Flavor Boulevard

Summer Green Roll – avocado, cucumber, kaiware sprout, wakame and hijiki. Alissa scooped wasabi like it was green tea ice cream, but I like this one just as it is: plain, fresh and light.

It’s been a long time since I last either wrote about food or ate anything that I could write about. The occasional rainfalls during the drought of takeout Chinese are so-so hu tieu and com suon somewhere in the Ranch 99 complex, and homemade soups, lovely but no hot news. Vegetable intake has been limited to shibazuke from Berkeley Bowl, homemade kimchi, and toasted seaweed (seaweed counts, doesn’t it?). Before leaving for her trip, Cheryl fed me her black chicken soup, brown rice, tau yew bak (similar to thit kho but with soy sauce instead of fish sauce) and, like a loving sister, concerned looks and advice on how I should feed myself healthy meals. I agree with her one hundred percent, but all planned menus for the next day fluttered their wings away as I run from class to class and get home only wishing to relax. Cheryl is married. I entertain the idea that I live like a single guy. A single guy that could not have looked more forward to a vegan dinner with some old friends.

After much debate we decided on a simple kampyo roll, a big fluffy summer green roll (that we each stuffed into our mouth in one bite to prove our manliness(*)), a Cha-Ya roll, a tempura stuffed eggplant, a gyoza and vegetable soup, and three desserts.

Cha-Ya Roll – avocado, yam and carrots, tempura roll with sweet soy sauce.

Tonchi Nasu – tempura stuffed eggplant with setsuma potato, corn, tofu, hijiki, soybean and carrot

Taku Sui – gyoza soup with tofu, broccoli, zucchini, napa cabbage, snap peas, asparagus, cauliflower, silver noodles and mushrooms in a light broth – I like this a lot!

Yellow Moon – tempura banana with a scoop of soy ice cream, drizzled with green tea sauce and red bean sauce

The Yellow Moon is just the tempura banana, the soy ice cream is listed as a separate dessert, but we shameless girls requested a scoop of ice cream with the banana. The Cha-Ya staff is so nice. 😉 This tempura banana is not oily like the deep fried banana desserts at Thai restaurants, the batter is light and plain. It gives you the impression of healthy foods.

Vegan chocolate cake (left) and Oshikuro (right) – plain white mochi in gooey red bean sauce. The red bean is a bit too sweet, but I like it still. The cake is like a soft brownie, not at all dry and lifeless like normal vegan cakes.

(*) In case you wonder, a picture of us is to the right.

Address: Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese Cuisine
(North Berkeley)
1686 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley CA 94709
(510) 981-1213
Dinner for four: roughly $90 – Kinda expensive now that I think about it…

One very cold Saturday afternoon in Oakland.

Darren: Normally I don’t like fruit flavored stuff, like watermelon candies you know?
Mai: Yeah, like cherry candies…
Darren: But this mango ice cream is really good!
Mai: It is! I like the green tea the most though, it’s so refreshing. What about you, Kristen?
Kristen: I usually don’t like strawberry flavors, but this strawberry one is so good…

Good thing we each had a different favorite.

When the girl took up our empty sushi plates and asked if we wanted dessert, we were already stuffed, which is a given every time Kristen and I go out together. But we asked the girl what’s on anyway, and she listed, if I remember correctly in my post-food stupor, “tempura ice cream, green tea ice cream, red bean ice cream, green tea cheesecake, seven flavors of mochi ice cream, which includes mango, vanilla, strawberry, green tea, red bean, coffee and chocolate”. We looked at each other for two seconds then at her.

– Can we have the seven flavors, please?
– You want all seven?!
*Looks exchanged*
– Uh… it’s not a thing of seven mochis?
– Well we can make a platter of that too. You want that?
– Yes please. *sheepish grin*

Never turn down ice cream.

Zero complaints on the tempura and the rolls too, they’re Americanized of course and we didn’t do any nigiri nor any of us Japanese. But if you’re American, happen to be near the intersection of Piedmont and Echo in Oakland while hungry for sushi, Shimizu is a sure bet.

Address: Shimizu Japanese Cuisine
4290 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 653-7672
shimizucuisine.com

Volcano Scallop ($7.95) – Battered and deep fried scallops with sweet soy sauce

Thick sweet & spicy sauce. Soft chewy sticks of sticky rice. This is one heckuva tteok bokki. I can see myself going here for a tteok bokki takeout on movie weekends, and it’s only $7.

Address: Crunch
2144 Center St
Berkeley, CA 94704
(Downtown Berkeley)
(510) 704-1101

This place used to be a sushi joint. I ate there once. I’m glad it has changed into something much better.
Also, Crunch gave me a humongous plate of kimchi pork fried rice that was just three spoons above my limit and not enough to take home. What should I do? Cut down or increase my limit?

