Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Yeah. Can't hear you. All right. You're on the mic? There you go.
So yeah, there we go. There we go. Yeah, good enough. Rocking the panels, we got Joe Hazen. How you doing?
I'm doing well. Great to see you. Full-packed house. I know it. I know it.
Let's tell you know what? Let's do everyone in the room first. Our special guest for today is uh Andrea Nguyen with her new book, Evergreen Vietnamese. And plus, I of course am gonna talk to her about her what I consider to be classic in the field, Asian tofu. Hello, Andrea, how you doing?
Good. How about you? Doing quite well. And as a special secret sauce guest, we have uh Dennis No from DeAndi, one of the one of, you know, we did what do we, Dennis, back in the day. I brought the spinz all.
Is that thing still working? It is working, yes. Love you. He has one in his house. In that house.
I have all of your products in my house. Oh my god. I appreciate we appreciate it. We appreciate it. So we're gonna be, I don't know what we're gonna be doing.
We're gonna be talking about a lot of stuff. Maybe fish sauce. I mean, I want to say maybe, I mean I know we're gonna be talking about fish sauce. You have to. And in Stanford, Connecticut, we got Nastasia Lopez.
How you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I think.
I don't know. Oh, and actually, you know what? They turned my water off today when I was in the shower. Oh. And then and then it started dripping, and I'm like, I'm gonna get that la I'm gonna get those last few drips, and then it turned rust.
And so I got coated in that rust water. And so when I yeah, it's when I got out of the shower, I'm like, I'm gonna use the dark blue towel, not the white one. You know what I mean? Anyway. That hey, people, if you're ever gonna be in a bad situation, make sure you have at least one dark towel in your bathroom to, you know, take care of yourself.
You know what I'm saying? Anyway, uh I heard Jackie Molecules, Jack Ansley. How you doing? I'm great. Still in DC.
Still in DC, huh? No one on the West Coast right now. Well, except for our man. Except for our man Quinn chilling in the upper upper upper left. How you doing?
I am I I am perpetually on the West Coast. Just off the West Coast. Like just like not even. You know what I mean? Like you know, next stop Asia where you are, right?
I mean, there's no land anywhere beyond you. I mean, there is there is the West Coast of the island. I could be more West. I mean by what? By what?
Like five miles? More than that. All right. Okay. All right.
So uh today, you know, now is the portion of the show where we discuss any interesting cooking. Any, you know, any anyone got anyone got anything? Before, you know, if not, I'll have to fill it in and I want to hear other people's stories of the week. Anyone got anything fun? I will quickly say that uh I had a very, very good meal at a place called Astoria DC, which is uh Sichuan based cuisine.
Wait, it's called Astoria Perman. Yeah, I know. I do not have the backstory for you there. It's a Seshuan joint in DC called Astoria. Yeah, that's correct.
Okay. Okay. DC's a weird place, man. I don't know what to say. But if anybody's passing through DC, um I have no connection to the place.
It was just really good. I was I was impressed. Well, what'd you have? What did I have? I had um I forget what they called it.
Um there's like an actual Sichuan name for it, but you know the Seshwan chicken dish where it's like a mountain of basically peppers and and like you have to kind of fish through for the little pieces of chicken. The dry fried ones? I think some menus just call it, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's like all those chilies on top, and they're like Tian Chin chilies, but they're not really hot. They're just like really pretty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um it was it was very good. So, what is the deal with that, Andrew? Are they just like way like I mean, like I like to see them and stuff, and occasionally I'll suck on them, but like what are they actually doing?
You know, when uh when you buy those chilies, Dave, they're like they come in like huge quantities. It's like Costco quantities. And they have um they release just a little bit of fragrant um chili heat perfume. But you know, you're not expected to eat them. I know, but like uh I have a like a thing is that like uh I'll if if it's on the t if someone takes it away, I won't be like, I was eating that.
Whereas I normally, if there's anything left, I would do that. But if it's there, I'm gonna be like, no, me too. I eat all my garnishes. All right, don't leave that parsley spray. That's for me, you know, that's food.
This is why I am extraordinarily against the non-obvious non-edible garnish. I mean, if it's like if it's a hunk of metal, I'm not gonna eat it. You know what I mean? Yeah. But like, you know, if you put it on the plate.
Dave, this one this one would have driven you crazy because it also there are peanuts in this, and some of the chilies, and it was not a very well-lit restaurant. So some of the chilies were kind of like shaping almost like peanuts. Like peanut and chicken, how many times I I would go for a peanut and then just bite into an empty chili shell, and that got frustrating. I see. I see.
Well, I you know, but the thing is I can tolerate that. That's fine. But like I see you were going for the peanut. It is disconcerting when you go for one thing and get another. Right, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, exactly. Which is why very few restaurants can get away. Actually, it's interesting in Evergreen Vietnam Mies, you talk a lot about uh Trumploy in in Asian cooking, but you know what's ha gonna happen beforehand. Very few restaurants can get away with serving you something where you don't, where the referent is different without telling you in advance. Right.
Because you know, as a diner, you're like, what the hell is am I getting? Yeah, yeah. And and you know, the surprise isn't uh unless you're you're really there to get kind of titillated by it, but otherwise, you know, you you have certain expectations you gotta deliver. You know, I was in DC last week and I had a ate a a Lao place called uh tip cow. And I have is uh that place was so good.
And you know what? I got this inside scoop on Monday, is when Chef Sang cooks. It's the only day that she cooks now. So uh if you're in DC, stop by there. And she has this collared leaf wrap, Pang Mian.
Typically, like I've seen it with uh wild pepper leaf. We call them uh Lao Lo in in Vietnam, but the Lao version, they typically will wrap um like uh fried catfish, or here she also had um fried tofu and herbs in um raw collard leaves, so it's kind of bitter. And then the sauce was like fresh pineapple, um, with fermented soybeans and ginger and soy sauce. It was so good. And she gets her catfish fresh from the Chesapeake.
Wow. With the skin on. And it it and then it's good, it's a good cat. It's not like a mud, it's not a muddy. No.
Okay. Real clean. All right. I was amazed. Yeah.
Have you they got rid of all the mud. That's what I'm saying. That's the thing. I I've very rarely have muddy tasting fish anymore. Whereas it used to be constantly, I would get muddy.
Not constantly, I mean, because I would avoid them. Yeah. But what did they do? Did they like wash the mud out of the fish? I don't know.
I don't know. It's the chemical is Jasmin, but I don't know what uh I think it's from some bacteria that lives in the, you know, where they're hanging out. I don't know. But it's rarer than it used to be. Don't you think?
I think it's maybe because they're farm raised. More like catfish. This this catfish had a little, you know, like a little flavor to it. Nice. All right.
I also remember when catfish used to be really fatty too. In a good way or better. In a good way. I think frot pan fried to like release all this wonderful richness. You know, I need to get I need to get better with my freshwater fish game, because like I get I always gravitate towards uh saltwater fish.
You know, and I'm not saying that's a good thing, but like I've never like wrapped my head around loving carp. Carp is hard to love. It's you know, it's very firm and kind of tasteless, right? And you have to really manipulate it. At its best, it's tasteless.
