Flavor Boulevard

Do you have those times when you keep craving something sweet, even after you wiped clean a cereal bowl worth of Double Fudge Brownie, exterminated many prunes, and skillfully chewed up four pirouette cookies like a mafia boss smoking cigars? I’ve started to see such danger of staying up late, but sweet stuff is always easier to eat than savory stuff in those wee hours. To avoid having my belly exceed my face, I started going through pictures of food (it helps more than studying and thinking about food), and found some munchtastic  sweet treats I meant to but never got around to blog about.

1. Chè khoai môn (taro che)

One of the few country treats without mung bean paste. Depending on each root and how long it’s cooked, the purplish pale taro cubes can be grainy, nutty, a little chewy, or al dente, like scallop potato minus the butter. However they are, they serve as a textural contrast to the gooey pudding-like sticky rice base. I’m particularly charmed by the vibrant green color in this Lee’s Sandwiches‘ rendition, hopefully from pandan leaf extract. You know it’s a skilled cook when the sticky rice grains are still visible, yet so soft you don’t need to chew. Taro che is less sweet than other kinds of che, as coconut milk alone gives much of its sugary taste.

2. Chè bắp (corn che)

Another rare sticky rice concoction without mung bean intervention. Another pair of contrasting textures: crisp and firm kernels versus luscious goo. Another mild pudding sweetened by coconut milk. Bellaire Kim Son’s kitchen strayed from the common recipes that call for shaving the kernels off the cob, and used whole kernel sweet corn straight out of the cans. A simple, cheap, inhomogeneous toothsome mess.

More than 18 months ago: chè đậu trắng, chè bột báng, chè trôi nước

If you walk into my house you’re not gonna see many purple things. Truth is, I think purple is a picky color, even more so than pink. The wrong purple is tacky, the right purple rarely happens. But somehow all purple foods taste good (except eggplant). Purple cabbage, purple lettuce, beet, taro (mmm, taro ice cream), blueberry, purple spinach. Then I ran into purple potatoes at Lucky.

I bet you can carve your initials and use it as a stamper. At first I thought they are some cross between normal potato and beet, with the beet’s juicy crunch apparent whatever way you slice. Turns out it’s a mutation that causes production of the antioxidant anthocyanin, giving it the ink-stain color. So it’s all potato.

Mudpie the chef sliced them. Stir fry with salt, pepper, garlic powder, tarragon until golden.

Good stuff.

I couldn’t care less about sports, and the World Cup teams I root for aren’t wearing purple. But if you take a peek into my fridge, lotsa purple are there.

Previously on Down the Aisles: Magnolia’s Taro Ice Cream

Sitting still, it looks like a rock. It is sweet with a hint of lard. It is chewy with a weak crunch, similar to a lasagna’s crust. The smooth, thick black skin shines like lacquered wood, but possesses an almost clear and cool embrace of jello. Though closely related to the superglutinous and mud-heavy banh it, banh gai takes it light.

The same everenduring stuff of Vietnamese villagers’ creations are thrown together, wrapped and steamed in banana leaves: sticky rice flour, water, mung bean paste, sugar. If you make it in cone shape and let the sugar brown the flour naturally, you get banh it. Go the extra mile of picking, chopping, sun-drying, boiling, and grinding the ramie leaves to a black powder that you would mix with your sticky rice flour in a 1:10 ratio, then after the fire settles you get banh gai.

Actually, you get the skin of banh gai. The thorny ramie leaves with silver underside give the black buns their color and trademark names, “thorn leaf banh it” (bánh ít lá gai), “thorn leaf banh” (bánh lá gai), or, most economically, “thorn banh” (bánh gai). But as proof of their everversatile imagination with ingredients, the villagers of North Vietnam mix the mung bean paste with shredded coconut, lotus seed, ground peanut, winter melon (bí đao) for crunchiness, and translucent cubes of pig fat or vegetable oil for a mild saltiness.

