New Eats: Vietnamese Meatless Meatballs (Xiu Mai Chay)

Okay, since I'm playing some catch-up here, I'm going to go in for a two-fer-- offering both a restaurant recommendation and a fantastic drool-inducing recipe. First off, Zips and I are newly back from the Oakland area. We had an academic conference in early November, and the culinary highlights included not only managing to find our way back to Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco, but also finding some amazing new digs in Old Oakland. We actually stayed at the exact same (closet-sized) hotel we stayed at two years ago, but went the other direction in our explorations of the local environs. In contrast to the Vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant (with the cool neon sign blazing in the window, you know... the one we didn't care for...), Zips found and took me to Le Cheval, a wonderfully elegant Vietnamese restaurant that has a robust vegetarian section on its menu. 

  

It has an airy, spacious dining area. 

The veggie goi cuon were delicious. I had lemongrass tofu, and Zips enjoyed her vegetable curry. The Vietnamese coffee was to die for (as my mom would say).

Now that I've spent some time in the bay area surrounded with, no steeped in multiple Asian American food traditions, I'm a little wistful. So to satisfy my own longings, I'm offering up an excellent recipe I cobbled together back in July.

The Vietnamese meatball can be used as a filling in a lettuce wrap (which we did) or alternately in a baguette sandwich banh mi xiu mai chay (which I will definitely be doing soon-- when I have success, I'll post it here!). They're typically made with chicken or pork, and nước mắm, but we use Quorn chik'n tenders and a soy sauce-based nước mắm recipe. This one's nearly vegan, but I used an egg to bind the ingredients together. If you're a clever vegan, I'm sure you already know a work-around.

Xiu Mai Chay (Vietnamese Meatless Meatballs)

12 oz. bag Quorn chik'n tenders defrosted in a microwave until room temperature. Chop in a food processor and squeeze out excess liquid
3 cloves fresh garlic minced
1 Tb. minced lemongrass or fresh ginger
1 Tb. chopped fresh mint
3 Tb. chopped cilantro
1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch
salt and pepper
2-3 Tb. Nước mắm chay*  

Mix everything together and add 1 beaten egg. Shape them into meatballs about 2" in diameter.

Here's the super-ultra secret ingredient trick: **Roll the meatballs in sugar. I put some sugar out onto a plate and rolled them around. Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.


Voila! The sugar caramelizes in the oven. They're savory, fresh, moist, a little sweet, and perfect to wrap in lettuce and dip in nuoc mam chay. Enjoy!

*: Oh yeah, while I'm at it. I have adapted the quintessential Vietnamese sauce, Nước mắm to a delicious, fishless variation. Having traveled in Vietnam as both a carnivore and as an herbivore, I assure you, this one passes muster with my Vietnamese relatives! Zips refers to it as our

"Righteous Indignation" Nước Mắm Chay

1 garlic clove minced
juice and pulp of 1 lime
2 Tb. rice vinegar
2 Tb soy sauce (we use low-sodium kikkoman most often)
1 tsp. garlic chili paste (Sambal Oelek)
1 tsp sugar

These are the ingredients I always use. Once you get a feel for how spicy/sweet/salty you like it, you can certainly fudge the measurements. You can also add scant shreds of carrot to garnish it. This is a perfect dipping sauce for the meatball lettuce wraps, or for cha gio chay.

New Summer Tagine Recipe

(First off, let me admit I do not own a tagine. Nevertheless, this is delicious and easy to make.)

Driven by the usual summertime necessities (65% poverty, 35% laziness) I found and tweaked a wonderful Moroccan-inspired chickpea/chik'n recipe for dinner tonight:

1 12 oz. bag Quorn Chik'n Tenders

1 14 oz. can vegetable broth

1 14 oz. can whole tomatoes

1 14 oz. can garbanzo beans

1 med. yellow onion

2 cloves garlic

1 bell pepper, diced

2 Tb. olive oil

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. chili powder

In your tagine (or dutch oven or other large-ish heavy-bottomed pot) saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil for about 5 min. Then add the quorn tenders spices and saute for another 5 min. or so. Pour in broth, tomatoes (and juice from the can), garbanzos, and bell pepper. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes until everything is nice and incorporated and the aroma of everything drives you insane. Salt and pepper to taste (but you probably won't need it at all).

While that's happening, bring to a boil 1 1/4c. vegetable broth, a little of the juice from the canned tomatoes, and a sprinkle of cumin, coriander, and chili powder. Stir in 1 c. of whole wheat couscous. Cover and turn off the heat immediately, and allow the couscous to absorb the liquid (5-8 min).

Serve the "tagine" mixture over the couscous, and don't be stingy with that sauce. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Another good protein, low fat dinner that we didn't even have to leave the house for!

Summer Fever!

We went to the local farmer's market yesterday morning and found it swung into high gear already. Locally grown produce, starter plants for herbs and flowers, a lady selling agua fresca, long lines for kettle corn. It smells like summer. We've got it bad. Just planted tomatoes and basil for the patio garden. Then, covered in dirt, I built a fire in the fire pit and grilled some veggie dogs and corn. Rather than buying that lady's agua fresca, Zips bought me a small locally grown watermelon (it's a little early in the season), and cut out all the flesh, whizzed it up in the blender, and strained it twice-- creating an entire pitcher of juice for the same price as a single styrofoam cup filled with melting ice and a little melon juice! Wanting to contribute more (and not overindulge in charred processed veggie meats), Zips found a recipe on the label of a can of garbanzo beans that looked good. The recipe is called "Rockin' Moroccan Pita" and involves cooking chicken breasts in cumin and chili powder, then tossing with garbanzos and stuffing it all into pita pockets topped with yogurt. All the elements are there for a new twist on a bean salad, so Zips took a 12oz. bag of Quorn chick'n tenders and grabbed a couple of ears of roasted corn and invented:

Mexican Double "Chick"pea Salad

blend together

1 Tb. ground cumin

1 tsp. chili powder

4 Tb. olive oil.

and toss in chick'n tenders, coating them thoroughly. Heat chick'n tenders in a pot (you can add 1/2c. water-- we did this in a pot over the fire and heated it until most of the water evaporated).