You're kind of chewing on kind of wet styrofoam. Yeah. Oh my god. Uh uh, so you mentioned the pepper leaves, which I had a question about because you have several recipes in Evergreen. Vietnamese about a pepper leaves, and I feel that like there are so many different very close.
So for those of you that don't know, all of these plants are very closely related to black pepper, like same genus, different species. Peeper, blah, blah, blah. And they are used all over the world, everywhere but Europe. Right. What's with that?
Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Every culture except for Europe uses some variant, maybe because they don't grow there. Yeah, it's true. It's a tropical plant.
It's a tropical vining plant. Yeah. Yeah. So you have the beetle leaf. I've never used uh I've never used uh the wild pepper leaf that you and Oja Santa in in Mexico.
I mean everyone has a variant. I tried making a drink once with the actual beetle leaf and it tasted too much like a burning transformer. It was like you know how like when you when electronic goes poof yeah it tastes like that. You know what I mean? So people I liked it because I knew that that flavor was going to be there and you could convince yourself that you like anything as long as you know it's going to happen.
Remember I was saying that before but like other people were like nah man, nah. But then when I did a drink with Oja Santa, everyone loved it. Do you think that the wild pepper leaf that you're talking about would be good in a drink? Yeah because you were using the better leaf that is probably known in India as pan. Yeah the chewing one sticker the chewing one.
Yeah and you're not yet that's a chewy. It's not a swallower. And so well I remember I was freezing with liquid nitrogen breaking it up and yeah yeah. So the thing with the wild pepper leaf um it's oftentimes referred to as a wild better leaf but then people get confused with the chewing one. Yeah.
So I call it wild pepper leaf because in Vietnamese we call it la lot and it's a thinner leaf and when it's heated up it releases this incense like fragrance that is so darn charming and um just intoxicating. And so if you heat that up somehow and add it to your drink man, you're golden. What does it taste like before you heat it? It has a very mild flavor. You can chew it when it's raw and I think that your saliva and the heat in your mouth will trigger certain um oils to release but but it really exhibits um it's its beauty once that it's heated up I'm gonna try it nitro model and then see because I'm normally I do everything I can to not heat heat.
Yeah, right. But this you're saying I should heat it to get the I gotta do some tests. You do. Would it be also be good in beans the way that oja santa is, even though it's a different flavor? As a finishing, I was at it at it at it as a finisher.
Yeah. Yeah. Cause it it's really gonna react to heat. But you know, like a lot of those kinds of or oh hasant is like a big thicker leaf. They're big, yeah.
But they they they're thicker, but it tears quite easily. It's not like uh it doesn't have that kind of glossy, like maybe I'm gonna cut my mouth situation that like beetle leaf, like pawn has. Yeah. Yeah. Pan is is like it's not pleasant.
No, you feel like you can probably stitch it together for an outfit. Yeah. It's like sturdy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but oh asantha's fleshy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um I love it. Yeah. I love Ola Santa, but um, well, whatever.
I if I ever have a place again, I'll I'll work on it. You know what my favorite herb to do now, and I gotta find a source because I have a plot now. I'm a member of a community garden now. And uh, although I don't have a lot of light, I wanna do scented geraniums. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, rose rose adrenaline, all the different kinds. Yeah, that would that releases it that's perfume so beautifully, no heat needed. Yeah, and some of them are some of them can go a little bit on the detergent side. Yeah. You start thinking of like grandma's wallpaper.
Yeah, yeah, but some of them aren't, right? Some of the so you need to catch just the right one. So I'm gonna ask my farmer supplier if he'll give me some to plant. You think he I buy his stuff. He won't why wouldn't he Yeah, just give a little cutting or whatever.
It's a little starter plant. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, I'm still gonna buy from him. Yeah, but you do you need a little secret, you know, back back back window consultation on which one would work.
And I don't think the local weirdos uh would pick it from the community garden. I don't think they would steal it. If I planted something that they could see, they would steal it. You know what I'm saying? That's so New York.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you know how New York is. Uh so my crazy uh culinary thing this week was uh so I do Sunday family dinner, right? And I thought it was gonna be I don't know what I thought.
I decided to do whole fish. So back in the day, back I used to have a commercial deep fryer home, right? And you know, 40 pounder. And one of my things I would do, my stepfather would catch these like, you know, 36, 40 inch striped bass, right? And I would I would uh put you know butcher's twine through the tail and I would tie it to the mouth real tight, like a like a U.
And then I would low temp it at like 57 Celsius, which is a 135, until the inside got to be ours because it's so big, you know what I mean? Then I would uh until it got to about 52 on the inside, pull it, you know, fin sticking up, all that stuff, like starch coat it, and then deep fry the whole thing. You know, always stuffed with lime, cilantro, garlic. Uh I always do lime, cilantro, garlic, sometimes orange, uh onion, you know, stuff it in and some parsley so that it gets the aroma when it's low temping, you know, and the and salt and pepper. So they because the aroma goes through the whole fish when you steam it, right?
Right. Anywho, you wouldn't think it did because you wouldn't think it does because that's the kind of thing where you're like, oh, that stuff's just vestigial. You're just making you feel good. But no, when you're when you're low temping or steaming the fish, that stuff really permeates the flesh. Makes it better.
Anyway, you deep fry the whole thing and it comes out, and you have this giant fish that can feed like 20 people, which is amazing, awesome. Anyway, I don't have that deep fryer anymore. So I got like a whole bunch of bronzino, right? At like I went to the, you know, my local market down on um in Chinatown, and I got like, I was like, give me five. Because I 12 people are coming over.
Well, this this one, oh man. Five. That's I had 12 people. That's like grandpa brand's in the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, you know, whatever. But they were a good price, and the eyes were clear. And you got lucky. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I looked at them. You know what I mean? Well, they looked back at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, you know, you know how you when they get all sunk in the dry eye and like the yeah, yeah.
Uh anyway. So they I was like, okay, this is gonna work. So I get them, and the here's my first mistake. Uh the guy says, Do you want me to clean them? And I only have I don't have that much time, right?
So I'm like, sure, sure, clean them. So I don't have every, not one, not two, not three, not four, popped five, popped all five of the little like bile sack things. Oh, oh, five. Oh, no. And left that yellow garbage, the bitter, that bitter stinking, yucky, yucky, yucky, smelly stain on the end.
Every single time. It's like the guy was like, F this dude and just stabbed the sack on every single fish. I was like, son. So, like, then like obviously not, and so once I once I saw that, I was like, I'm gonna have to do some trimming anyway. And plus, they left so much blood on the back.
Oh, so you know, I take a score the thing, and I take my have a little nylon brush, I'm like to go to the, you know, to go to the whatever the the spine, right? Yeah, and then I was like, I have a bunch of kids coming over, everyone's gonna complain about the bones. You know how everyone complains about the bones at a whole fit, everybody. So I I think I have the good compromise. You ready for it?
Ready for the compromise? Okay. All right. So you hold the fish open, and then I cut, I cut a like the rib cage thing along the backbone, and then just rip just the rib cage bones out. Because the backbone one, once it's cooked, is not a problem.
Yeah, it's like easy removal, kind of like Picasso-E. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the rib cage bones that mess everyone up. You know what I'm saying? I think this is the compromise.
