It’s been so crazy with work lately that I haven’t had much time to do any cooking.  I’ve been asked to hurry up and post more recipes so I’m going to rock this return with some crustacean!  Here’s a recipe I created on the fly so my measurements may be a little off.  It’s all ‘to taste’ anyway so if you’ve got a rich palate, then you’re good to go.  This crab dish infuses more Asian flavors using five spices, ginger, garlic, and fish sauce.

The worst part of it all was preparing the crabs… yikes!  I don’t know about you but the thought of killing these guys and ripping them apart while their separated claws are still twitching in your hands just freak me out.  So, who do you call??  The Matador!  For you folks who don’t have a Matador to call on, here are some instructions:

Some recipes will call for crabs which have been “livebacked”, that is, cleaned while still alive. Livebacked crabs are used for charcoal grilling, stir-frying, or as an addition to soups and stews.
First, place the crab on its back and hold it in place with a large cleaver or french knife positioned on the center-line of the crab between the two sets of legs.  Strike the cleaver a sharp blow with a rubber mallet or similar tool; chopping the crab in half and killing it instantly.

Pull off the triangular shaped apron from the underside of the crab. Turn the two halves of the crab over and pull off the top shell. Now the gills (clear feathery fingers situated just above the legs), the intestine (a firm white crooked piece in the center of the back), and the beaklike mouth parts are exposed.

Remove and discard these parts. Reserve any yellow fat known as crab butter from inside the shell, it makes a wonderful enrichment for a dipping sauce.  Rinse the two cleaned halves of crab. Slice each half of the crab into 5 sections by cutting through the body between each leg.  Now you have 10 legs with a body section connected to each piece. Crack each section of each leg with a mallet or the handle of a heavy knife.

Ingredients:

• 4 live crabs
• 3 tbsp of five spices
• 2 tbsp of fish sauce
• 2 tsp of brown sugar
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced (for seasoning)
• 10 cloves of garlic, sliced (for frying)
• Crab butter from inside the shell
• 1 tsp of kosher salt
• ½ tsp of black pepper
• 3 tbsp of flour
• 3 tbps of julienned young ginger
• 3 tbsp of vegetable oil

Preparation Instructions:

Clean and prepare the crabs as mentioned above.  Clean and scrub two shells for plating at the end and cook them in a pan or in the oven until they turn orange and set them aside.  In a small bowl, combine five spices with brown sugar, minced garlic, crab butter, and fish sauce and mix well.  In a heated wok, add oil, garlic, and ginger and fry for about a minute.  In a mixing bowl, add crab and dust with flour until all pieces are slightly coated/dusted.  Sprinkle some salt and pepper to the crab on top of the flour.  Add crab to wok and fry evenly for about 5 minutes until the flour gets a nice golden color.  Add seasoning mixture to the crab and stir well until every piece is coated and continue to fry for another 10-15 minutes until cooked.  Transfer to serving platter and place the two shells on top for presentation.

Mmmm… I love me some shrimp!  I can have shrimp all day long.  One of my favorite ways of preparing shrimp is stir frying them with garlic and fish sauce.  Delicious!  Give me a bowl of steamed rice with some shrimp and gravy nicely drizzled on top and I’m set.  This was one of four dishes I prepared one night for a family dinner and it was the first to go.

I don’t really have a recipe as I just eyeballed everything but I’ll try to include a guestimate below so you have some baseline to go by.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. of peeled and deveined shrimp
• 2 tbsp of sesame oil
• 3 tbsp of fish sauce
• 3 tbsp of sugar for browning
• ½ tsp of black pepper
• 1 large yellow onion, sliced
• 10 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 3 green onions, sliced
• 2 tbsp of vegetable oil

Preparation Instructions:

Place shrimp in a bowl and add sesame oil.  Slice garlic and onion and set aside.  Heat up a pan with vegetable oil and brown the sugar.  Once brown, throw in the garlic and onions and cook for about a minute or two.  Add shrimp and stir so that every shrimp is coated – add fish sauce and pepper and continue to stir. Cook for about 4-5 minutes (you don’t want to overcook the shrimp) and add the green onions.  Transfer to serving platter.  Serve with steamed rice.

This dish isn’t exactly like the traditional Chinese Black Pepper Beef with the stir fry onions and sometimes bell peppers.  At first glance, it appears to look more like the Vietnamese Bo Luc Lac (Shaking Beef) because the beef is cubed and not sliced and is served with a watercress salad.  It’s sort of a hybrid of the two but super easy to put together for a quick meal.  What’s most important is the cut of beef you use which should always be tender filet, otherwise you’ll be chewing for days. 

I like to use Lee Kum Kee’s Black Pepper Sauce marinade – it’s got peppercorn in it and tastes close to the flavors you’ll find in Chinese restaurants.  I would normally stir fry yellow onions in with the beef but with the watercress salad, I chose to keep the onions sweet, separate and crunchy. 