Beef bibimbap ($8)- julienned cucumber, carrots, bean sprouts, egg, lettuce and sauteed beef to be mixed with rice

Kimchi fried rice with pork ($8).

What can you do with 24 squash blossoms?

Twenty-four is too few for squash blossom canh, a clear soup that Mom used to make when I was little. The flower is the only thing of a pumpkin plant (squash blossom in Vietnam is pumpkin blossom) that I didn’t mind eating (I hate pumpkin). The flowers perish too quickly that American grocery stores almost never carry them(*). That scarcity, I can only guess, also raises them to the exotic level that makes the modern American restaurants include the word in their menu around this time of the year (summer squash blossom season) and feature a mere 3-5 flowers on a plate amidst the more common vegetables like zucchini and cauliflower. The craze has been around for at least a decade, Carolyn Jung said, and I don’t see it wilt away anytime soon.

Although I dislike the place at first because it’s always too crowded, Berkeley Bowl gradually grew on me. It started when I realized, after many years away from Vietnam and living just a bit inconveniently far from the Asian markets, that I haven’t seen certain grocery items for ever, for example, woodear mushroom (nấm mộc nhĩ) and straw mushroom (nấm rơm). Then one day I ran into them at Berkeley Bowl. I was like, oh? they have that here?! It’s a great moment. One where you reunite with old friends, and if we should speak in grand terms, it reminds me to appreciate growing up in Vietnam and in my family, the lack of either component would have resulted in a much, much poorer experience with food.

Sometimes that great feeling clouds my better judgment. You know, when people dig out a picture of their middle school gang from a notebook, buck teeth and silly hair or whatever, they feel compelled to put it on Facebook. When I saw the squash blossoms at Berkeley Bowl, I felt compelled to get them home. Not that I knew what to do with them or had time to cook them.

Mom suggested stuffing them with ground pork. I’ve had them stuffed with cheese and batter-fried. But it’s summer. Peaches are in season. This something I make with squash blossoms should taste light and fresh like the flowers it bears.

Bouquet Nectarine Gyoza
– Squash blossoms (the male blossoms, because they’re big enough to stuff)
– medium firm white tofu
– gyoza skin (wrappers)
– 1 yellow nectarine, diced (If you use peach, peel off the skin because peach has fuzz)
– sugar, salt, pepper to taste
– a steamer

Rinse the squash blossoms under cold water, peel off the dark green spikes at the base. Also break off the stem, if there’s any.
Mash the tofu by hand while mixing it with the diced nectarine. Add salt, sugar and pepper to taste.
Gently stuff the nectarine-tofu mix into the squash blossom.
Wrap a gyoza skin outside the blossom, leaving at least the top half of the petals exposed.
Steam until the gyoza skin turns translucent (5-10 minutes). The flower petals will wilt but still retain their color and the bottom half should still be a tad crunchy.
Take out and let cool.

UPDATE: pan-fried these to make them taste better (albeit less healthy  :-D)

(*) Every website I’ve looked claims that squash blossoms can only stay fresh in the fridge up to 2 days under precise condition. Well, what you see in the picture “pre-steamed gyoza” are squash blossoms after 8 days in the fridge.

When I’m home, Little Mom pampers me with her food and sweeps me out of her kitchen, except when I open the fridge to snack, because her mind fixes on the idea that if she lets me touch the stove, I only make a mess. She’s right. Not to toot my own horn but when I’m home, I’m a lazy mess. So when I said Mom, let’s make bánh dầy đậu, she threw her hands up, said oh my sky there’s no more room in the fridge, made the bean paste herself, and only let me play with the dough. 😉

The mung bean paste filling is really the most important part of the Vietnamese mochi (similar to the Japanese mochi, but it’s 100% Vietnamese): you want it slightly savory, slightly sweet, and mashed. Little Mom is the queen of seasoning, so that part was flawless. My job was to knead the dough and roll up them balls. At least I didn’t have to pound steamed sticky rice into oblivion. I was kneading while watching TV with Mom. I was kneading when she sectioned her bánh bao dough into balls. I was still kneading when she wrapped the pork and egg inside the bánh bao dough. More kneading makes the mochi skin softer. After kneading, the rest was a breeze.

Bánh dầy đậu (pronounced kinda like |beng yay dou|) – Vietnamese mung bean mochi:

(Make 12 mochi)
– 250 g dried split mung bean (~ 2 cups), soaked overnight and deshelled
– 2 cup sticky rice flour
– 1 cup warm water
– 1 cup sliced mushroom
– salt and sugar to taste

The filling:
After soaking the mung bean overnight, wash away the green peel outside, we only want the yellow seed. Boil the mung bean until it’s tender. Mash the cooked bean.
Set aside 2 cup of mashed bean, let it dry and crumble to make mung bean powder.
Sautee mushroom, add the remaining mashed bean while sauteeing, add salt and sugar to taste. Let cool.
Make 12 small balls.

