Flavor Boulevard

Linh Son pagoda, Houston, click on the image to see more pictures of the pagoda.

Linh Son pagoda, Houston. Click on the image to see more pictures of the pagoda.
Although not all Vietnamese living oversea can take a day off to go to the pagodas on the first day of Tet, many manage to keep the tradition. Of course there is no strict requirement that one has to be looking at and praying to the Buddha at a certain day, for a certain amount of time, or with a certain prayer. Tet is not a religious based tradition. But many Buddhist and even non-Buddhists like to go to the pagodas on the first day of Tet to have a peaceful start of the new year, to feel spiritually lightened (hopefully enlightened as well) and pure on the important day. Many also choose to eat no animal product on this day, as it’s the new spring and every creature deserves to be happy and live in peace. Nonetheless, vegan restaurants are somewhat scarce in the conservative town, places with banh chung banh tet for sale don’t generally make the vegan version, and to deprive a Vietnamese of banh chung banh tet on a Tet’s day is somewhat cruel. So the pagodas take on the precious task.

Dua mon is pickled vegetables, here packaged in jars, and apparently on sale for $5? I believe I haven’t had dua mon. I’m not big on veggies in vinegar-sugar-salt mix, the only exception to me is pickled bean sprout (dua gia). But perhaps because every house during Tet is so overabundant with meat and glutinous rice, the dua being a bit tart, a bit sweet, crunchy, and light is a nice change in both taste and texture. In fact, with its economic nature and longevity, a big jar of dua on its own makes Tet in poor households.

Back to the star of Tet food. The square ones are banh chung, the cylindrical ones are banh tet. Banh chung is wrapped in dong leaves, banh tet is wrapped in banana leaves (theoretically). Banh chung declothed:

and quartered:

Mother got to the banh tet before I did, with a knife. I was 5 minutes too late to grab the camera. So here, in all gruesomeness, six “khoanh” of banh tet:

If you’re wondering, yes, their basic structure, except for the shape, is the same. Thick coat of glutinous rice outside, simple mung bean paste inside, since these are vegan banh made and sold at the pagoda. The meaty version of banh chung has lean pork amidst the bean paste, and that of banh tet has fatty pork. The outermost rim of glutinous rice is somewhat greenish yellow, naturally dyed by the leaves wrapping them and the long cooking process, in which they are submerged in water for hours. Banh chung was born in the North of Vietnam over 2000 years before Jesus was born, and especially made for Tet and Tet only. It even has a myth to explain its symbolism. Banh tet was its little brother, made for easy cooking and carrying, more popular in the South, available in one form or another all year long. The rice layer is soft and gummy, the bean paste middle is a little salted and sweetened. It’s vegan, but it doesn’t lack flavor. It’s really really heavy though. One khoanh of banh tet for breakfast and I was full from 10AM until 7PM! I would have been starved otherwise, classes all day, and school cafeterias don’t serve vegan food. That means if you like to keep yourself reasonably full, with 6 bucks you are full for 3-6 days of banh tet, and 4-8 days of banh chung. Pretty good huh?

First day of school is exciting. After a long break, we got up early again, felt motivated, felt ready to be hardworking. This may be the only day in the semester we get up early by choice, but let us not stress that. We checked our emails to see if the professor is in town and will hold class. Yes he is. He even came on time and commented on the president’s inauguration speech, not that there is much to comment. We hung around the undergraduate lounge, tried to read, but we were still in web-surfing mode. Our friends saw us for the first time after 5 weeks, some said they built a fence over the break, some said some said they shouldn’t have drunk so much the night before, some expected this to be an easy last semester. The usual day, the usual bunch. Our professor asked us what on earth is going on with our other professor, from whom we hadn’t heard since our last email 2 weeks ago, so we truthfully said we have no idea. We heard, but couldn’t focus during the lecture, mind wandering what should we blog about today. We forgot to bring lunch because we felt so motivated in the morning. We had only 1 class today from 12:45-2:00, but we were hungry.

