Bánh Pâté Chaud

Ever since I was a little kid, my mom would make these Vietnamese pastries for breakfast, though we’d eat them at all hours anyway. When I left for college, I pried the recipe for this cost-effective dish from her at the last minute. It has turned out to be one of the more useful things that I brought with me.

I hesitate to use the word “traditional” when referring to this dish; the very nature of Vietnamese cuisine sort of rebuts the word. Phở, for example, takes its name from the French “pot-au-feu.” That dish, which has become the meal that most typifies “traditional” Vietnamese food, is made using French techniques such as the bouquet garni.

But who gives a fuck, right? The important thing here is that the Vietnamese are notorious for appropriating the cuisine of their colonial overlords and making substantial leaps and bounds with their interpretations of it. And so, a few generations later, you have me making bánh pâté chaud in my residence hall kitchen.

Bánh Pâté Chaud

• 1 lb. ground chicken
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• a couple dashes of fish sauce
• pepper, maybe salt if you really feel like it
• 1 or 2 boxes of Pillsbury puff pastry dough (depending on how you fill them)

Mix all of the sexy ingredients, and insert a bit of the mixture into an approximately 2×2-inch square of pastry dough. Press the edges with a fork or your fingers. Brush some yolk on top if you want to get fancy.

Finally, throw it all into a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes! These freeze really well, too.

Into The Heart of Darkness, pt. 3

The glorious end to our tour of Vietnam brought us to my family’s hometown of Vũng Tàu; who can resist a trip back home to partake in a frustrating trek through unfamiliar neighborhoods to find one’s ancestral home? (We couldn’t find ours, of course.) Apparently the house is cursed or something? I don’t know, Vietnam makes no sense.

When we finally gave up our fruitless search, we took on the vastly lighter task of finding banh khot, the specialty of the city. Banh Khot is a rice cake with a shrimp in the middle of it which is shaped and seared in a special pan and covered with shrimp powder. And yes, you dip it in fish sauce. These were fucking amazing! I highly recommend that you motherfuckers make the trip out to Vũng Tàu to try these, because there is no happier dish in the whole world. Stare at this and salivate, you swine.

Into The Heart of Darkness, pt. 2

I have been told repeatedly by my aunt and various nosy motherfuckers that Hoi An, a small city on the coast of the South China Sea, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its main attraction is its ancient Old Quarter, where motor vehicles are outlawed and people sit around and make sweet crafts all day. Almost all of the buildings are a sort of peeling yellow and there are tiny dogs everywhere.

During our survey of the city, we stopped to eat at a local restaurant/cooking school for tourists: The White Lantern, owned by the awesomely named Miss Vy. Apparently, the teeny-tiny Miss Vy is a culinary institution in Hoi An, much like how Tom Colicchio is one in New York City. Except NOT A DOUCHE. (Just kidding, I’m a total fag for Think Like A Chef.)

We downed two plates of “White Rose” shrimp ‘n pork dumplings, which were like delicate little packages of crack. The dish was unmistakably Chinese-influenced, though the presentation was all Vietnamese. I could have just eaten plates of that, but it would have been somewhat unseemly of me.

For my main-ish course, I had soft egg noodles topped with shrimp, chilies and crab. They also gave me a basket of mysterious crackers to crumble into the bowl. I couldn’t really pin down the flavor: it was almost in-between the flavors of sesame and shrimp. The resulting texture from the crunchy chips and the springy noodles was sweet-ass.

After I ate my noodles, I kind of stole a bit of my mom’s dish, which was a barbecued beef deal with vegetables and rice crepes. It was another one of those dishes where you just have to throw everything together on top of lettuce, making a perverse sort of taco. Then, of course, you dip it in fish sauce.

For dessert I cheated and had the waitress bring me a French-inspired mango mousse cake from the bakery across the street. Thanks a bunch, Miss Vy!

Into The Heart of Darkness, pt. 1

So, Vietnam.Though it may be less than constructive to essentialize a whole nation, it seems that in this case it is somewhat enlightening. What I realized is that the Vietnamese just don’t give a shit. About anything! Practically every question that may come to one’s mind while in Vietnam can be answered with, “They just don’t give a shit.” Why do little kids pee on cars? What’s with the small plastic furniture on the street corners? Why doesn’t anyone wear a helmet? They just don’t give a shit! The Vietnamese really are a chill bunch of people.

When it comes to food, though, attitudes tend to vary. In general, most Vietnamese hate food from other regions: the Southerners think that the food in the North is underseasoned and bland, the Northerners see Southern food as frilly and hedonistic, and the other Viets are fiercely proud of their own regional specialties.

The — I can’t think of a better term than this — Middle Vietnamese are serious about cuisine. Our first stop was Hue, Vietnam’s former capital city, which is situated in the midsection of the country. We were taxied through a procession of temples and tombs until they all started to blend together into a frightening showcase of stone monoliths. At that point, we decided to break for lunch. My aunt told the taxi driver, “Take us somewhere cool!” so he drove us to a tiny restaurant on a shady, tree-lined street.

The driver said, “Hue has the best food in Vietnam, you’ll see!” Unfortunately, I really couldn’t care less; I was starving. He was right, though: it was amazing. We had something like a tasting menu, so here’s the breakdown:

We started with some shrimp cakes, which were a hybrid of an omelette and the traditional “cake of meat” food. They were spongy and peppery, and were supposed to be dipped in fish sauce. It’s sort of hard to think of an American equivalent for it.

Next was a fried thing with melted mochi on top. The mochi was very cheese-like in texture, which was really surprising. I’ve heard of American chefs doing this too, but this was entirely new to me. This, like most of the food, was to be dipped in fish sauce.

The next plate was a pile of banana leaves filled with steamed tapioca flour dumplings, called banh bot loc la and banh bot nam la. They were filled and topped with shrimp and ground pork. The banana leaves gave them a somewhat smoky taste, and the dumplings themselves were really springy. The banh bot nam la wasn’t so much of a dumpling as a smear of steamed cake on a banana leaf. You just sort of scoop it out with a spoon and eat it like that. These were awesome.

We then got a tray of tiny rice flour pancakes called banh beo. They each came in a small dish and went down in two bites. Eating them was sort of a Buddhist moment for me: they were so good, but only lasted so long. How delightfully transient! But like White Castle burgers, you can’t have just one. I must have eaten like 7 of these.

And then, the grand finale! Banh xeo are crepes stained yellow with turmeric, served crackly and crispy with a wonderful collection of fillings inside. They’re traditionally filled with pork (ground or otherwise), shrimp, mung beans, and bean sprouts. Eating them is a very DIY affair: you wrap one in a lettuce leaf with mint, basil, and/or cilantro (which are on a separate plate) and dip the whole thing in fish sauce. The textures might be too GAR for some, so exercise caution while devouring yours.

We ended lunch with some durian, but it was so horrible that I dare not write about it now. Yeah, I think I’m going to go grab a bagel. Peace.

Banh Xeo @ SilentH

There’s a somewhat new Vietnamese restaurant in Williamsburg, and eating there is sort of a surreal experience. While I have heard that the place was started up by couple of Vietnamese girls, the only people in there were white hipsters (including the waitstaff). It was nice to finally see a decent Viet place in Williamsburg, though. I was scared that we as an ethnicity weren’t quite hip enough for that crowd.

I got the banh xeo, which is a Vietnamese take on the French crepe: it’s made with rice flour and coconut milk and stuffed with ground pork and shrimp. You’re supposed to wrap pieces of it in lettuce to dip it in fish sauce, but they gave us mesclun. What the heck, guys? You can’t wrap shit in mesclun!