The thorn leaf buns sold in package of three for $1.99 at CD Bakery & Deli don’t have fat cubes, peanuts, and pieces of winter melon. They are wrapped with plastic instead of banana leaves. They are labeled “mung bean black sesame mochi”. They contain yellow and blue (?) food colorings. But I like their slightly sweet, slightly crunchy, slightly cool black skin.

After a week at room temperature, they get white mold. Perhaps, it is to match the white sesame seeds on top.

Address: CD Bakery & Deli (in the Lion Market plaza)
1816 Tully Road, #198
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 238-1484
Open 7 days 8am – 8pm

Something else from CD Bakery: sugarcane juice

Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh bía (Vietnamese-adapted Suzhou mooncake)

It has the texture of corn germs (the flat yellow seed inside each corn kernel). With the tiny mahogany peel cracked open just a little, each quinoa seed spills out its soft white flesh, the combination gets amusing. It’s like broken rice but more vigorous and inhomogeneous, or sesame but more fleshy. It goes well with walnuts either mixed in at the beginning or added at the end. If you think hard about it, it even tastes like clariid catfish eggs.

Several ideas spring up: quinoa chè? quinoa xôi (sticky rice with quinoa or quinoa with mung bean)? quinoa bread, quinoa pie?

Have you cooked with quinoa before? What is your experience with it?

Mudpie’s Red Quinoa with crushed walnuts
(recipe adapted from Suzy’s special red quinoa)

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons butter
• 1 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 cube beef bouillon (or more if you like)
• 1 cup red quinoa, rinsed and drained

Mudpie notes that you shouldn’t go light on the seasonings, especially the beef bouillon. And if you’re not a fan of cinnamon like me, then star anise, cloves, and a tad of pepper powder can kick the Chinese five-spice powder out of the pot.

Directions

Rinse the quinoa grains carefully before cooking, as the saponin coating on the seeds can give an unpleasant bitter taste.

Place the water, butter, five-spice powder, ginger, black pepper, and beef bouillon cube into a saucepan over medium heat, and bring to a boil. Stir the mixture to dissolve the bouillon cube, then add the quinoa and crushed walnuts. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until all the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes.

Downtown Berkeley are these two-faced blocks between Shattuck Avenue and Fulton Street. Facing Shattuck, they are adorned with picturesque lamp posts, shops and pubs, neon signs casting shadows of hustling pedestrians and huddling homeless men. Facing Fulton, they quietly gaze at the lush green west end of campus through glass windows of modern apartments. The quiescence called for some gathering, and Gather burgeoned.

It gleams with efficiency and environmental awareness. All ingredients are bought from local farmers. Seats are made with used suede and leather belts, candle covers are rolled up wine menus, diners and waiters respect the intimate spacing between tables, and food was served within a few minutes of placing an order, but not without intricacy.

Starting with the vegan charcuterie:

Clockwise from top left:1. (Yellow, red, and purple) beet tartare on horseradish almond puree, topped with arugula flowers; 2.  Baby potato celeriac salad dressed with olive sauce, served on “marrow” bean puree; 3. Braised mushroom bruschetta on sunchoke puree, adorned with leek fondue; 4. Bread; 5. Roasted “graffiti” cauliflower on almond pepper puree and a vegan “aioli” touch; 6. Roasted purple haze carrots, pea tendrils, and Jerusalem artichokes on cashew ricotta.

Surely you can tell from the picture that 3 and 6 were my favorites. The cashew ricotta was best among the five bases. The cauliflower had an odd hint of Indian food, or Mexican according to Mudpie. The bread was airy, chewy, and crunchy. The finely chopped beet tartare was plain, refreshing and texturally amusing. The flowers were earthy like all flowers you ever chew.

As soon as we used up the last piece of bread to wipe clean those tasty purees, our large plate rushed to the table. They call it the seared fava leaf chickpea cake, one of the restaurant’s new and proud assemblies. We daintily shared two mushy, tofu-like wedges with hidden leaves, lots of vallarta beans, tender baby artichokes, and crunchy frisee bathed in caramelized funnel rosemary vinaigrette.