School kids in Vietnam have vendors waiting for them outside the school gate. As soon as they get out, they swamp the vendors’ modest environs. Clockwise from bottom southwest:

– banh khoai mi nuong (baked cassava banh): white, firm, sleek, sweet. Too sweet, maybe? Easily tiresome after a few bites.

– banh su kem (chou à la crème – cream puff): avec du chocolat pour la présentation seulement. More chocolat et less pastry would have been nice. Too little creme inside. But I do prefer these bite-sized hollow balls to monstrous orange-sized puffs in Vietnamese boulangeries.

– banh cam (“orange” banh): sesame ball is the commonly identification in America, which obviously makes more sense than “orange” balls, when the balls contain absolutely no orange or citric element. Perhaps it refers to orange the color, eh? Or the shape? Another item seriously shrunk after immigration. It was actually the size of a small orange when it was in Vietnam. Sugared bean paste inside, deep fried flour shell outside. Best freshly made. Soon afterwards, the crunch leaves and each bite is a stream of oil. The thinner the shell is, the less oily the ball is. Average snack.

– banh bo nuong (toasted banh bo): so… bò is beef (like pho bo, you know…), but fear not, this dessert does not contain animal product, much less animal flesh. Why call it bò? Perhaps because it looks like cow tripe? Who knows. Just leavened rice flour. I can’t tell if it has sugar or whatever else. It’s just light. Fluffy, lightly sweet, lightly sour. Untoasted banh bo is white like a feather ball. Toasting is supposed to strengthen both the texture and the taste. I had never liked it, because of the sourness, and I don’t now.

This is what the dessert selection at Kim Son has become after they stopped serving dau hu nuoc duong (soft tofu in sugar water). Do I regret not eating from vendors when I could? Maybe. I don’t know most street foods, don’t know who make them best, don’t know how differently they taste compared to their Americanized cousins. But wherever it is, however it’s made, dessert is like the first day of school, not too much of a celebration in its honest self, simple or extravagant, it’s a delight we all look forward to.

We heard dapples of fireworks last night, other than that, everything was normal. TV had the usual shows, roads had the usual cars, the usual air, the feeling of a usual day. Isn’t that strange? New Year came quietly in this town, but with all the bombing and protesting around the world, I suppose a quiet peaceful New Year’s Eve is a nice New Year’s Eve. No champagne, no confetti, no wishes, no counting down. We slept.

But how about some black eyed pea? 🙂 Not only is it a traditional American New Year’s food, it always appears in a baby’s first (and most important) birthday in Vietnam (quite a connection, I know… but a good bean, isn’t it?). The word “đậu” for bean, or pea, has the same spelling with the word for passing (an examination), chè is a dessert, so chè đậu trắng is a sweet food of good luck for the beginning of something. Cooked until soft, washed with cold water, the hard “black eye” part of the testa taken off, then cooked again with sticky rice and preferably brown sugar, the beans melt in your mouth. In an average pot of che dau trang, you see the sticky rice makes a gluey protection of the beans, the seed coat is still just a tad chewy, your jaws and tongue will enjoy a mix of texture. This might be exclusively enjoyable for those with an eye on texture food, myself included. In a good pot of che dau trang, you can see each grain of sticky rice and each shapely pea, but each spoon will only give you a sweet, nutty, almost homogeneous mixture. Oh, can’t forget the slightly salty, thick and fat coconut milk, of course. Coconut milk makes everything aptly better.

Coconut milk sneaked in here too… A small cup of chè bột báng (tapioca chè) from Lee’s Sandwiches. The big pink and green balls have mung bean paste inside, the little ones are your usual tapioca marbles in bubble tea (only slightly bigger and not dark brown). There is no sticky rice, but there is a teaspoon of pan-dried sesame seeds atop. Chewy and sweet is the main theme che bot bang shoots for. It’s pretty light.