And to tell them, you know, if you want the fin meat, which is clearly the best meat, okay, cheek, cheek, cheek. But like fin meat is good too, because it's fatty around it, right? Right. Pull the fin off and suck on it. Don't be a jerk.
Don't call, don't come, don't come to me and say that you took a fin and got bones and got mad at me, right? Yeah. But I mean, those those rib bones, man, those are like tiny, thin little bones, and people like will, they're afraid of choking on them. Yeah, yeah. It's like choking has them.
And you don't want them to come over to your house and go, I want a Dave Arnold's home. And then like they he choke my kids. I mean, they're not babies. Anyway, so like uh anyway, anyway, anyway. So I realized at this point that I can't fit this many.
I that in my I have an ANOVA, which I was gonna use to low temp it, right? I was like, oh my God, I have to put and I turned them into C shapes, you know. I was like, these are gonna have to go in two layers. I can't cook five, I can't fit five on one pan in this oven. Right.
So I was like, oh man, this is two layers. And then I was like, because I my plan was low temp it and then throw it into the brevel to air air fry it to crisp it up. You know what I mean? Yeah. That was the plan.
Simple, right? I was like, oh my God, it's not gonna work because I don't want to have to air fry in two rounds because it'll take too long. And the first one will kind of be sad by the time the second one. Yeah, yeah. And so I was like, oh my God, I'm hosed.
I'm hosed. Because you can't air fry in two layers. You know what I mean? Yep. So I was like, oh my God.
So here's what I did. I have one of those little crappy plug-in-the-wall now, deep fryers now, but they're not crappy, they're crappy though. And like it doesn't have enough power, right? So I was like, I was like, I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm gonna stick the deep fryer on top of my induction burner.
And I'm gonna use the induction burner and the deep fryer, right? To to to make sure it has enough power so that I can do fish, fish, fish, fish, fish. Fast, fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, turns out that like the way they design it, you can't make the induction burner unless I cut the deep fryer apart, which I should have done in retrospect, you can't make the the because of these cheaper um deep fryers, they're basically just third pants.
They're enameled third pants. Right, right. And right with a with a with a thing you stick in it. But I couldn't touch the induction, so I couldn't make it go. So I was like, son of a I mean, son of a gun.
Anyway, so then I stick it on my gas burner, right? Right. And everyone in the house is like, I didn't tell my wife. Everyone was like, who was in the kitchen with me was like, you're making a mistake. And I'm like, let's find out.
And so like I used the gas burner and the thing and the oil temperature, I my recovery was amazing. That deep fryer is never coming back from what it did to it. I was like, uh through the third fish. I was temping it, everything was good. Through at the around the third fish, I started smelling the plastic.
Oh man. Oh. I have a hood on, everything. They weren't smelling it over where they were eating, but I could smell the plastic. I knew that it was proper.
Your fried daddy days were number. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So uh finally the next day when I looked at it, I had melted the entire back out of the it thankfully didn't meld with my stove.
It like I was able to pop it off of my stove. But yeah, that thing is gone. So I need to, I'm gonna modify a deep fryer to use two circuits instead of trying to heat it. Don't don't put your electric heat, uh uh your electric deep fryer on a gas element. Just don't do it.
I I well, you know, you've tried it, you've been there, you have recovered. Yeah, you didn't burn down the house. Fish was delicious though. Yeah. I mean, you want that really fast, like plunge action.
You know, did you score the fish? Or you just like no. Yeah, right, right, yeah, yeah. Right, right, rice. But yeah, if I was gonna do it from z from zero, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's gorgeous. Just cornstarch, your cornstarch and rice flour and I didn't have any cornstarch, so I used arrowroot, which was it wasn't as crispy, but it was it was fine. I have a for some reason I have a boat ton of arrowroot in my house. I do too. Why would you use it for it?
I I don't know. I think mine's like 15 years old. You know, like sometimes you buy things and you just go, yeah, I'm gonna use sometimes. Yeah, it was like it was like it was like a small thing of arrowroot was like five dollars and five pounds was like ten dollars. I'm like, I'll take the five pounds.
Yeah, because I'll I got some use for it. Yeah. Paint from Shea someday, I don't know. No, I mean, like, you know, there was a time, you know, when we were kids, arrowroot was like, ooh, you had like a small spice jar of arrowroot and you used it for your fancy thickening, but now nobody cares about arrowroot. No, no, exactly.
You know, arrowroots like and like kutzu was like sexy. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, a lot of chefs do like the kudzu. Yeah, I don't use it though. I don't either.
I have I have some of that too. But arrowroot, yeah, I've got like bags of it, little boxes of it. And I just I just look at it every once in a while in my pantry. Yeah. Um but so you used it and it was just it is it's not as hard as cornstarch is in terms of frying.
You notice that? Yeah, it didn't, yeah. And you for this application you want hard. You want hard. You want that really hard texture.
And and some chefs have been Asian chefs have been telling me, Oh, you know what I do? I cook my tofu with cornstarch and rice flour. Yeah. Yeah. And you did you test it?
What do you think? I I like it, but you know, you have to consider which kind of rice flour you're using. Like a coarse grind, kind of bob's red mill that is dry, dry ground, you know, um, stone ground, or a much finer Asian rice flour that's been soaked in water and then the grains have been soaked in water and then ground, and then it's really much more powdery. So so if you want like a crisper finish, I would I would go with with the bobs. Even try like brown rice flour, which sometimes can be, you know, it's gonna be a little even harder than white rice flour.
As long as it's not gritty. Yeah. That's the thing you know the thing about the wet ground, here's the issue like terminology is so crap, right? So like wet grind to me is like close to starch. You know what I mean?
In in in the way that starch doesn't have damaged starch in it, right? Right. Because it's not damage. It's wet ground, right? And so like this is a problem like in in Europe, not in I don't know, all of Europe.
In UK apparently, if you ask for, if you want cornstarch, you ask for corn flour. And I'm like, no, they are different. They are a different are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because one, you grind up corn, and when you grind up the corn, you break some of the starch.
And so that broken starch absorbs water and it holds water differently than cornstarch does. Because cornstarch doesn't hold water unless you know, you know, you unless you heat it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like anywho.
Yeah, no, I well, I know the wet mill thing, because in because in certain parts of Asia, you you traditionally you would go to the market and you would buy a um rice flour that was already like hydrated, but it was hydrated because the miller soaked the rice, then um grounded it so that it was already like this paste for you to take home and use it for dumplings or different kinds of of um cakes and stuff. So you get sticky rice um paste or a a regular rice paste. And so that's where that comes from because it's already hydrated and it's much finer texture than if you were to go straight from like just grinding raw grains of rice. And um, so that's you know, there's a difference between those two. You just have to choose and and play with it.
You know what I used to hate about rice flour, or you know, is uh I could never remember whether it was the green bag or the red bag. I know, I know. I've I've bought the wrong ones. Yeah, yeah. I even like bought the wrong like 20-pound bags of rice and gotten like, oh my god, I have a 20-pound bag of sticky rice now forever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be like, but like you went back when I used to teach at the French culinary, I'd be like, get that, I'd be like, don't get the glutinous one. I don't even want the glutinous one. They're like, green or red, green or red. I don't know.