Then we washed it down with a scoop of saffron tangelo sorbet, a clever mix most resembling of citrus seeds or grape seeds. Doesn’t one scoop seem too few?

That might just have been my only complaint about Gather. Its careful measure in both the source and the product of taste makes it lovely and fashionable. Gather was gratifying. But was Gather amazing? It’s hard to strip meat off the meal, there’s something in the condensed texture of muscle and the fatty taste of skin that makes vegan dining similar to black and white food photography. Now, the aesthetically appeasing B&W photographs are regaining popularity.

Goodness quantified:
Vegan charcuterie (14.00) + braised lamb (12.00) + Chickpea cake (15.50) + saffron sorbet (3.00) + tax
= $48.84

Gather Restaurant in Berkeley
2200 Oxford St. (at the corner with Allston, where Fulton becomes Oxford)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 809-0400

Gather is right across the street from Azerbaijan Cuisine.
Another vegan restaurant in the area: Herbivore the Earthly Grill

The San Francisco airport is a great excuse to eat out on the other side of the bay. Catching a morning flight? Breakfast at Milbrae Pancake House. Picking up parents and wanting to show them around at mid day? Lunch at La Boheme in Burlingame. Arriving in a lazy afternoon after four hours confined in the airplane’s seat with a neck cramp and in the mood for something nice, light but hearty? A crepe at Cafe Grillades of San Bruno sounds just right.

It’s one of those homey places where you can nibble a panini while reading the chronicles, sit by the window and gaze at a quiet parking lot, or meet someone for a casual interview. It has the boureks and the Algerian couscous if you want to impress old friends with an interesting order, but it also serves classic ham and cheese on toast all day. It will satisfy both the burger hunger and the vegan healtheist. It has the West European facade, the Mediterranean sum up, the North Saharan novelty, the San Franciscan appeal. In plain view, Cafe Grillades has a pretty good all-inclusive menu.

But we came here for crepes, and get crepes we did. Somehow the herbivore in Mudpie and the carnivore in me switched place that day. Mudpie decidedly took on the Algiers Merguez, spicy lamb and beef sausage mingled with chunky potatoes,  mushy tomatoes, and slabs of onions in crème fraiche (first picture). I, feeling betrayed by the chicken burrito on the plane, went down the defiant path with a ratatouille flat square hot pocket.

My reasoning was simple: I like meat, so if I like something sans meat then that vegan thing must be really good. And it was. In fact, it was better than the Merguez sausage crepe. Eggplant was one of those healthy veggies my mom had to funnel down my throat, but here it fit in so well with zucchini, bell pepper, and more onion. Feta cheese clumped a few tangy notes. The crepe innards were definitive of satisfaction.

Gratified, we charged onto dessert. A mango crepe brulee with brown sugar, creme fraiche, and caramelized top. This mix between a tart freshness and a fixating sweetness, some chewy underripe fruit and a thin malleable encasing,  is, my friends, the best any sweet crepe can be.

Cafe Grillades
851 Cherry Ave #16
San Bruno, CA 94066
(650) 589-3778

Pocket thinning:
Ratatouille (8.95)
+ Spicy Algiers (9.50)
+ Mango crepe brulee (7.95) = $28.84

Despite the name, banh men are quite girly cookies. Just look at how colorful they are: pink for strawberry, yellow for durian, white for plain coconut, green for pandan leaf. The literal translation “yeast cookie” is also a misnomer because there is no yeast, just tapioca flour, sugar, coconut milk and water.  Somewhere between your teeth and your tongue they would transform from crunchy to melting, all of a sudden that crisp cookie disappears, a sweet lingering gently passes by. And that’s it, you wouldn’t even know that you’ve just had a cookie.