Che is a vegan snack. Sticky rice, bean and coconut are about the main ingredients in any kind, some have fruits or roots, but eggs and milk stay out of this business. So how many variations of che do you think there are? Quite a few, actually. Chè bắp (corn), chè bột báng (tapioca), chè bột khoai, chè củ năng (water chesnut), chè củ mài (a kind of yam), chè chuối (banana), chè đậu xanh (mung bean), chè đậu đen (black bean), chè đậu đỏ (azuki bean), chè đậu trắng (black eyed pea), chè hạt sen (lotus seed), hạt mít (jack fruit seed), chè hạnh nhân (chesnut), chè nhãn (longan), chè khoai lang (sweet potato), khoai môn (taro), khoai mì (cassava root)…, and many others I haven’t tried. Are there similar desserts in other countries? I don’t know, but certainly not in the US, where people say ew to soy milk (and not to raw clams). Kim Son, quite to my disappointment, has stopped serving che dau trang for some while, but still has chè trôi nước, another familiar dessert of the Vietnamese, especially in the North, where some call it bánh trôi, as it’s a ball floating in sugar liquid. Such simple name is made simpler, pronunciatively, by the Southerner, when they turn it into chè xôi nước: xôi – sweet sticky rice (the coat of the ball is indeed made of sticky rice flour), in nước – (sugar) water. The stuffing is, surprise surprise, Mung Bean Paste. Sweet outside, mild and nutty inside. A beast to work your jaw. Doesn’t it remind you of banh it? Sprinkle some sesame seeds and spoon in coconut milk for a homey taste of the countryside.

Off to a well-seasoned new year, everyone! 🙂

1. This is real, homemade chả giò – fried rolls of ground pork, shrimp, carrots, and jicama wrapped in rice paper (not the stuff made with thick yellow sheets called “egg roll” in restaurants). These won’t make the cut for a roll beauty contest, the grease will probably fatten your blood clots, but to me they’re worth a few years of life. I like them freshly fried and crunchy, I like them microwaved and chewy, and I like them cold, too. My mom makes supersized cha gio, five little piglets and you’ll lie flat on your back rubbing your tummy.

2. Fried wonton: here’s where the yellow flour sheet comes on stage to be a wrapper. Same stuffing as the cha gio, different shape, different texture. They make great bite-sized snack, both by themselves and wrapped in lettuce. Yay for more fat. But remember, Asians are skinny, so what to be afraid?

It’s been a while, I know. One time I asked my advisor about his hobby, his reply was “I used to read a lot when I was an undergrad, but now I just don’t have time anymore, all hobbies are gone.” He went on warning that I should devote some time to my hobbies now while I still can, because graduate school and later business (such as postdoctoral positions, if I can get some) will devour all of my time (and probably my soul, but he didn’t say that). Well, guess what, I don’t even have time now. On the positive side, you don’t get to sleep much, so it’s unlikely that you would have insomnia.

But sometimes you would wish you had insomnia. Now that the tests have receded and won’t come back for some time, I can (and must) stay up late for homework. So I just had a refill of energy, which at the time seemed light and even not enough, but is now weighing down on me with such concentration, unfortunately in the stomach and not in my head. It would make a great weightwatcher meal. Guess, anyone? It’s a Vietnamese pancake, i.e. banh xeo.

Recall that we’ve had several posts of banh before, it is no surprise that this one is also made of flour (rice, in this case). Here’s a quick list of ingredients my mom uses:
– prepackaged flour to make banh xeo (sold at Asian markets),
– soy milk (to dissolve the flour),
– ground pork (to be browned)
– celery
– shrimp
– sugar, salt
A great and experienced cook herself, she follows no recipe and provides none. The measuring cup doesn’t exist in her kitchen. She seasons the flour-soy milk mix, so that one doesn’t need to eat her banh xeo with any form of sauce. You won’t find this sauce-free business in any banh xeo shack you ever drop by, simply because traditionally people wrap their banh xeo in a huge lettuce leaf, roll it up, dip into nuoc mam pha, and somehow manage to put the busy bunch into their mouth. (A regular banh xeo is about 20cm (7 inches) in diameter.) They do it utensil-free. If soy milk makes one shudder, reason of which is a mystery to me, then one can use cow milk (whatever percent), coconut milk, or water. Likewise celery can be replaced by bean sprout or some form of long crunchy veggie (or no veggie?). Do away with the shrimp and pork if you’re a vegetarian, and go tofu. Basically, do what you like. As long as you throw the stuff into a hot skillet, pour a ladle of batter, and hear a sizzling sound (a “xeo!“, hence the name), you’ve got a pancake. A liberal, easy going pancake.