The mochi skin:
Pour water into the the rice flour while mixing with your hand. You should stop when the mix feels smooth but not liquidy. Add more water if the dough breaks.
Knead for at least 30 minutes.
Divide into 12 balls, flatten each into a small disk.

The complete mochi:
Put the mung bean ball into the middle of the skin, wrap it up, make sure that no bean leaks out. Drop the mochi in boiling water and cook until they float to the surface. Cook for another 2 minutes just to make sure.
Roll the still hot mochi balls in mung bean powder. Let them cool.

Enjoy with a cup of Buddha’s Hand oolong. 🙂

When I walked down that aisle, I beamed with pride. In my hand, a bag of okonomiyaki flour, a bag of katsuobushi, bottles of sauces and aonori. Kristen took care of the cabbage and meats. Pancake day. Osaka style. At least that was the plan.

We didn’t plan on being authentic. We couldn’t. An American-born Taiwanese and a Vietnamese who haven’t lived in Japan at all are not gonna make an “authentic okonomiyaki” on first try. That’s why we chose premixed okonomiyaki flour instead of grating a nagaimo, bottled mayonnaise instead of whipping up eggs and oil ourselves. But just the thought of making our own okonomiyaki in whatever shape we want and however we want it, not having to go anywhere and regretting over soggy, over-salted mashes called okonomiyaki, generated the we-can-own-this attitude that guaranteed pride no matter what the outcome. It’s a sort of defiance after too many letdowns. Instead of mixing flour with water, we boiled roasted corn and mixed flour with corn tea.

Apart from that and the avoidance of green onion (I’d add green onion if I’m making pajeon – green onion pancake, but not okonomiyaki), and impatience – pouring more corn tea than I should, then the batter was too thin and I added some more flour and the batter went too thick, eventually I got double what I intended for, which also helped because we had a lot of cabbage – we followed the Best Okonomiyaki recipe pretty closely until the next-to-last step. Once I made too big a pancake, so when I flipped it, only half got flipped. I got omelet instead of okonomiyaki, but shape doesn’t matter, right? Ah, there was also a time when I forgot to layer the bacon on top of the pancake before flipping it, so the bacon was added to the bottom instead of the top, but that’s just a matter of perspective. 😉

Quasi-Osaka Okonomiyaki (serving 2)
[adapted from Best Okonomiyaki recipe]

1 cup okonomiyaki flour (100 g)
2/3 cup corn tea
2 eggs
1/5 head of cabbage, sliced into 2-mm-thick strips
9 strips of fresh bacon, cut into 3-inch-long (8 cm) pieces or however you like
100g raw shrimp, peeled and diced
Kewpie mayonnaise
Okonomiyaki sauce
Aonori (seaweed flake)
Katsuobushi (bonito flakes)

Boil the roasted corn kernels to make corn tea (옥수수 차 oksusu cha). I just take a handful and throw in a pot of water, you should rather go heavy than light on the kernel, it makes the tea sweeter. Let the tea cool.

Chop the cabbage. Time to show your prowess of chopping without looking, which I can’t do. You’d end up with a LOT of cabbage. Make cabbage salad with kimchi.

Mix flour with corn tea.

Add cabbage, diced shrimp and eggs into the flour. Mix like you never mix before.

Plop some of the mix onto a hot, lightly oiled skillet and spread it into whatever shape, canonically a disk. Four inches across will make it easiest to flip and big enough to be a meal.

Layer bacon strips on top. Let it sit for 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat.

Flip. And DO NOT PRESS it down. You want the air in there for crunch. Let it cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Spatula it out onto a plate. Sprinkle copious amount of aonori and katsuobushi (which we forgot to do! But we used tempura shrimp to make up for that later). Squeeze mayonnaise and okonomi-sauce into your desired pattern. Or make a heart-shaped pancake, like Kristen.

Here, a lesser writer would put something cliche like “this is the best okonomiyaki I’ve ever gulfed down”.

This is the best okonomiyaki I’ve ever gulfed down.

If you bought extra shrimp, make shrimp tempura. We decided this on a wimp and protected ourselves from flying oil with plastic bags. Recommended for entertainment. 😉

With leftover batter after deep frying the shrimps, make fried dough. Drizzle syrup and eat them as dessert. Can you see the shrimp imposter? 😉

Future prospects: grating nagaimo, making our own sauce, other styles of okonomiyaki.

Legend said the first ever bánh dầy (pronounced |beng yay|) was a flat thick bun of cooked-and-pounded sticky rice, white and chewy and not recommended for dentures. The prince, taught by a Bodhisattva in his dream, made it to represent the sky, and bánh chưng to represent the earth. I don’t think the sky is chewy, but I really like it when it’s white. I also like banh day with silk sausage a lot. But somewhere along the history of Vietnam, somebody gave banh day a mung bean filling, softened the dough (which means more pounding for the sticky rice), rolled it into the size of a pingpong ball, and coated it with mung bean powder. I can NEVER get enough of this thing.