My mother’s girl friends at work love these. The cute bites come in all shapes: worm, button (like the ones made by tt at PlayingWithMyFood, and spiky caterpillar (banh men gai, the ones I got). Ch3rry Blossoms made flowers of them. Extremely light and mild, they are a convenient snack, my fingers just have a go at the bowl next to my laptop without me even noticing. The label on the box says: “Serving size: 150g, Serving per container: 1”. There are about 150 cookies in there, so I can be proud that at least I didn’t follow the label.  A container like this at Lion Food market sells for less than two bucks. What’s better than a cheap sweet treat?

Bánh chưng and bánh tét to the Vietnamese Tết are like turkey and ham to the American Thanksgiving. The holiday feast just wouldn’t feel right without them. Although I have blogged about these sticky rice squares and logs before, the lunar new year has come back, and so are they. Sticky rice can be uberfilling in large quantity, and like all festive food, it’s not recommended that you feast on these dense beasts day after day, as satisfaction would turn into tiresomeness. But once a year, or maybe twice, a couple slices of banh tet sound so much more interesting than cereal, rice, even noodle soup.

Banh chung and banh tet have rather similar ingredients, especially when they’re made by Vietnamese Southerners. Both are wrapped in leaves (although slightly different kinds of leaves), and boiled for hours in water that is sometimes spiced with lemongrass. After cooking, a heavy weight is put on banh chung to drain the water, while banh tet are rolled around to perfect the cylindrical shape. I remember we used to hang pairs of banh tet in my grandfather’s kitchen, taking one down everyday during the week of Tet to whip out a nice settling meal with thịt kho trứng (pork and egg stew), dưa giá (pickled bean sprout),  and spring rolls. There are the savory kind with meat and mung bean paste, and the vegan kind for those who want to practice self-control on the first day of Tet. In Houston, my mom usually gets the savory kind from Giò Chả Đức Hương, where we also get our cha lua supply, and the vegan kind from Linh Son pagoda. I branched out this year and tried a meaty log from Huong Lan Sandwiches 4 in Milpitas.

Their banh tet measures about 7 inches long, making eight thick nice slices, each has a chunk of fatty pork in the middle, pink and spiced with pepper. The sticky rice coat here gave its leaf wrapping a bit insecure sliminess when we first unraveled, but all was well. The banh tet smelled great, the sticky rice has a tight but soft texture. The seasoned bean paste is just salty enough to intrigue. In some way, banh tet is better than banh chung because every bite guarantees a bit of everything. No piece will miss the meat completely and no bite will get all the meat, the stuffing is even throughout the whole banh.  It was honestly good by itself without condiments. Huong Lan Sandwiches had not failed me.

And neither did Thao Tien. When we got there last week in our quail quest, Thao Tien’s employees were busy running a small table pyramidized with banh chung and banh tet. They locate nicely in front of the Grand Century mall, passed by hundreds of people Tet shopping that day. Seeing the sale went like hot cakes (the sticky rice cakes were actually still warm), we were too eager to snatch one home that we forgot to check the tiny white sticker on the side. Surprise, we had grabbed a bánh tét chuối (banana banh tet).

It’s solely vegan. The sticky rice coat is made interesting with dots of black beans on shiny green background. The core is sweet, mushy banana in a reddish purple hue. This is just the usual ivory banana that always ripe too soon, but somehow slow cooking in a compact block of sticky rice wrapped by banana leaves makes the fruit change color. Chemical reactions? It still tastes sweet, with a hint of bitter (for lack of a better word) like a guava skin. And it looks beautiful to me.

The banana banh tet also goes well with my rotisserie chicken from Safeway, minus the guilt of defeating the whole vegan purpose thing. Thao Tien’s logs are also shamelessly long, almost two times bigger than Huong Lan’s. I will be eating banh tet every day for the rest of the week. Happy Tết to bánh tét and me!

