Homemade Pho

Pho is one of my favorite things (it's pronounced "fuh.") It's a Vietnamese noodle soup that's slightly spicy, very tangy and is served with myriad extra fun things to dump in. Any dish that is automatically customizable is ok in my book. It's also great for a hangover (not that I would know.) 

Pho is one of those things I get cravings for sometimes, but satiating those cravings becomes difficult living in Baltimore; there are decidedly few pho options in the city. Boo! Coming from Portland, where there are many, this caused some consternation. Enter: White Girl makes her own pho. And while it's nowhere near authentic, it's a pretty damn good representation and will do when good pho is 3,000 miles away.

So here's how I did it.

I started by sauteeing onions and lemongrass in some sesame oil. When they were just translucent, I added chopped mushrooms. Then I added enough (homemade! so good!) chicken stock to make it into soup. Then I added all the Asian ingredients I had in my house: fish sauce (this really makes it--it gives it great umami), soy sauce, sriracha and grated ginger, along with some pho rice noodles. This seems like an exotic ingredient, but I found them at the regular grocery store. Same with the lemongrass.

 

I let it simmer for a bit, then added some frozen corn. Finally, I topped it off with fresh scallions. 

To serve, I even chopped up some typical garnishes that normally accompany pho in any restaurant: lime wedges, mung bean sprouts and peanuts. Ok, so the peanuts aren't quite typical, but they were a really nice touch. In restaurants, there are normally two sauce options, too: a sortof sweet plum sauce, and a spicy chili sauce similar to sriracha. I didn't have those and had already added some spice.

Homemade pho! Like I said, not quite authentic, but pretty admirable for a home effort.

Rice Paper Rolls

One of my favorite appetizers at Thai restaurants is the vegetarian rice paper rolls. The rice paper is chewy and the vegetables are fresh and crunchy, and the accompanying peanut dipping sauce is salty and tangy. It makes for a delightful combination. I purchased some rice paper rolls way back in the day and needed to use them up, so I made some homemade. They turned out pretty damn good--a pretty decent likeness to my favorite Thai restaurant's version.

Here we have the assembly line for the rolls. You want to make sure to have everything ready to go before you wet the rice paper, lest you end up with a soggy, rice papery mess and no roll. And that would be sad.

 

So, I assembled all my ingredients:

*Scallions

*Shredded carrot

*Shredded cucumber

*Shredded yellow pepper

*Avocado

*Cilantro

*Spicy wasabi peanuts (which were leftover from a random road trip but worked perfectly for these)

Then, you simply take the rice paper and run it under warm water for about 10 seconds, making sure to saturate the whole thing. Next, lay it flat on your work surface and place all desired fillings closer to one end, then roll up like a burrito. Try to roll them tightly so they don't end up falling apart when you bite into them.

I didn't make a tangy peanutty dipping sauce, but instead used Trader Joe's teriyaki dipping sauce, which I could drink with a straw it's so good.

I paired these rice paper rolls with my attempt at homemade pho. Stay tuned to hear about that adventure!

Sushi Dinner Club

Here is a dinner party I recently had with some friends. We do a "dinner club" about once every three months or so. I'll let the photos speak for themselves this time. It was a lot of fun!

Rice Paper Rolls and Soba Noodle Stir-Fry

One of the staple meals that appears in Chez Stadium is an Asian-style stir-fry. I like to chop as many vegetables as are in the vegetable drawer, saute them all up and add soy sauce or Soyaki or some other form of Asian-flavored sauce. I'll serve it over whatever starch is convenient. Usually this is instant brown rice (c'mon, real brown rice takes forever to cook!) or whole wheat spaghetti noodles. Sometimes it's quinoa. But today I had some whole wheat soba noodles from Uwajimaya, so I opted to cook those up for the stir-fry.