I don't know. I know, but but don't you read like three or four languages because those bags are printed in Thai? Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. Hello. Well, as long as we're on rice, let's talk rice, because uh Evergreen Vietnamese has a bunch of interesting rice hacks in it.
Like uh, first of all, how about this uh what's the what's the Vietnamese word uh that's uh similar to kanji again? Dao? Yeah, yeah. Explain to me, first of all, difference Vietnamese style and like the Chinese style, and then your blender hack. Oh so Vietnamese style uh kanji or porridge, um, we call it do.
And the thing is that so much of what I see out there in kanji is really thick and practically gluey. But in uh Vietnamese fashion, it can be kind of almost it could be any texture you want. It'd be kind of thin if you like, with a good um broth. And so there are different ways of making it. You can use um broken rice, you can use leftover rice, you can use sticky rice.
And so my hack stems from the fact that I'm lazy. I don't plan ahead. Uh I like laziness. Laziness with a good result is the best result. Yeah.
So then in the morning, I'm gonna like bring a pot of water or broth. Uh broth is much better than water, um, to a boil. I throw some rice in there, I let it really like the grains plump up, and then I'm gonna turn the heat off and put the lid on it, and I walk away and I do like nothing to it. And it's hydrating very slowly, just like your fish right I mean like time is cooking and you just let Mother Nature just do her thing and at the end of the line you just stick a blend a hand blender in there or stick it in the blender whirl it up to break up the grains and then reheat and the starches bloom. I bet your hand blender is better because it lets you could control more.
Yeah yeah and I mean it looks like at the end it kind of looks a little um barfy you know right but be patient right that's what you say you very in the book you're like don't worry it will look bad right now yeah and you know what that's in recipe writing sometimes it's so romantic right it's like oh you're nearly there it's so beautiful and I'm like no it's not there yet don't worry because I'm looking at the pot too going oh my god how do I convince people that you know they're not just like going down the path to ruin with this with this conji but then you can add different kinds of grains to it and then by the time you're ready for lunch you know you reheat it and you add whatever leftovers you got and then you've got yu. But you say it looks normal once you reheat it. Yeah because the the starches bloom and they express themselves the rice grains you know whatever grains you got and and it thickens. And then you can like you know the thing is that so many people I remember one recipe tester who's white and she said to me I've been to you know I've eaten a lot of of conchie and it's always thick. I'm like but lady you know what they're like different textures just like you can have polento at different textures you know um and risotto too so there you really have to decide what you want for your for your porridge.
PS my favorite polenta is scrapple oh yeah that's that's polenta with life. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah. Um, all right.
So a couple of things. One, you wrote a whole book on I mean, at the end, you have you have some recipes. If you hate plants, there are some recipes in here, but you have a couple of recipes that are, you know, right. But the whole idea is taking kind of your mindset and view and moving it towards plant-based uh like writing a plant-based book. And uh we we could talk about it in a minute.
But here's what's interesting. You wrote in what's this 2012? You wrote the only like readable book on how to make tofu. I love Shirtle's book, right? But that's more of like uh social missions.
Yes. With some recipes, you know what I mean? And like some like all this kind of stuff. But Asian tofu was kind of like when that came out, it's like, oh, finally, there's a book people can read on how to make and use uh all different styles of tofu. And uh, including for the first time actually explaining how different coagulants work as opposed to just mentioning what they were.
It used to be hard before this book came out when I was you know first doing tofu stuff. I stayed on even though Epsom salt is not your favorite, it's your third favorite. That's the one that I oh wow because I could buy it at the right aid, right? And there was no one that there wasn't anyone on the internet yet. All I had was shirtleaf's book.
Yeah, you know what I mean? And Nigari. I tried to get it once, but it was not, it was not the liquid. I couldn't get the ratios right. It was just a solid salt.
It didn't work. I don't and the person at the store, like Sun, whatever it is, um Mitsua or Sunni, oh uh oh, right. The Japanese the second story, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one, you know, near Astro Place. Anyway.
Uh so this is like whatever, this is like, you know, 99, 2000, something like this. You know what I mean? Like there was not a lot of information, and so I was able to get it to work properly with Epsom salt. And so I just stayed with it, even though it's you say it's it's greedy grainies. It is, it's grainy, a great grainy tofu results.
But if you've you've got um, you know, gypsum or niggari or even blending them nowadays too. You're not a GDL person. You know, a GDL man, it's like jello tofu. Uh yeah, but it certainly works every single time. I feel like it's fine if you're a weasel.
Is that what you're saying? I mean, you know, like, you know, box tofu, like that, I call that survival tofu. I mean, the last day, end of days tofu. So I have to say, like, I feel I feel like everyone should make tofu at least four times. Why four?
Because by the time they get to the fourth time, they'll have figured out that they either didn't press it hard enough, or the first time maybe they'll mess up the coagulation. The second time when they get it right, uh that they're gonna start getting better with the cleanup, and so they won't worry about it as much, and they're gonna figure out that they didn't press it enough, they press it too much. Third time, like they're just feeling and the fourth time they can actually do it. That's what I think. My feeling.
That's my feeling. But don't you don't you think there's like that magic the first time you you go from beans to curd, and you're like, oh my god, I just made tofu. If it works, you know, I didn't think I could do it the first time. And I I was like using Shirtlift's book. And I interviewed him for this book too, and he was very, very helpful.
But he was like on a mission. He was very dogmatic, very much returning to, you know, the the earth kind of thing. He's a different, he's a different person. Yeah, he is. He is.
And he's still like on its mission to get people to eat more soybeans. Soybeans are are his thing. Um, but I was just amazed. I just like went to my health food store, bought whatever soybeans I had, they had, yeah, coagulated it with. I I think I got my uh gypsum from like I mail ordered it or from a low local uh brew place.
Yeah, the picture in here is like the I forget the name, it's like LB Carlson or whatever. It's the home brewer supply. Yeah. Uh because I wanted to show people like you could just like go buy this stuff and then make tofu. Epson salt, but I tried Epsom salts first, too.
And then it like it was like grainy. But I thought, you know, what is it that people are using to make tofu? Because it's just like two ingredients coragulate and beans. But also your book, Shirley's book does not go into different richnesses for different applications. Yeah.
So like the first time I made Yuba, delicious. First of all, that's something maybe you make twice because it's incredibly delicious and it will give you an amazing appreciation for you, but and then find a fresh yoke Yuba shop. Buy it because it is so labor intensive. Yeah, do you like the red ones that come out later? The late, the late, you know how like you pull out the yes, and it's like all kind of crunch at the bottom of the pan.
I like yeah, me too. I uh the we here's why you should make yuba. Because you can see the difference from the beginning of the batch to the end of the batch, you get an appreciation for it. But whenever I make a fresh tofu or a yuba product, I end up not doing I if I'm gonna do a recipe, I buy the tofu. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, like when you're gonna make fresh tofu, you just want to eat it with some good soy sauce and ginger. You know, it's like making fresh cheese and drizzling like olive oil and some good salt on it. Yeah, I also never soak it when I make it, I just pre press it, serve it, press serve. So it has all of the nut has been washed out. It's like so.
We can talk about draining. People are so like into it, I've got to drain tofu because otherwise it's just gonna like you know fall apart and I'm going to be awful. But tofu has its tenderness and you want it to express itself be because of that tenderness. And if you press the damn thing to death, it's like eating overcooked chicken breasts or pork loin. Right, right.