Eaten fresh, it’s crunchy. (Yes, the layer of flour must be thin, the shrimp and whatnot do not have to be covered). If the batter was just flour and water, it’s crunchy. Otherwise, it’s soft and fulfilling. I’m not a fan of crumbs, so I’m happy with microwaved banh xeo.

It’s a very simple name: banh it (it literally means “few” or “a little”, banh in Vietnamese is a term used for anything made of any kind of flour, in any shape and size, cooked in any way imaginable, so “cake,” “pastry”, “pie,” “bread,” and similar terms are not equivalent translations, in fact I’m still looking for a correct corresponding term). I digress. This banh it we got from Gio Cha Duc Huong (Bellaire Blvd, Houston) has a pyramid shape, similar to the ones I’d had in Saigon. Once again I don’t know how the banh maker can shape these things up in banana leaves, and an American bonus, cling wrap.

They’re certainly not ancient world’s wonder, but they’re quite resilient, at least against my attempt to dissect and take a picture of the interior.

It is as simple as a child’s treat can be. A clump of mung bean paste concealed by a layer of sticky rice flour. I believe brown sugar is added to the dough to make the color. (Update: indeed there is sugar, but I’m pretty sure there is no la gai in this little one.) The mung bean paste is also a little sweetened, but dry and scrumptious to the extent of powdery (so yeah, not really a “paste”). The dough coat is, you guess it, sticky. And a little plain if, at all possible, eaten without the bean paste. I enjoyed the mixing of texture in my mouth, mostly because of the filling’s nuttiness. The pyramid is only about 4 inch high and at most 9 square inch at the base, but it hits you hard and sound in the tummy. It is powerful. It makes me wonder about Vietnamese children. If these are their snacks, how come they’re so skinny? I suppose because it’s just sticky rice, bean, and very it sugar. Last note: if you want to savour food with your hand like a good traditional Indian, be prepared for some meticulous finger rubbing with soap and water, it sticks with you.

Instead of choosing among a few dozen types and brands of cereal, the traditional Vietnamese children choose among a few dozen kinds of stuff made of rice flour and often containing meat for the morning energizer. Meat and rice in the morning, what? You must be be kidding… Well… we have breakfast croissant, breakfast burrito, breakfast sausage and cheese biscuit, sausage and cheese kolache, pancake with sausage and/or bacon and definitely butter, and probably more things out there with meat and dairy. The only difference is rice and wheat, but unless you count your calorie intakes and all, grain is grain.

Banh cuon certainly doesn’t have any cheese or butter in it. I’m still waiting for the day McDonald comes up with MacBanhCuon (MaCuon, maybe?), then banh cuon will have cheese, egg, sausage, and bacon, probably pickles too, but I think the flour sheet is too delicate to be mass produced like the buns. Anyway, I digress. My schooldays back then often started with pho, hu tiu (a noodle soup with pork instead of beef and slightly sweet broth), banh cuon, and occasionally when I was young we had banh gio. There’s not much I could remember about it because it was rare to find a street vendor with trustworthy cleanliness, and it was rare, if ever, to find a store selling banh gio. Yes, it is almost exclusively street food, until it gets to America.