In the meantime, combine

1 16oz. can of chick peas (drained, rinsed)

3 green onions, thinly sliced

1/2 tomato, diced

1-2 cobs worth of roasted corn, de-kerneled

1/2 c. parsley, chopped

juice of 2 lemons

drizzle of olive oil

Combine seasoned chick'n to the bean mixture and serve warm or cooled.

I realize the bean company called this "Rockin' Moroccan," but with the cumin and chili and roasted corn, we agreed this tastes decidedly south of the border. The "Double Chick" comes from the combination of chick'n and chick-pea (and it's more fun to say than chickenchickpea salad) It's delicious!

My other obsession this weekend is the memory of the crepe suzette haunting me from La Creperie in Chicago. I already had a crepe batter recipe, so looked around for a Suzette a la Germain that resembled the orange-y goodness that we enjoyed. I settled on one, and realized partway through it that I had misread the directions, so improvised what I think is an AWESOME sauce:

Crepe Zipzette a la Germain (just the sauce)

Juice of 5 oranges

zest of 1-2 oranges

2Tb. sugar

1 Tb. butter

Heat these in a small saucepan about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and mix in 2 Tb. Grand Marnier. Once I'd made a batch of crepes, I folded one in half, dipped it through the sauce and folded it again (now quartered) onto the plate. Drizzle with more sauce, and sliced strawberries, bananas, orange, and some whipped cream.

Try not to let your eyes roll back in your head too much!

Baby it's c-c-c-cold outside (Happy Lunar New Year!)

It's record-breakingly freezing in southern New Mexico. We have our second snow day from the university-- not necessarily because of the weather itself, but because of the power company's inability to support keeping us all warm. During our two hour rolling blackout last night, all I could think of was what could I make to eat when the lights came back on. We lit candles all over the house and I laid under a blanket with a cat purring on my lap and though of soup.

So I decided to come up with a vegetarian variation on a Vietnamese comfort food: chao ga, or chicken and rice soup (also commonly made with crabmeat and corn, and also often called congee in English). When I traveled to Vietnam with my Vietnamese mother nearly eight years ago (almost exactly-- we were there for lunar new year!), I got sick with a persistant hacking cough (maybe it was SARS?). I loved rice soup. I haven't had it again since, so I sleuthed around for common ingredients and came up with my own.

Chao Chay (vegetarian Vietnamese rice soup)

3 c. vegetable broth

1/2 " piece of fresh ginger (cut into slices)

1/2 clove of fresh garlic (leave it whole so it can be taken out)

1/2-1 c. frozen corn

1/2 c. quorn chik'n pieces (or cube some naked cutlets)

1 Tb. soy sauce

1 Tb. corn starch

1/2 tsp. garlic chili sauce (sriracha)

1 egg (optional)

1 c. cooked jasmine rice

white pepper to taste

chopped cilantro

chopped green onion

Add ginger and garlic to veg. broth and bring to a boil. Add corn, chik'n, dissolve cornstarch in water separately and whisk into broth until clear and thickened a little. Season with soy sauce and sriracha to taste. Scramble raw egg in a bowl and drizzle in to the broth while stirring (pretend you're making egg drop soup). Add rice and bring to a simmer. When you serve, add white pepper, green onion, and cilantro. **note: the rice will suck up all the broth, so if you have leftovers, you'll want to add more broth to get it soupy again.

I googled "chao chay recipe" before posting this and used the translate function on a recipe. My favorite portion of the clunky translation was at the end:

Cook for instance, remove the seaweed and fried tofu and oyster mushroom give up no end. Tasting eating and asked to draw a bowl add pepper, and coriander on top for flavor. This soup is very cool food and supplements!

Wish appetite.

Wish appetite! ngon lam! and Chúc mừng năm mới

What's for dinner? What's in the fridge?

Of course the down side to having a break from working is having a break from getting paid. It's dinner. We're out of everything. We've got a fruit bowl with oranges (3lb. bag on sale for $1) and some bananas. We have some frozen stuff we've stocked up on, but very little produce. We're sick of Boca burgers. I can't believe I'm out of soy sauce. (I can't believe I can't afford to buy soy sauce right now!) We have dry goods like rice and lentils but no broth.

So I did a little internet recipe searching and came up with:

Orange Sesame Ginger Chik'n with Brown Rice

Throw some brown rice (jasmine, basmati, whatever) in the rice cooker and whisk together this marinade:

2 Tb. sesame oil

1 Tb. soy sauce (I had 3 packets from a take out sushi from one of our travels)

2 Tb. honey

juice & zest of 1 orange

2 cloves garlic minced

1 Tb. fresh ginger minced

I thawed out a 12 oz. bag of frozen Quorn Chik'n Nuggets and marinated them for about 30 minutes. Then sauteed a little bit of onion (thinly sliced) and one more garlic clove in some sesame oil, threw in the marinated chik'n chunks and browned it, adding all the marinade. I sprinkled a teaspoon of corn starch so the leftover juice would thicken into a sauce (or at least a glaze).

Serve over the rice with some cilantro. Here I've pickled a little bit of red cabbage and carrot with rice vinegar, sugar, and a little sriracha garlic chili sauce.

It was a hit. And I didn't have to leave the house or do any shopping. Just gotta get to Friday!