One of these coming weeks I’ll post recipes for the true black pepper beef and bo luc lac… for now, here’s the hybrid:

Ingredients:

For beef:

• 1-1/2 pound beef fillet steak (cut into cubes or sliced if preferred)
• 1 large white onion – sliced
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1 tomato, sliced
• 3 tbsp of black pepper sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee’s)
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp of sugar

For watercress:

• 2 bundles of watercress
• ½ cup of rice vinegar
• ½ cup of sesame oil
• ½ tbsp of sugar or 1 tbsp of corn syrup
• salt to taste

Preparation Instructions:Cut beef tenderloin into thin slices or cubes, whichever you prefer.  I like mine cubed sort of like the Vietnamese Bo Luc Lac because I like my beef medium rare.  Sliced beef cooks too fast.  Combine beef, sesame oil, sugar, and black pepper sauce in a bowl and stir well. Cover, marinate for several hours or refrigerate overnight. Cut and wash watercress and set aside to drain.  In the meantime, make the dressing for the watercress.  Combine the sesame oil, rice vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar into a bowl and stir well.  Toss the  watercress with the dressing and set aside. To cook, heat up a pan with some olive oil and stir-fry steak the steak until it’s plumped up and bouncy.  Prepare a plate with the watercress, tomatoes and onions – when the beef is cooked to your liking, transfer to plate onto the onions.  Served hot with steamed rice or if you’re counting your carbs, just have the beef and watercress as a salad.

Ingredients

For Biscuits:

• 1/2 stick of butter (2 ounces)
• 2 cups of self-rising flour
• 3/4 cup of milk (you will probably not need all of the milk)
• Quail eggs (for however many biscuits you are making)
• Sliced Swiss cheese
• Italian dry salami

Instructions / Preparations

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Put the flour and the butter in a large bowl
3. Using your bench scraper, cut the butter into the flour. The crumbs should be about pea size.
4. Slowly add the milk and mix it into the dough
5. As soon as the dough is smooth and pulls away from the bowl, stop adding the milk and turn the dough out onto a floured workbench. You can use all-purpose flour to flour the work surface
6. Knead the dough for about five minutes until it is very smooth
7. Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick
8. Using a floured 2-inch round cutter, press straight down into the dough and then give the cutter a slight twist and remove the biscuit from the dough.
9. Place the biscuits on a cookie sheet
10. If you want a deeper golden color, you can wash the biscuits with cream.
11.  Bake for 10 minutes or until done.
12. Pull in half with your hands (they pull apart very easily, you don’t need a knife)
13. Cut the sliced Swiss cheese with the same round cutter
14. Place cheese onto biscuit half
15. Fold a slice of salami onto the cheese
16. Fry quail eggs on lightly oiled pan (they cook very fast – 60 seconds or so)
17.  Transfer fried egg onto salami – sprinkle with salt and pepper if desired

We made these for some friends some night ago.  A few minutes later I came back with the second batch to replenish only to find just a few traces of confectioners sugar.  Easy crowd to please! 

Bun Cha Hanoi has got to be one of the best dishes originating from Northern Vietnam… seriously.  Try to pronounce it in Vietnamese – boon ja ha noy, or not and say the American mouthful, ”I-don’t-want-to-bother-twisting-my-tongue” version - Vietnamese Hanoi-Style Rice Vermicelli Noodles with Grilled Pork Patties.  My go-to restaurant for bun cha is Hanoi Restaurant in Little Saigon… but forget you guys now!  I’ve mastered the recipe!  Dare I even claim that mine is better?! *Doing the Carlton dance*

I think the key here is to allow time for the meat to absorb the marinade.  The flavors in this dish are found in the meat and in the sauce so nurture them like your babies!  People eat this in different ways.  You can either combine all the yummy elements in a bowl of nuoc mam or wrap the vermicelli, meat, and herbs into a lettuce and dip into the sauce.  (Recipe below)

Ingredients / Preparation Instructions

Sides:

• 1 package of vermicelli
• 4 cups of nuoc mam cham
• Fresh herbs: Mint (rau thom), Perilla (tia to), Vietnamese Balm (kinh gioi).

Boil the vermicelli, drain and set aside. Prepare the fresh veggies and set aside. Make the nuoc mam cham (dipping sauce) and set aside.

Sliced Pork:

• 1 lb pork butt or shoulder, thinly sliced about 1/8 to 1/4 inch or
  Stay away from lean cuts of pork as it will become dry.
• 1/8 cup minced Lemongrass (xa bam). Many Asian markets will sell minced lemongrass in the freezer section – I used fresh Lemongrass… the smell is amazing once you start chopping
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp ground pepper
• 10-15 cloves garlic, minced (don’t be shy!)
• 2-3 shallots, minced
• 4 tbsp sesame oil
• 6 tbsp thick soy sauce (make sure you use thick soy sauce and not the regular kind… if you can’t find it, use regular and add browning sugar or molasses)

Slice the pork into thin slices roughly 2-3 inch strips with about ¼ inch thick. Grill the meat outdoor for a better taste… we did ours over charcoal… yum!