We got our banh gio from a small food shop in Bellaire, downtown Houston, named Gio Cha Duc Huong. A triangular cylinder is its basic shape, a thick coat of rice flour with ground pork and minced woodear mushroom inside, with a little bit wandering too close out to be visible. In all splendor the banh gio is a coarser, thicker, chubbier, more stern and fulfilling version of a roll of banh cuon. I know what it is made of, and I know it is boiled, but I have no idea how they put the liquid mixture of rice flour and water outside a few spoonfuls of meat stuffing to form a pudding wrapped and cooked in banana leaves. The flour coat is bland, but the stuffing makes up for it just right. No condiment is needed, and I don’t know if it has ever been eaten with any kind of condiment. The whole package is somewhat like a student who just pulled an allnighter, rather easily shattered and just collapses in your mouth. A spoon would be much more useful than a fork, and I can’t imagine using chopsticks with this. But its endurance is remarkable: it was made and cooked the same day we bought, it stayed good in the fridge three days later, and its twin brother stayed good one day later at room temperature.

Banh gio is a kind, guileless meal. Unless you eat 3 in one sitting or something oversize like that, it won’t make you feel like carrying a stone around the rest of the day. Its lightness will never betray you.

Sold at most banh mi stores in the States.

My roommate is eating dinner, I haven’t had anything since 9am, and I’ve vowed to stay on this chair until I get a plot to show my advisor, so I can’t grab anything to eat yet (except the cookies within reach). The best solution to satisfy the saddened tummy is to blog about food. Above is a bottle of nuoc mam pha, and a jar of chilly sauce if you’re in the mood for crying.

We come here frequently when I’m in Houston. It’s Banh Cuon Tay Ho #18, belonging to the franchise Banh Cuon Tay Ho (but apparently not on the website, which is good, because the website, oddly enough, is quite Chinese influenced, when banh cuon is as Vietnamese as it can get). I’ve blogged about this chain before, in San Jose, but the restaurant in Houston is quite different. It’s a lot more spacious (you don’t have to worry about accidentally flicking your chopstick, or worse, nuoc mam, over to the other table). In all fairness, it’s Texas. You can’t blame California for being mostly inhabitable. It’s also a lot less Vietnamese-looking, minus the fact that the staff and all customers are Vietnamese. Nicer tables, less noisy, doesn’t have the smell of food, doesn’t have a TV with some beauty contest going on. Anyway, just go to the one in San Jose, then come here, then you’ll like it here better.

Asians like fish, don’t they? I never understand why…

Most of the time I get the to-go box. It’s just more comfortable slurping at home. The plastic box may look flimsy, but I admire it for not spilling out anything during the long drive (with various sudden hitting-the-brake instants).

Three pieces of shrimp tempura, a lone deep-fried shrimp (recall there was no such thing at the San Jose place), a small cup of nuoc mam pha, a bag of quick-boiled bean sprouts and greens whose names I have no clue, slices of cha lua (the ones with yellow curd are cha chien, or fried cha lua). Digging through the jungle, and the heart of goodness is…

…5 rolls of banh cuon. Five! Who can be full after 5 rolls of steamed carbon paper thin rice flour sheet gently stuffed with ground pork and finely chopped wood-ear mushroom? Each was just a little longer than my index finger. They’d make nice body pillows for a mouse. I dipped the rolls into the nuoc mam and they went down too quickly. Perhaps 10 rolls would have sufficed. (That’s why it’s breakfast food in Vietnam.) But making these flimsy pieces of woot requires a bit of skill. With a little less than $6 (cash only), it is a much healthier, more customer-cared meal than a burger or the bully version of a roll, a burrito. The wait was also fairly quick.

Address: Banh Cuon Tay Ho #18 (inside Hong Kong Mall, near Ocean Palace)
11209 Bellaire Blvd
Houston, TX 77072

It’s a Sunday night and I have a little more than 12 hours until my first class of a new week. If I make sure I have 8 hours of sleep as they recommend for everyone, and an hour of scurrying around to get ready in the morning, then I’d have only 3 hours left to tend my homework, make a plot to show my advisor, write my thesis (and hope one day I will finish), study for the GRE, and blog. (One would say blogging is a waste of time, but I personally think it’s a better use of time than hanging out at clubs and bars. Anyway, maybe that’s just me.) Of those activities blogging isn’t the easiest one, I kid you not. You got bored from working, took out a piece of pastry your mom got you from Lee’s Sandwiches. You thought, since it’s not popular where you live and you haven’t had it since donkeys ago and couldn’t find it on Wikipedia, maybe you should blog about it. Then you took pictures of it. You even took out a knife to cut it up nicely.