I mean it has its place in recipes, pressed tofu. And you know, anyway. Reason I bring all this up aside from the fact that I'm a fan of the book and I'm glad you wrote it, is that you wrote this book on plant-based, and not once did you even mention that you wrote a book on how to make tofu. I know, because I don't know, you know, it's like because I don't want people to think like you have to make tofu to make any of those dishes. And in in Evergreen Vietnamese, like tofu is the star protein.
And I was so happy to do that and to use it in all these different guises. And I had like a little mission, you know, people can use like regular tofu that they can get at like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, you know, um Costco. But I I wanted to push people to using fermented tofu, which I think is like next level tofu. You don't like the one with the chili for your recipes. I don't because the one with the chili, I mean, it's already manipulated for you.
And I love the fresh taste of chili, you know, versus stuff that's already in the brine. I don't know what they're using. And different brands are gonna vary, you know. But when you buy fermented tofu, um, please like look uh I I really love the Taiwanese brands. I think that they're more elegant.
Um, they have uh a really mellow, mellow flavor. Some of the brands from other parts of Asia can be just a little too intense. Well, they're so different though. They are right, like like the stuff that you get on the well, it's different, I know the ones that are like fermented in big chunks and fried are different from the ones you get in the jars, but um yeah, but I only learned that because I researched Asian tofu and I went, you know, on tofu explorations, you know, tofu tourism, tofu tourism. Well, you use the fermented tofu a lot in this as like uh almost like uh like a cheese substitute in that you did uh a water spinach with fermented tofu like cream sauce yeah yeah and then there's also this um this dip that I make this sauce um with lemongrass and chili and lime juice and that's great for coup d'etates you can also like drizzle that on um uh grilled romaine and top it with fried shallad as a salad you could even like put it on rice you really think the fried shallot have to make it fresh huh come on just on that one not every and on the sometimes yeah yeah all right just but you don't always have to you can buy it okay well you're very like uh what's it called you're uh forgiving I am a practical purist yeah I know my limits I know home cook's limits speaking of fermented tofu that's the one recipe in the tofu book that makes me a little nervous growing mold well because listen someday we'll have uh you I mean I get nervous like I would eat almost anything I'll do anything to myself you know what I'm saying yeah but for others yeah it just makes me nervous if it's not inoculated with something that I know what it is it just makes me nervous you know and here for fermented fofu I'm like let's let it sit out and see what happens.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you're like stuff might happen to the wrap over the top don't worry don't worry you'll be okay yeah yeah yeah I've tested it on myself I'm sure you will be but that's the one that makes me because like the the the alcohol you know the liquor's gonna like kill whatever later on yeah. And salt too. There's plenty of salt in there. Uh hey, another one uh interesting, going back to the tofu, I think that's in this book and not this book. My mind gets confused because I was skimmed back through this again uh before I came on today.
And when you're when you're smoking the pressed tofu, you put sugar in with the tea. What is the sugar doing there? Is it is it add like that kind of burnt scorchy? Yeah, kind of caramely. Yeah.
Because tea, you know what it when it uh cause because the tea that I call for is I think lapsang sushong. So it's not the smokiness, but I wanted a little bit of that caramely quality. Just and it doesn't smoke for that long. So you really got a narrow window of time to like really, you know, inject power into the tofu. And that's like pressed tofu.
So it's like really dense. And the thing is nowadays when you go to buy tofu at a regular supermarket, that super firm tofu that is sold in vacuum sealed packages, that's the equivalent of pressed tofu. Um it's not as as silky textured as what you would get in an Asian market. But you can, you know, tinker around with with all those um dishes that call for pressed tofu or you're making baked tofu. You can use super firm um as as a sub.
But yeah, that that's what the sugar is there for. Sugar is kind of a nice thing to play with, you know. I mean it's like such an evil nowadays. I just Hey man, you know, uh well, speaking of uh evil and and healthy, did you want to go through why you wrote this book or are you sick of talking about that? No, no.
I mean, I think Dave, you and I around the same age. Yeah, things happen to our bodies when we uh uh head into our 50s. And um, so around 2019, I had um some health problems that um didn't require surgery, thank goodness, but um I realized that I had just been eating and drinking a lot of stuff that I shouldn't. Um it's work related. You know, we're we work in food and we're we're curious people and we combine a lot of weird things in our bodies.
And um to just kind of tweak my diet, I double down on vegetables. But the thing is that I'm a rule breaker, I can't stick to like one diet. I'm I can't be paleo. I can't, and then like Mediterranean's great, but I'm Asian, so it doesn't quite work with with my culture. But I like plants, right?
And um, and I realized that if I just ate more vegetables and built my food, my my food choices around that and ate low meat. I'm not gonna give up meat altogether because I think meat has its place. Um but once I started playing with vegetables and redoing some of my favorite Vietnamese dishes, I was like, vegetables are extra cool. They have personality, you know, mushrooms squeak. They do, they do.
They do, and we don't talk about it. Yeah, chitin. Yeah, you know, and and and they had they're beautiful, carrots have different colors and and their flavors, you know, reflect their colors, you know, and and so I thought I'm just gonna write this book about vegetables. And I my health was getting better. I go and I talk to my mom, who's like back then 87, and she goes, Oh, I'm so glad that you're, you know, if you reawaken and refresh yourself, child, I'm so happy for you.
Um, and I said, but you know, I did it by eating a lot more plants, mom. And she's like, ah, we used to do that in Vietnam. And her thing was just telling me that our diet had changed when we came to America. And that happens to a lot of immigrant communities. You know, this country is a land of of um of opportunities to to indulge and to eat lavishly, and part of that is eating a lot of meat.
We have inexpensive, we have inexpensive meat. We do. I mean inexpensive relative to where what it should cost. Yeah, and all of a sudden, you know, uh, we were eating a lot more animal protein, and she revealed to me that even when she had like a dish in Vietnam that was like a stir fry, we had a family of a household of eight people. She would call um for 300 grams of protein for eight people.
It's 10 ounces. Yeah, that's more of a seasoning at that point. Like seasoning meat. Like when like when I when I graduated college, you're like, you get you buy one thing of bacon and you make it last all week by adding a little bit to every dish. Yeah.
Yeah. But that was like how we ate all the time. Or if she had like a little soup or something, she would call for a hundred grams. And she had it dialed down to the grams. And at that point, I realized that, you know, I was returning to my food roots.
And um, so this book, the name of it really is about the enduring aspects, the evergreen ideas of Vietnamese food. And it's rooted in in plants. So, you know, like what are your what are your perspectives on the term plant-based, Dave? Because I, you know, you're you're a thinker of um from many different angles. What does that mean to you?
I okay. So what I appreciate about you and your book is you're dogmatically non-dogmatic, right? So it's not you're not trying to make somebody else feel bad. My issue, I mean, everything is eventually plant-based, right? I eat plant-based pig because that's what the pig ate.
But you know what I mean? Uh but I don't know where I am at it. I try to avoid anything that tries to make somebody else feel bad for their choices. And so when I I dislike, that's why I dislike the word clean, because the opposite of clean is dirty. So that means I eat clean, you eat dirty.