$2 for 3. Found at: Alpha Bakery & Deli (inside Hong Kong City Mall)
11209 Bellaire Blvd # C-02
Houston, TX 77072-2548
(281) 988-5222

Unfortunately, I love them so much that the store-bought version just doesn’t do it for me. With Little Mom’s help, a batch has been made. A recipe is on the way. (UPDATE: the recipe is here.)

Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: cudweed sticky rice (xôi khúc)

Put me next to a pig foot and I turn into a total nut case. But boy, these chunkies, sweet, salty, chewy, just a little spicy… I cleaned the bones until they were white.

A feeble attempt at including some starch to our lunch: ground beef and pork coins covered in batter and fried.

Dessert: ho tteok (호떡) – chewy sweet pancake with some kind of syrup or melted brown sugar filling, and the best part? They’re not too sweet!

Ready-to-go lunch for two: ~$15
Address: Koreana Plaza
2370 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 986-1234

There’s a Vietnamese song that starts like this: “Ten years pass by without seeing each other, I thought love had grown old/ Like the clouds that have flown by so many years, I thought we had forgotten.”(*) It then went on to say, as you might expect, that the narrator still yearns for that love like ten years ago. An even more dramatic thing happens to me: I still crave xôi khúc with the same passion of the last time I had it, which was twenty years ago.

The lady who sold xôi khúc (xôi cúc if you’re from the South)(*) near our elementary school was old. In her sixties at least. She was clean, so Little Mom bought xôi from her. We never had xôi khúc from anyone else, and I don’t remember seeing anyone else selling it. Loosely wrapped in banana leaves like all other xôi(*), her xôi khúc beamed with the smell of ground black pepper in the bean paste and the cool, herbal flavor of the steamy sticky rice. After the lady stopped showing up in the mornings with her basket, we stopped having xôi khúc for breakfast.

Xôi khúc is too much of a hassle for living-alone home cooks. First of all, you need the leaves that make xôi khúc xôi khúc: the not-so-popular-and rau khúc (“rau” is greens)(***) whose English name I could find only after I found out its Japanese name from the blog of a Vietnamese expat in Japan, and I don’t even know Japanese. The Japanese use this grass in their kusa mochi, a category of grass mochi to which the yomogi daifuku belongs. De javu. The Vietnamese grind it up and use the juice to knead sticky rice flour into a dough and make xôi khúc. The dough coats a ball of savory mung bean paste, the whole thing is laid between thin layers of sticky rice and steamed. In the end, you get a handful of something with grains of sticky rice on the outside, so its appearance is like xôi, and a ball of grassy sticky rice dough with bean paste filling on the inside, so its construction is like bánh (anything made of dough). Hence its name varies: bánh khúc, xôi khúc, xôi cúc (the Southerners’ simplified pronunciation).

Today, I’ve reunited with xôi khúc. This small store in Bellaire, packed with xôi, chè, savory foods and customers at 9 on a Sunday morning, sells xôi khúc, 1 đồng 1 viên ($1/ball), each ball as big as a lemon, two of them fit snuggly in a white styrofoam box. The rice scoop digs into the tray. A slight bounce and the soft sticky rice separates. A familiar peppery smell infiltrates my veins. The guy asked if I’d like to top them with a few spoonfuls of fried shallots. Yes, please!

Address: Đức Phương Thạch Chè
11360 Bellaire Blvd
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 498-1838
(also in the Vietnamese Veteran Memorial area, near Giò Chả Đức Hương where Little Mom buys silk sausage)

Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: sesame beignet (bánh tiêu)

(*): Vietnamese lyrics: “Mười năm không gặp tưởng tình đã cũ/ Mây bay bao năm tưởng mình đã quên”. The song is titled Mười Năm Tình Cũ (“love dated ten years”). You can listen to it here.
(**): xôi is steamed sticky rice, either mixed with beans (sweet xôi) or eaten with meat (savory xôi). I’ve written about xôi bắp (corn xôi) and xôi đậu (peanut xôi) before.
(***): Gnaphallium affine, Jersey cudweed in English, hahakogusa (ハハコグサ in Katakana or “母子草” in Kanji) in Japanese. My inner linguistics savvy especially likes the Japanese name: 母 (haha) is Kanji for mother, 子 (ko) child, and 草 (gusa) grass: so rau khúc is Mother [and] Child Grass (mẫu tử thảo).

And eat an amazing cream puff. (Cream puffs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cupcakes) Click to see my post on the Spring Harvest Tea Party at Teance tonight. We drank some eye-opening teas, literally and figuratively.