Usually appearing in my vegetable drawer are carrots, onions, broccoli, sweet peppers (either red or green) and zucchini. All that went into the stir-fry, plus button mushrooms and some frozen snow peas. I also had some leftover roasted sweet potato I threw in at the end.After it's all cooked, I usually grate in fresh ginger (stored already peeled in the freezer) and add Soyaki or soy sauce or some combination thereof.

Feeling ambitious, I decided to make rice paper rolls to accompany the stir-fry. I really enjoy these at Thai restaurants (especially E-San), but they are fairly easy to make at home--just a bit time-consuming to prep all the fillings. I keep it simple, going all veggie, and today I put in the following: julienned cucumbers and red peppers, grated carrots and radish, alfalfa sprouts and avocado (not pictured). Some directions call for boiling the rice paper for a few seconds, but I don't bother with that. All I do is run them under warm water for 10-15 seconds, then quickly fill as they soften. You want to make sure your toppings are all ready before you start working, since when wet, the rice paper gets really sticky.

Here's my rice paper, which I also got at Uwajimaya.

And my rice paper roll-making station:


Basically, you just run the wrapper under warm water for ~15-20 seconds, lay it flat and quickly fill with your prepped toppings. Then just roll like a burrito and seal. I served these with Trader Joe's Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce.

Aww, a poor roll has become a bit flaccid. How embarrassing.

And here is the stir-fry. Pictured on top is the chicken I cooked all day in my Crockpot. I threw various Asian ingredients in, like soy sauce, peanut butter, ginger and garlic and just let it do its thing all day. De-lish! Crockpots are delightful contraptions.


So, pets, it's not hard to make a foreign cuisine at home.

White Girl Samosas

Sometimes I get random ideas in my head about things to make. They stem from perusal of the approximately 14,598 food blogs I regularly read. I see something, then think about what I have at home and if I can make a version of it.

I recently bought a jar of green curry paste at Uwajimaya and have been thinking of ways to use it aside from the typical coconut milk curry. Here's what I came up with, something I've lovingly dubbed "White Girl Samosas," since, you know, I'm about as Indian as Dick Cheney. I don't like to fry anything, so making a dough to deep-fry was out. Phyllo dough has a similar consistency, and it's lower in calories, so I used that for the pastry. Then it was just a simple matter of filling it with samosa-like fillings. And voila! White Girl Samosas were born. (Check out what a normal samosa is here.)

I opted to go with a typical filling of potatoes and peas, not because it would be more authentic that way, but because that's what we had.
Here we have the filling, looking just lovely and not at all like poop or baby food or some combination thereof. I think I should be a photography instructor my photos are so good!


Here's what I did to make the filling: I started by sauteeing onions, carrots and garlic in a big saucepan. Then I added some frozen corn and about 2/3 of a package of frozen peas, along with 2-3 tablespoonsish of the green curry paste. I cooked 'til warmed through, then added a dollop of Greek yogurt. Adding some potato I'd already cooked in the microwave, I then, with my handy-dandy immersion blender, pulverized the shit out of the vegetables, making them more of a paste-like consistency, like you'd find in samosas. Stirring in some soft tofu was the last step. I had hoped it would remain firmer and resemble Indian paneer, but it broke up and absorbed all the flavors of the curry, which was fine too.

After assembling 4-5 layers of phyllo, each brushed with a little olive oil, I wrapped up the whole thing. Isn't it cute? Doesn't it look like a little bundle with a baby inside*?

I brushed the top with a little more olive oil, then stuck in the oven 'til it looked like this:


Crunchy, flaky outside, creamy and spicy on the inside. This one's a winner! It may not be authentic, but it is original.


*Ok, so I couldn't find the exact image I had in mind, but it totally made me think of that scene where the stork drops Dumbo through the train and Jumbo unwraps the little bundle, and there's Dumbo, looking like the most adorable animated pachyderm you've ever freakin' seen. Ok, now I have to put this movie in my Netflix queue, because it is one of the best Disney movies! So sad, but so satisfying when Dumbo gives a big "Fuck you!" to all the bastards that were mean to him. And I dare you not to feel hearbroken when Jumbo rocks him to sleep from her jail circus car. It tugs at the ol' heartstrings, lemme tell ya!

