My Sister's Garden: Chuoi Moc

There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas in the world, but most of us living in America are only familiar with the ubiquitous Cavendish variety. These bananas are tasteless and mushy, but they are widely available thanks to their excellent shelf life. Chiquita (formerly United Fruit Company) created a formula to cultivate and export these bananas for next to nothing by exploiting the workers in Latin America. With their success, other growers such as Del Monte and Dole joined in and flooded the markets with these cheap fruits.

Vietnamese people are extremely particular about fresh fruits because they serve as the majority of snacks and desserts. A variety of banana that is very popular is chuoi moc, which is about ½ the size of a regular banana or smaller. The skin is thinner and the flesh is firmer. It tastes rich and sweet with a subtle hint of tartness. My favorite way to enjoy this fruit is to make banana tempura.

My parents took a few banana offshoots from my aunt’s garden and planted them in my sister’s garden over 3 years ago. The fruits from these plants have been pretty small (2 bites), but with the incredible amount of rain we’ve had in the past few weeks, this batch turned out extremely plump (3-4 bites).

Aside from eating the fruits, we slice up the banana flower/heart (bup chuoi) to add to salads and soups. Each banana bunch produces a single, sterile, male banana flower that hangs down. The female flowers produce the actual fruits that you see above.

The beautiful leaves are used to steam-cook various fish and rice dishes. Gone are the days of buying frozen banana leaves from the market. :)

Vietnamese Pho Noodle Soup (Pho Tai Bo Vien)

This is exactly how I like my pho:

A bed of fresh pho noodles topped with paper-thin slices of raw beef, a few sliced meatballs and some scallion.

Drenched with a boiling broth of beef bones, chicken thighs, charred ginger & onion and toasted star anise, cloves and cinnamon sticks that have been simmering for several hours and seasoned to taste with salt, rock sugar and a tiny bit of fish sauce.

Garnished with roughly torn Thai basil leaves. No extra condiments, please. :)

My Sister's Garden

My family has always been very pragmatic gardeners and never wasted time growing silly things like flowers. When we lived in Kansas, the front yard was a space where I planted marigolds, pansies and daffodils. In our giant backyard, my sister planted rows of corn (seeds brought from Vietnam), apple trees, arugula, water spinach, twenty different types of herbs, tomatoes, chilies, watermelons, opo squash, bitter melons and anything that we eat and will grow could be found in our garden. My American friends would gaze in amazement at our backyard because practically everyone in that little Kansan town had perfectly manicured lawns. I had the chore of plucking dandelions from our front lawn and hated it so much that I still remember it to this day. I think this is the reason why I have no desire to ever live in a place where one has to maintain a lawn.

My sister, KC, has quite an impressive Florida garden. When my parents visit from Hawaii, they would hide seeds from Vietnam or Hawaii in their checked luggage to plant in her garden. So, she has a few banana plants, a couple coconut trees, a lime tree, dragon fruit plants, various medicinal herbs and these:

Sweet 100 Hybrid tomatoes

Hot banana chili peppers

Sweet banana chili peppers

Tabasco chili peppers

Anaheim chili peppers

Coconuts

Rau lang (sweet potato leaves)

Pan-fried Dumplings (Yaki-Gyoza)

Dumplings:

• 1 lb ground pork (or any protein)
  
• 1 bunch scallion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 knob ginger, minced
• Sea salt and freshly cracked white pepper to taste
• ½ tsp cornstarch
• Splash of white vinegar
• Splash of Shaoxing wine
• Soy sauce to taste
• Glug of sesame oil
  

• Gyoza skins
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Hot water

Dipping Sauce:

• 1 red chili, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 big clove garlic, finely chopped
• Sesame oil
• Soy sauce
• Vinegar
• Hot water

To making the filling, throw meat and the first set of ingredients into a bowl and mix well. It is important that you knead the meat for at least a good 10 minutes so that everything can meld together and result in a springy filling texture when the dumplings are cooked.

To make the dumpling, take a gyoza skin and place a teaspoon of filling in the center. If you are greedy like me, you can put 2 teaspoons and risk dumpling explosion. :) Dip your finger in a bowl of water and moisten the edge. You can simply fold them over to make a half moon or whatever creative shape you have in mind. I made half moon shape with little pleats. What’s important is that you don’t trap the air inside when you seal the dumplings. I like to make all my dumplings at once and freeze the leftovers (uncooked) for later use.

To cook your dumplings, you will need to put a non-stick frying pan over medium to medium-high heat. Drizzle a tiny bit of oil and place the dumplings into the pan, making sure they are not touching each other. Allow the gyozas to fry for a little bit until you see the bottom turn a golden brown. Have the lid ready in one hand and pour about ¼ cup of water into the pan and cover immediately. The oil will splatter if you don't do this quick enough! Lower heat and steam cook dumplings for about 3-4 minutes or until the opaque skin has turned translucent and water has evaporated. At this point, you can optionally raise the heat and allow the dumplings to crisp up a bit before plating.

You can enjoy these dumplings by dipping them in a simple mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, but I like to add chili oil and garlic to my sauce. To make this sauce, all you have to do is fry the chili (fresh or dried) and garlic in some sesame oil. Transfer this oil to a cup and add soy sauce, vinegar and a bit of hot water to dilute it.

A Taste of Turkey

S let out a little yelp as he opened a package from his mom in the mail this past weekend. She sent something sweet and something sour:

Burma kadayif - rolled, shredded phyllo dough with pistachio in syrupy goodness.

Erik - tart green plums as the season winds down.

Turks like to eat these little plums with salt, but I thought I'd show him how Vietnamese eat their green fruits - with muoi ot, fresh chili pounded to a pulp with some fine sea salt. :)