And it's a moralistic thing to, and I don't like it. But plant-based isn't like that. It's plant-based can be neutral. So when it's used in a neutral way, I think it's great when it's used in a way to kind of beat down or look down on other people and the choices they have to make in their life, then I I have a problem. You know what I mean?
Like that's my that's where I am. No, I am the same way because it's, you know, we're all we all come from agrarian societies, and plant-based means putting plants first. And you and vegetables deserve to be loved by everyone, not just vegans. Yeah. Well, speaking of vegans though, what I think is interesting, even though all throughout it you're like, you could put in chicken, you could put chicken into this or beef.
You also go through great lengths to make vegan versions of everything, including, and Dennis, you better get in on this. I'm gonna get bent. Uh, fish sauce. Oh, yeah. Vegan, vegan nook mam.
Yeah. So I didn't even know. First of all, have you guys tried uh it's not fish sauce, even though they say it's it's not a replacement for fish fish sauce, and it's not a replacement for soy. But have you guys tried the yandu? I have heard about it.
Yeah. I was kind of bringing around and I forgot. I don't know where they make it, but it is delicious. I'll say this, it's especially delicious in Western dishes where you want to pop the umami. You don't necessarily want to add MSG, because MSG, even though we we could talk about that too, it's more difficult to dose MSG, right?
Yandu has flavors other than the other than the fact that it's got a lot of free uh glutamate in it, but it doses like soy or it doses it doses, I would say, like soy. It it's uh it takes a heavier dose than fish sauce. It doses like soy, uh like light soy. Right. And um, but when you add it, it adds those things that you like without the characteristic notes of those cuisines.
So it's more of a secret, it's adaptive, yeah. It's secret. So you can add it to like a Western soup, and it's not like, yeah, it's not like you have another thing that's like that is uh have you ever had the the Japanese Ayu fish sauce? This the sweet water, the sweet fish Ayu. It's a it's a new it's newish newish meaning 20 years old, but it's not like traditional product.
But it's it's a typo shotsuru, the Japanese uh fish sauce. It's uh yeah, it's but it's it's like I say it's new. It's not like it's not like it's I think from further south in Japan, it's not it's not from uh Ishikawa, uh it's uh it I love Ishiri, but but this is different, but it also you can use it in Western dishes without feeling like you've pushed it in the direction of a Japanese product or you know, whoever whichever product you're using, right? Um so I think it's really interesting. You should try it.
I was gonna bring it, but like they turn my water off. Like I told you that they turn my water off. So my whole mind was thrown into a hole. I was gonna take a little yondu and bring it and see see what you thought because you say that the commercial vegan uh Vietnamese vegan fish sauces that you don't really like very much. They have a chemically quality.
I mean, they're they're um they're convenient, but you know, they're hard to get for people who are looking for a vegan fish sauce that's good. There are commercial vegan fish sauces sold at like health food stores, and honestly, they don't taste very good. They're very bland. And um they're gonna dose like a super low sodium uh soy sauce. And I don't know about you, but I'm always like taking my uh sodium count, assessing them when I'm matching condiments, because that's really where, you know, when you're looking at those numbers, then you can really assess like how much you need to dose, right?
And um, so with the uh vegan fish sauces that were coming out of Vietnam, they're hard to obtain, they're not always readily available for people. So I was like, can I reverse engineer this with accessible ingredients and have people make it at home? And like, hell yeah, you can, and it's so damn fun because then you're like understanding how you're building that scaffolding of flavors. And wonderfully enough, like canned pineapple juice is part of that. Right.
What do you think? It's just bringing that like a sweetness to it or what sweetness, a slightly um strangely fermenty aspect. It was like the weirdest this kind of round, because in Vietnamese, like um the term for savoriness is dumb da, which means like profound. And then um even like like monastery and glutamate, the term for it is bot nock, which is sweet powder. So my understanding of a umami is really something that is profoundly savory sweet.
And so using uh the pineapple um juice kind of gets me into that zone. And then there is seaweed involved in there because I wanted to inject the um the piscine quality. Like there are a lot of Did you triple seaweed that one or double seaweed? Double seaweed it. And then uh you're gonna need a little bit of um I use marmite in there for that kind of you know, yeast extract, baby.
Yeah. Joe Hazen's uh co-signing on the on the on the marmite, yeah. Yeah. And then you need a flavor enhancer because uh you have salt in there, but the salt gets to a certain salinity level and then the crystallization happens, and then you want to just send it over the top. And I'm into flavor enhancers.
And I do agree with you. Dosing with MSG, if you've not used it um a lot in your life, it's tricky. Yeah. I can go a little bit, you're like, it's a little under, it's a little under, and then when you go over, it's very clearly MSG. Yes.
And it tastes like it. So whatever the Umami Institute people have told us, like MSG has no flavor, it has a flavor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you want to combine it though. So see, I'm always like using MSG with other uh with salt or with soy sauce or with fish sauce.
Because the MSG is just there to nudge. It's not there to define flavor. But if you added it to your sesame salt, sugar. Oh damn. Yeah.
So that was a good idea. Yeah. Hey John, she she grinds up the sesame, salt, and sugar into a powder. Yeah. And it becomes this magical little condiment you just sprinkle on things.
And um, it's something that Buddhist uh people love, but also my family's Catholic, and my parents grew up with having a little jar of that in their homes. And um, we would add it just to a little rice, you know. It's kind of like for a khaki sort of, but you know, without but finer, right? Finer, much finer. And even the nori, you make a nori dust, it seems like it's finer.
It is, it is. The nori dust looks like uh graphite, it's just really beautiful. And I use that uh to replace uh dry shrimp sometimes. How much of a mess is it? You know, you gotta like back off and and and turn away, it's just like let the blender rest for a while.
Speaking of mess, what is your kitchen made out of? You have a recipe and you're like, you could use you could use dried turmeric or you could grate a bunch of turmeric and you're and like what is your kitchen look like? Oh my god, like I'm so frightened of turmeric, fresh turmeric. I love it, but I'm so frightened of it. Do you have a tech technique that not ruin everything you own?
You know, I uh I I protect my counters. They're white. Yeah, oh my god. But but you know what? You gotta like attack, you gotta lean in, you know, to like really clean that turmeric off.
But I just am very careful. And I just use a little bit at a time. And even, you know, turmeric like ground turmeric, some of the beautiful turmerics um that we're getting from overseas from places like burlap and barrel and Diasporico, um, they're like super strong. And a little bit of it, man, you know, all of a sudden your counters stained. But Barkeeper's friend is a wonder.
And and soft scrub. Okay, when you're at the market and you know how sometimes you'll see, you'll see the turmeric, and it'll be kind of it'll be kind of like not really orange or would you rather have ground at that point? Or would you, or do you think the the I always like the color? I I I love the color in like drinks and stuff, but do you think there's a huge flavor difference? I I always feel like it's not as good when it's not the right color.
Am I wrong? It depends. I that's not terrible. I like break off a piece and chew on it to see what the flavor is like. I like scratch a little part of the body.
But they could totally tell. I know. There's a lady, you know. I'm also the one who got goes through all the ginger to make sure that it's like got some some punch to it. So I'm always scratching the bottom and tasting it.