Then you ate it. Then you washed your greasy hand and wiped away the flakes and tossed the napkin into the trash can. Then you took the memory card out of your camera and slid it into the slot on the side of your computer. Nothing showed up. You opened Computer, but no form of external drive was in sight to click on. Windows Vista gives you surprises. Deterred? Nah. A USB cable came in handy, you got your images transferred. Uploaded too. Then you have nothing to write. The pictures are there. The names are there. Just no words in mind. It oddly resembles doing homework.

The pate chaud is a common pastry at any bakery in Saigon, and although I haven’t been to other parts of the country, I’d say it’s common everywhere in Vietnam. It’s not quite common here. This is the second time I’ve had it in America, the first time was at Shokolaat downtown Palo Alto, but Shokolaat serves it as an entree, not a snack, and the stuffing at Shokolaat is not seasoned ground pork. The ground pork clump in Lee’s pate chaud is similar to what I’ve had in Vietnam and the pork stuffing in banh bao (minus the peas and all). Unlike other Americanized Vietnamese dishes loaded with meat, this chap actually has a skim amount of meat inside. If the pate chaud in Saigon is Sarah Palin, fluffy, flaky, and shiny, then the pate chaud in Houston is Vladimir Putin, a charred, compact, powerful settlement in your tummy.

Bu it’ll also flake your desk. It’s a good treat if you’re carnivorous. My mom didn’t tell me how much it cost, regardless my guess is it’s less than $2. Now back to work…

Let me say this before I forget: chocolates need to have simpler, more absentminded-friendly names. Back to my introduction. As much as I enjoy reading the menu ahead to know what I’m getting into before stepping into a place and stepping out in silent indifference, I have a thing for places I just happen to find. Actually I don’t remember how I found this place. Was it a short walk from one of our dinner spots? Was it online? I doubt it was online because it doesn’t quite exist online yet (not to be confused with restaurants of similar names in San Francisco and all). Anyway, we went there, we saw a guy sitting at one of the coffee tables with his laptop who informed us “She’s busy but she’ll be out in a minute,” we did some sightseeing along the glass cabinets of chocolate. I did marvel at their collections of chocolate truffles and the like, but perhaps my stomach has grown bigger so it prefers something bigger than little bitty truffles. My gaze stopped at the cakes. Chocolate cakes of course. (I don’t know how old Penhryn was, but I was surprised to see that people on yelp went there for the bubble tea and not the chocolate. To me that’s like going to college to have parties. At the shop the bubble tea was way in the back and the chocolates were everywhere. Maybe they believe in affirmative action?. I digress…)

We are pretty indecisive when it comes to chocolate. We stood there, we stared, we discussed, we were close to tossing coins had we had coins. The lady came out from the back and sold some chocolate for another lady who arrived after us, meanwhile we were still trying to decide what to get. They all looked inveigling. But we were full from dinner and we had more desserts at home than we could eat, so we got only 2 pieces of cakes, whose names I can’t remember now.

This one was something ganache something. 😛 Getting that overweight son out of that box without smashing it was a demanding task, lemme tell ya.

This one was violet something. I remember the violet part because the flowers on top were purple icing. Maybe there was a hint of raspberry in dark chocolate? I can’t remember. If you’re in Palo Alto, take a walk downtown and make a swift turn into this place and take notes of the names of what you get. I’m no connoisseur to remember rococo names and all, so this is the only name I can think of for these species: Spoon-licking Good.

Address: Blue Danube Cafe
165 University Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94309
(650) 321-5588