My Chau's Baby Back Ribs

One of the great parts about living close to my parents is that my mom always wants to send me home with tons of food, whether leftovers or ingredients for future dishes. As a Costco shopper, she usually has tons of things in bulk that she's more than happy to share with me. This past weekend, in addition to random necessities like crushed red pepper and garlic, she gave me a rack of ribs in a marinade, ready for cooking. How could I turn it down?

As ribs go, these aren't your traditional American BBQ ribs; rather, the use of fish sauce (nuoc mam) makes this a Vietnamese recipe and it is mmm mmm good!

The marinade is prepared as follows (recipe courtesy of My Chau):

• dissolve 1/2 cup sugar in 1 cup warm water
• add 1/3 cup fish sauce (nuoc mam - Squid brand preferred) and 2 tbsp of chopped lemongrass
• adjust marinade sauce to your taste (add sugar, water or nuoc mam as needed)
• add ribs to marinade and leave overnight
• in the morning, flip the rib over to marinate the other sid
• before cooking, take ribs out of fridge to allow them to reach room temperature
• cook the ribs for one hour at 350 degrees in the oven (flip the rib rack over halfway through cooking)
• after an hour, turn the broiler on and broil about 10 minutes or until the ribs have a nice warm brown color

Once the ribs have cooled, slice them up and enjoy with your favorite sides!* The ribs were perfectly cooked: the edges were crisp, but the meat came easily off the bone. This was a perfect Sunday night dinner and I'll be sure to make it again! Thanks, mom!

*my favorite sides would usually consist of white rice or some other carb, but we had some veggies on hand and I decided to be good and eat those instead!

Pâté Chaud (Vietnamese Meat Pies)

I apologize for my recent disappearance from the blog. After returning from Vietnam I had back-to-back wedding weekends that kept me away and also left me too tired to do much cooking. I'm returning now with one of my favorite comfort snacks that always reminds me of home...

It'd been a while since I'd enjoyed my last Pâté Chaud, which is essentially a buttery puff pastry filled with pork and vegetables. I'm usually able to fulfill my cravings by making a quick visit to my parents' house -- my Mom is known in our family for having the best pâté chaud -- but she just left town for a little over a week, so it was a good chance for me to try to make my own delicious batch at home.

While every family, restaurant or café has their own version of pâté chaud that includes different techniques and ingredients, I'm going to share the version I grew up with and love the most.

Let's start with the ingredients*:

• ground pork (about a pound)
• peas & carrots (I used about half of a frozen 16 oz. bag, thawed)
• one small yellow onion (or half of a medium-sized one), diced
• puff pastry sheets (I use one box of Pepperidge Farm brand, which includes 2 big sheets)
• salt & pepper
• Maggi seasoning (this is a household staple ingredient and is essentially like liquid salt - it makes everything taste better)
• one egg, beaten for egg wash

Start by taking your puff pastry out of the freezer to thaw. The box says this takes about 40 minutes, so prepare accordingly -- apparently the secret to delicious pâté chaud is allowing the pastry to fully thaw so that it bakes to crispy and flaky perfection.



While the pastry thaws, prepare the meat filling. Add the peas, carrots and onion to the ground pork. Season generously with salt, pepper and Maggi.



Once the pastry is thawed, it's time to build your pâté chaud. This is the part I got to participate in as a kid, so I always enjoy it. Use a pizza slicer to cut the pastry into even rectangles, about 3.5" x 4" in size. You can also make circles, triangles, or whatever shape you like, but Momma My Chau always made rectangles for us. Just remember whatever size or shape you cut, you need to allow some extra pastry on the outside edge in order to seal down the filling.

Scoop out a little ball of meat onto the center of your base pastry, then cover it with a pastry on top. Use a fork to mash down the edges of the two pastries so that they close and seals tightly over the meat. Once you have all your pâté chaud prepared, it's time for one last important step. Brush the tops of each pastry with your beaten egg, careful not to make a drippy mess everywhere.



Finally, stick your baking sheet in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until the tops are a beautiful golden brown. Try to resist the temptation to eat these as soon as they come out of the oven, because they will be H-O-T. (I've burned the roof of my mouth a few times in my life when I just couldn't wait.)



Growing up, this was always a breakfast snack or appetizer treat. Since I was making it for dinner this week to fulfill my craving, I made a side salad of roasted asparagus, tomato and corn, served cold. Kinda random, but I thought I needed some veggies to balance my 2 (3? 4? I'll never tell!) pâté chaud meal.



*The listed ingredients ended up making 9 meat pies, with a decent amount of meat filling left after I ran out of pastry. I ended up cooking the leftover meat and turning it into a tasty tomato-based pasta sauce. Quite delicious!


More images available on Flickr.

Vietnamese Stuffed Tomatoes (Tomates Farcie/Cà Chua Nhồi Thịt)

One of my favorite meals growing up was my mom's stuffed tomatoes (more commonly referred to as "Cà Farcie" in our household).  The dish, while Vietnamese, is inspired by France's longstanding influence and relationship with the country (hence "Tomates Farcie"). Usually this is something I eat when going home for a casual family dinner, but this week I finally decided to make it myself!

Shopping for the ingredients was very simple: about a pound of ground pork, 3 beefsteak tomatoes (you could probably use vine-ripe or other tomatoes, but I liked beefsteak for their size, which made them easier to stuff), and one yellow onion. All the seasoning I already had in my pantry: salt, black pepper, nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce) and sugar (this is Kim's tip - to offset the tartness of the tomato!).

First, dice the onion into small pieces and add it to the pork in a large bowl. Then season the meat with salt and pepper. If you like, you can add other ingredients to the meat at this step -- other recipes/versions of this dish include cellophane noodles, mushrooms and other seasoning.

Next, halve the tomatoes and remove everything inside, leaving only their shells. Set the filling (seeds, juice, chunks of tomato) aside to use for the sauce.

Fill the tomato halves with the seasoned meat. Heat a large skillet with oil, then cook the tomatoes, meat-side down, over medium-high heat for about 5-10 minutes until meat is browned.

As the stuffed tomatoes are cooking, heat the tomato filling in a pot over low heat until the tomato chunks become soft. Depending on how saucy you like your food, you can add a can of tomato sauce (or whole tomatoes, if you prefer a chunkier sauce) at this stage. Add salt, pepper, about a teaspoon of sugar and a few dashes of nuoc mam to the sauce and season to taste.

Flip the stuffed tomatoes once they're cooked, then pour the sauce over them and simmer everything over low heat for another 10 minutes or so.

Serve over white rice* and be sure to scoop enough sauce! For maximum deliciousness, break the stuffed tomato up into bite sized pieces and mix it well with the rice. Trust me, it's worth it.

*The white rice isn't really in line with my healthy eating, but for a dish like this, you really can't skip it. In fact, I scarfed down two bowls before I knew it... oops.

More images on Flickr.