My First Bento!

Here is a tiny bento my friend and former colleague Kitako gave me from her trip home to Japan. Bento lunches are very popular in Japan. Essentially, they are lunch boxes. But some people get really fancy and elaborate, making faces or pictures out of food. I am way too impatient for that, so I plan to use my new Hello Kitty bento for small things, like yogurt, carrot sticks, salsa or other small items. Cookie Monster actually got the inaugural use today, with salsa in the bento to go with his chips.

Arigato gozaimasu, Kitako-san!
どうもありがとう。

Chicken Curry

I try to change it up here in Chez Stadium. Of course, Cookie Monster and I have our favorites--pasta, salad, garlic toast, sauteed vegetables, etc.--but you gotta branch out now and again, you know? (One of us--I won't say who--requests cookies for dinner almost daily. But I won't say who, to protect this monster's privacy.)

So here we have VCK's foray into the Wonderful World of Indian (and/or Thai) cooking. Hey, wouldn't that be a cool TV show? "So, what'd you do last night?" "I watched The Wonderful World of Indian and/or Thai Cooking! It was interesting and/or informative!"

I don't know if this is technically an Indian dish. It could be Thai since it has coconut milk. But I'm not too worried about technicalities here. Will it be good? Will it go in my tummy? Sold!

For this dish, I actually followed a recipe. Gasp! I wanted to do this since I really have no idea what I'm doing in this genre of food, so I figured a solid template would be appropriate. Here is the recipe I used. However, I still did not measure anything, and I most certainly did not use the 1/4 cup oil it calls for. Blech! That is way too much oil! I added some zucchini, as well as a little bit of harissa to add some spice.

Here we have the curry cooking away:

And here is the finished product. I served it over brown rice, and with it I warmed up some of Trader Joe's frozen naan and some mango chutney.

Verdict: It was pretty good, but missing something. It lacked that depth of flavor that most curries have, be they Indian or Thai. It's probably because the restaurants put copious amounts of ghee or other really-bad-for-you ingredients into their curries. I think next time I would add more of the spices it calls for.

This is a good introduction into this type of food. It didn't take long to cook and it was a satisfying, fairly healthy meal. I recommend it.

Asian Noodles

Here are some noodles with Asian sauce I made for dinner last week. I didn't have any actual Asian noodles (such as soba noodles, which are whole wheat Japanese noodles. I actually made them one time as a high schooler in Japan, which was awesome). Anyhoo, I didn't have any Asian noodles, so I just used whole wheat spaghetti.

I made a homemade peanut sauce, loosely based on this recipe from Alton Brown. I also sauteed carrots, broccoli, onions, frozen snow peas, tempeh, tomatillos and harissa to add some spice.





I served my Asian noodles alongside some Trader Joe's Coconut Curry Chicken Stix. I mostly cooked them in the microwave, then crisped them up in the skillet. They are great; they taste nothing like coconut--just a sort-of Asian spice with chicken. I served them with, what else?, a Trader Joe's dipping sauce.

These Asian noodle bowls were oishi!


Cookie Monster does not like chopsticks; he's not that great with them. But I have a pair in our silverware drawer that I bought at Uwajimaya specifically for Asian meals. It makes it feel more authentic, even if it's really not.

My parents always used chopsticks (ohashi in Japanese) at home, and I was pretty prolific with them fairly young. My mom actually lived in Japan in the '60s--my grandpa was a civilian in the Navy but knew how to fix airplanes. He was a high-ranking official, which means he and Grandma and my mom got the all-star treatment while they were there. That's about all I know.

When I stayed with a host family in Japan and they gave me a fork, I asked them for some ohashi and impressed the hell out of them when I knew how to use them.