really like the flaky layers of these biscuits, as opposed to the wetter, crumbly ones you find at say KFC.

What’s your favorite way to eat biscuits?

Aloha, Nate