Do you like the So like do you do you see when I'm buying ginger, sometimes I'm like, mmm, am I gonna get the big fibery one? Am I gonna go for the younger one? And I know they're entirely different, but I use them kind of for the same applications. Am I a terrible person? No.
No, you're not bad. Yeah. I forgive you. It I do the same thing, but I I try to go for for uh ginger that has like a kind of yellow, you know, flesh, and when I break it off, it has like some hairs sometimes. But it's like tougher to prep, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And then exactly. If you're gonna if it's gonna stay in, if it's gonna stay until the end. Right.
Yeah. But then I also like go for the chubby ones that have few arms, because then prep it's a lot easier. Yeah. You know what I like in your in your books? All of your books, when you specify uh star and east, you always specify the number of points so that if someone has one that's broken in half, you're like, no, nope, no.
Thank you. Thank you. So as my copy editor was like, just say how many star on east. And I'm like, no, no, no. You have never even cooked with it.
You are not thinking of the home cook. Yeah. 16 robust points. That's right. Not just little puny ones.
Yeah, yeah. Big ones. Well, actually, it's interesting. In the book, you go through a lot of that at the beginning. You're like, yo, listen, like, because you're gonna give like standard for people who are used to American cookbooks, like measurements, but you're like, this is what it really means, because you're like, how are you gonna like what's an onion, right?
What's an onion? Right. We we say that a medium onion. What the hell does that look like? And then we're all staring at the onion bin at the market, trying to pick out a medium onion.
And sometimes a medium onion's the size of a softball that day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Medium onion to me has no meaning. Also, you you go through garlic, you're like, P.S.
when I say garlic, this is what I mean. That's the way to do it. Tell them what you mean. And really, all that stuff is fungible anyway. They're gonna people are gonna add however much garlic they want.
That that's very true. But it's very true. But you know, I want them to get understand where my palate is, and then they can do whatever they want. There's you can't ruin anything in that book. Right.
You know what's something I've never made, and when you're reading this book, like every you're like, I gotta make green onion oil. And then like you'll you'll forget about it for a couple minutes and you read one, I need to make green onion oil. And then you go and it's like green onion oil, like green onion oil, I mean the fish sauce, obviously, but green onion oil is like one of the stars of this book. And uh and now I need to now I need to have it. And you can just microwave it.
Yeah, and how green does it get? It gets pretty green, especially if you add a little baking soda. Yeah, yeah. You uh you mentioned that uh you have a couple of recipes where you maintain the green uh with baking soda. Yeah, uh, you know what, Dennis, you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna I'm gonna spin that in my spinzall to get all the oil out. All the oil, all of it. Because I don't like the waste. Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Ingredients are costly these days. Yeah, but now I want that green onion and how much that does the onion flavor just really permeate the oil. If you put a lot in. I'm gonna put that in. The other day I also uh added fresh herbs to it.
Yeah. It was really lovely. Which herbs? Um gar uh dill and cilantro. I had you know, like you trim the bottoms.
Yeah. Instead of like throwing away, I just chopped them up and threw it in there too. I've had um the taste is okay, but I've had mm medium luck with color with uh basil. Oh yeah, basil just poops out. Yeah, it turns gray.
It's like such, you know, we want it to express itself and retain its fresh beauty, but it's a it poops out when it's cooked. Parsley. Bang! Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Boom!
Yeah, yeah. Green. Yeah, yeah. Mint also poops out too. Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah. Mint mint is like mint, just let mint be what it's gonna be. Don't try to force it to do something it doesn't want to do. Yeah. Although many people do successfully, just not me.
Um, so a couple of questions. Pickled, your pickled mustard green. When I buy pickled mustard green, unfortunately, it doesn't come in brine, it comes vacuum-packed in like individual vacuum-packed must. So you have a recipe for making it and a soup that uses the brine. But here's my question.
Yours is part salt fermented, and there's vinegar in it to begin with, is and sugar. Interesting because uh you ever you ever done I eat a lot of sauerkraut, like a lot of sauerkraut. And so I'll make it, but then I eat it too fast. I don't have storage to make enough sauerkraut for the amount of sauerkraut I eat, if that makes sense. Anyway, so I normally make it with regular European sauerkraut cabbage.
You know what I mean? But once I made it with Napa, and it didn't taste right because Napa doesn't have as much sugar in it. Yes. And Napa is a lot more watery. Yeah.
And it doesn't have the bite of European cabbage. Correct. Yeah. But like you it tastes more different fermented than it does even fresh. Huh.
Anyway, so I was interested in the sugar addition to the mustard greens. And I was interested in vinegar and salt for the fermentation. And whether is that traditional or is that something that like you're adding to it or that's a recipe that is from my mom and that just kind of kickstarts the process. Some people like traditionally you would take them the uh mustard greens, and they're not regular mustard greens that what we think of as the very thin, curly leafed. It's veiny.
Yeah, it's like it's it's got this beautiful, like thick mid-rib and very frilly um edges. It's almost like a skirt, a lovely woman's skirt and a gown, but um, it's got this bite to it. And traditionally people would let the greens sit outside and dry. And this particular method I think kind of speeds that up a little bit. And that ratio is something that my mom has used for decades, and it really works out.
And the thing is that you can control that bite. It kind of at the beginning, nothing seems to be happening, and then all of a sudden it gets really funky as it sits around. And I I it's a combination of all of those things. You know, Dave, I don't really know the the chemical reactions, but but it works. Yeah.
And I've seen like other recipes, you know, take a little bit longer and be a little fussier, but um, this is something that has really, really worked out for her. And I add a little bit of MSG to it sometimes because you know those products that you were talking about that you're buying, um, they oftentimes contain a little bit of a flavor enhancer in them. They're coming in from Thailand and and probably uh China. Yeah, I think they also there's a preservative in them, I think. There is it, yes.
That's noticeable, yes. And it's kind of tastes tinny or metallic y something. Even though it's in vac plaque, yeah, plastic. No, no, I totally agree. So you make it at home, and and yeah, the brine is really lovely.
And I don't like to waste brine, I like to use it whenever I can. Right. But so I so the salt level, I'm wondering whether you add the vinegar or the salt level is like it's not zero. It's mild, it's very mild. Because you're using in this soup, you're using it in a soup.
So I was like, oh, so like Yeah, no, but I was surprised when she gave me that recipe how mild that brine was. I was like, really, mom? And she goes, yeah, because the mustard greens will just take care of itself. Well, the vinegar must protect it a little bit so that like uh, you know, no weird bacteria can kick start into it. Yes, or something like this.
You know what I mean? Yeah, and and it's the kind of thing where I feel like it's age-old wisdom cooking. She's like 89 now, you know, she's like, This is how I do it. I'm like, why? She goes, This is just how we do it.
Me and the ladies. Except you change her on one thing. Uh, we're gonna run out of time, but Quinn has one question, but let's talk about first of all, let's talk about these uh steamed uh rice rolls. Where the hack. Yeah.
Okay. I mean, because that is like I I've only ever tried to make uh the Hong Kong style. Yes, of Chong Fun. Yeah. And uh uh it sucks.
Yeah. Making it sucks. So for those of you who don't know, you make a rice batter, you cast it onto like a fabric, and you steam the fabric, and then you pray it releases from the fabric and you're burning yourself and you don't have a steamer that big. Everything sucks. Everything's bad, right?