Address: Hương Lan Sandwiches 4
41 Serra Way, Ste. 108
Milpitas, CA 95035
1 bánh tét with meat: $6

Thảo Tiên restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Road #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
1 vegan banana bánh tét: $10

Being a blatant ruthless carnivore all year round, I know that going vegan one day of the year won’t help me redeem myself in hell, but I still follow my mom’s tradition on the first day of Tet. No cheese, no animal milk, no bone marrow, no lard, no skin, no fishy business. It’s the first day of the new spring, everybody deserves to live, so we believe it’s nice to spare the lives of yummy things that can move. Or at least we should try not to cause their deaths. That means I have to find a vegan restaurant in Berkeley. Mudpie was estatic. (Mudpie has been fighting to go to Herbivore down the block for months, and I’ve been “gently” suggesting other places all this time.) Mudpie went online and picked his order even before we got there: the Indonesian noodle salad with tamarind dressing (pictured above).

When we got there the place was packed to the roof. Lucky for us, we got the last free table, and some folks who came later had to wait for at least an hour to be seated. If you wonder how I knew how long the wait was, it’s because that’s also how long we had to wait for our food. I had nothing to do within that hour except looking at other customers and eavesdropping on their conversation. The table arrangement is quite efficient, everyone’s utensil is within everyone’s neighbor’s reach. We ordered a yerba mate tea to sip boredom away. The hot kind comes in three choices: organic (plain, no sugar, no milk), organic latte, and chai spice tea; the chilled bottle kind is flavored with either raspberry or mint. The plain kind wasn’t anything spectacular. It’s just commonplace bitter like any other unflavored tea. I don’t want to sound snotty, but yerba mate is just another overhyped foreign substance, worthy of seeking after only for its novelty and cultural value.

Moving on to the food. The Indonesian noodle salad was like a garden harvest. Cucumber slices, pineapple and orange cubes, a few streaks of bean sprouts, lettuce, cilantro, cabbage, onion, whole peanuts, carrots, all partied up in a spicy chili pepper tamarind sauce. It was sour and refreshing. The thin rice noodle got lost in the jungle. For a salad, it scored well. For an entree, it needed more warmth and more substance.

What the noodle salad didn’t have, the “curry-coconut udon noodle” had: warmth and substance. I don’t know why it’s not “coconut-curry,” and I don’t know why it’s called “udon noodle,” because this was not udon. Texture aside, the curry noodle didn’t have what the noodle salad had: flavor. It was coconuty, but a pinch of salt and a few tablespoons of sugar would be a nice boost. After all, vegan food doesn’t have to be unseasoned food.

It’s not clear to me why Herbivore has gained such popularity in the region. The two entrees we got did not make us oomph and aahh. Looking around at other tables, we saw many sandwiches, italians and happy faces, so was it just us not picking the right plates? Being on the verge of disappointment, I almost decided to leave without dessert, but Mudpie and a second thought made me grab the waitress to order a wedge of vegan pie with one scoop of ice cream. We heard that strawberry rhubarb was good, but since it was out, we opted for the olallieberry pie (just because of the name). According to Wikipedia, the olallieberry is half blackberry, a quarter raspberry, and a quarter dewberry. The pie filling was more tart than sweet, which is always nice. The crust was thick, dense, and plain enough to shelter us from a sugar flood.  The mudslide vegan ice cream swept me off my feet with its creamy texture, chocolaty sweetness, and sneaky coconut shavings. If anything, this awesome dessert assortment would draw me back to Herbivore.

Address: Herbivore the Earthly Grill
2451 Shattuck Avenue (the corner of Shattuck and Haste)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 665-1675

Click for Herbivore’s Menu

An order of 1 curry tofu noodles, 1 Indonesian noodle salad, 1 yerba mate organic tea (plain), 1 vegan pie + a scoop of ice cream set us back by $30. Overall, a decent and healthy catch. But in all fairness, dessert aside, Herbivore is not in the least comparable with Garden Fresh in Mountain View.

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! 🙂