Uh I tried it only one time now. Uh I'm sure it's just as hard to make the Vietnamese version. It is. It's even harder because they're they're thinner. So Bankun uh steamed rice uh rolls are are done with a thinner batter and um steamed traditionally over uh fabric, or you can do it in a skillet, but they're just a pain in the ass.
And you can eat them faster than you can make them. Oh, yeah. That's the thing. This is why you go to a restaurant. Exactly.
Or you have somewhere like your your mother or grandmother or auntie make them. But this particular method uh it requires rice paper, like sturdy rice paper that you purposefully over soak, my friends, so that they kind of become like these, it's almost like jellyfish or pieces of tissues that are floating in water. Then you fill them and then you very quickly steam them or microwave them. I steam them because you can control the heat a little bit better. And then all of a sudden you have the rice rolls.
Right. But key, key, you don't use the hot water for the oversaker. No, no, it is room temperature water, and just let it sit there for like eight to ten minutes. And you do like I I do smaller quantities of you know, like eight rice papers at a time in a large pan. And um, it's the only time where I would over soak rice paper because I'm always telling people, don't oversoak rice paper because then that'll never stick and you they won't seal for your rolls.
You're like, just touch the water, just touch it. Yeah, yeah, just like dunk and pull. Yeah. Or what about those pizza things where you're not even, you're just like painting water on the one side. And sandwiching the rice paper together.
I'm so glad you picked up on this because like it's like, you know, these are weird hacks that you could do with rice paper that you never thought of. Well, important though, why don't you describe which brands to buy, which brands not to buy, and why it matters. I am a three ladies and bamboo tree uh two Foucault brand rice paper. Those are are they're sturdier, they're made of tapioca and rice, and they tend to be a little thicker. So if you go with all tapioca rice paper, and I I just want y'all to know rice paper used to be made of all rice, but now it's tapioca and rice because then you don't require like super hot water to rehydrate them.
But um, and sometimes there's more tapioca than rice listed, but you want like a certain sturdy thickness. Um, and that's going to allow you to roll up um your um uh freshung salad rolls easier. Um, but also like for there's an hack for oven frying imperial rolls because people don't want to deep fry. I know you would. Uh yeah.
I know you would. But you have an air fryer. So you could do these in the air fryer. I don't believe uh I I don't believe in the term air frying. Go back to terminology.
Oven frying, what should we call it? Like uh like uh, you know, uh you know, uh what hot air circulation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, forced convection. Yeah, forced forced convection like wind tunnel cooking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, hot wind tunnel cooking. Um because frying is frying. Frying's oil. Yeah, you're right.
You're right. Oh, speaking of frying, you like do you think the result is the same? Here's the thing about like pan frying tofu. Isn't it actually just easier to deep fry tofu? You know, sometimes it sticks.
Can you ever notice like your deep fry tofu, and no matter what you do, they all kind of like combine and they become like twins and you're like separating them. So pan frying is a little easier. With your pan frying though, you're like, listen, if it sticks, pull it off, let it sit from there, it'll unstick. Don't worry about it. Is that is that how you go?
You're mellow about it. I am mellow because it's just food, you know. I would be aggressive and I would ruin it. Well, right, because you'd be like prying them, but then if you're not. In in hot oil, they become Siamese twins practically very easily.
They just gravitate towards each other and stick. So and you know what? People love deep fried food, but oftentimes they really don't want to deep fry at home. Yeah. I'm I wish that I had not, but uh, you know, just a couple of days ago on Sunday, but I know you and your worth it though.
It was worth it. Uh oh my gosh. Uh Quinn, let's get to the question we have on Patreon. What do we got? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Do you know of any more extensive resources on making the jerky? Your blog has a recipe from long ago, but wondered if you might have an updated recipe or know of any books. The Kubo beef jerky has a moist, soft quality that's hard to replicate, but it's my favorite. Then there's also other styles like Kordola Chen.
Have you made any of them and have any tips? And which style of jerky do you recommend for the salad in the book? I buy it. I buy beef jerky. You can, you know, you need so little that uh if you can get to an a Southeast Asian market and get, you know, Asian beef jerky like Chinese Vietnamese, that's great.
And there are like beef jerky shops in Little Saigon. But the sheeted soft ones. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you know, here, like if there's some if you can bend them, it's it's a little bit easier, you know, um, because you're gonna toss it in a salad. You're not chewing on the a whole piece of it so that your saliva can kind of soften the beef.
So it's going I I have not uh updated that beef jerky recipe, but now I think I'm gonna go home and and do it just for for you and your listeners. All right, please, please. Uh Dennis man, you didn't give us any of your amazing base profundo. Give us some of that voice. Well, uh, thanks for having me, Dave.
Oh my god. I'm happy to come back anytime. I think you're you should come back and just just you and then the man you, you know, Nastasia, you gotta tell Phil maybe Dennis can replace Phil Bravo as our as our base, our base voice of choice. I mean, you know, he also he also was a singer in uh yeah. So he can he can do he maybe he can do the grinch.
If Phil's not gonna do the Grinch this year, I'm just saying. Call me. I'm around. Oh my god. Voice so good.
Um who do we have next week, John? What's coming up? I don't remember. Quinn, who do we got next week? Uh nobody next week, actually.
No tangent to that. No tangent. All right, Patreon. We're gonna get to all of your questions. The week after, we have um Abby Belingick, and she's a uh Filipino American peace with a new book.
Love it. Uh all right now, qu uh since I have 44 seconds. In the a lot of your stuff with the seaweed that where you're adding the seaweed for the umami, you are doing it cold. Yeah. Uh you don't ever try heating, you don't like to heat the combu.
I usually like to heat the combu up to a certain certain level. I'm just curious about the choice. No, sometimes I do. Um, I think like in one uh recipe, I do uh actually I I throw combo into my uh vegan noodle soup uh broths, right into the pressure cooker. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That one. Right, but I mean for like the fish sauce and whatnot. Oh, yeah, no, because uh it's you know, it's just so little in the fish sauce. And now I have to try this freaking rice batter from Huey, the the crepe. Oh god, yes, you do.
And soak your own rice and then grind it, Dave, because you will like I would do it all different all the three ways because I have variations are attested. I watched, uh, watched the videos, I was like, oh my god. So good. It's like a fried rice taco. Let me ask you a question, though.
In the book, obviously, you're trying to be a little less profligate with the oil. Is it easier with more oil or harder with more oil? Um, it is it doesn't really we've got really good skillets. You use like a nice, you know, carbon steel skillet, good, but add more oil, Dave, because I know you're an oil man. Yeah, baby.
You know what I want? I want one of those little six-inch fans with a long handle. Oh my god. We'll set you up in the sidewalk. Got a side business, side hustle for you and your kids.
It'll pay for their college. Uh yeah, right. Uh listen, Andrea, thanks for coming uh on. The book Evergreen Vietnamese is available now. Get it from Kitchen Arts and Letters with a Patreon discount and a signed copy if they're still available.
Uh thanks for being on Dennis as well. Uh come back with your amazing voice and we'll talk about DeAndi, amazing restaurant here in New York City. Uh appreciate it. Cooking issues.
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