For the marinade, combine in large mixing bow:l the lemongrass, shallots, garlic, sugar, fish sauce, pepper, dark soy sauce, sesame oil. Add pork and mix well and marinade for at least 2 hrs or overnight is even better.

These yummy little savory Vietnamese pancakes are traditionally called “banh khot”… or “little circle fried shrimp flour” as shown on the bag of cake mix… heeee.  They’re very simple to make and are delicious with nuoc mam cham.  This dish is a specialty of the southern coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.  If you ask most Vietnamese, however, they’re more familiar with the neighborhoods of Ho Chi Minh City, where they have many stalls selling these savory cakes. 

I didn’t entirely stick to the traditional recipe or mung beans and dried shrimp.  I married the recipe with its Laotian counterpart adding a bit of coconut milk.  These are a little softer and chewier than what you would normally get in Vietnamese restaurants.  They’re best served warm, fresh off the pan and dunked in nuoc mam.  Mmm – mmm!!

Ingredients:

1 bag of banh khot flour
1 can coconut juice
4 cups of water

Filling:
16 large shrimps (peeled)
1/2 cup peeled mung bean (although I didn’t use all of it)
2 stalks of green onion chopped

Coconut milk for topping: (optional)

Fish Sauce or nuoc cham pha (detailed instructions here):
1 part lime juice
½ part minced garlic
1-2 chopped thai chili
1 part fish sauce
1 part sugar    
2 parts water

Preparation Instructions:

1. In a bowl mix flour, water, coconut juice together.
2. Wash mung bean and cook until tender. Remove excess water and mash mung bean into paste. Add in a dash of salt and sugar for taste.
3. Chop shrimps into small pieces. In pan heat some oil and add in shrimps. When shrimps are half cooked, add in the chopped green onions and some salt, sugar, ground pepper, and mung bean.
4. Heat the banh khot pan (I used my Ebelskiver pan) and brush with oil. Stir the batter and fill each mini cup to 3/4 high. Add in some mung bean and shrimps mixture. Brush on some more oil on the side of the cakes.  Scoop a little bit of coconut milk on top and add just a sprinkle of sliced green onions.  Cover for 2-4 minutes. Check to see if it’s cook or not. If not then brush on more oil and cover to cook again.
5. For the fish sauce, mix everything together and taste.
6. Serve banh khot with fish sauce.

Nuoc cham in Vietnamese means a general dipping sauce, however, in this case we’re speaking of nuoc mam pha or “mixed fish sauce” which is the most widely common used sauce.  If you’re familiar with Vietnamese food, you’ll find that nuoc mam pha is served with the majority of our dishes in different variations.  The flavor varies depending on the preparer’s individual preference but the main ingredients are generally the same.  Some people substitute lime/lemon for vinegar and vice versa.  I personally prefer the fresh tanginess of lime in my nuoc mam pha.  Here’s the basic recipe and you can always add more of a particular ingredient according to your taste. 

• 1 part lime/lemon juice or vinegar
• 1/2 part minced garlic
• 1-2 chopped thai chili
• 1 part fish sauce
• 1 part sugar
• 2 parts water

Some people prepare the sauce on a hot stove to dissolve the sugar more quickly, then leave to cool before adding the rest of the ingredients.  The flavor is pungent, sweet yet sour, and sometimes hot… my favorite! 

 I combine the garlic and chili together in a mortar and pound into a smooth paste – add a little sugar to keep it from splattering.  Transfer to a bowl and add fish sauce, water, lime and sugar.   

Two words… puff pastry.  That’s all you gotta say to hook me with a recipe.  You can seriously just throw a sheet in the oven and have it crips and warm with some butter and orange marmalade and call it comfort food.  What I love more is that you can just buy them at the market instead of making them from scratch.  You’ll always find an extra pack or two in my freezer… just in case!  When I saw this recipe from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, I was giddy for an excuse to make them.  I asked the Matador “did you want to invite anyone over for dinner tonight?”  and it was over!

Adapted from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics

Ingredients

• 1-2 packages (17.3 ounces/2-4 sheets) puff pastry, defrosted
• Good olive oil
• 4 cups thinly sliced yellow onions (2 large onions)
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme leaves
• 4 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan, plus 2 ounces shaved with a vegetable peeler
• 4 ounces garlic-and-herb goat cheese
• 2 large Roma tomatoes, cut into thin (1/4-inch-thick) slices
• 3 tablespoons julienned basil leaves

Preparation Instructions

1. Unfold a sheet of puff pastry on a lightly floured surface and roll it lightly to an 11 by 11-inch square. Using a 4-inch wide round cutter, cut circles from the rolled puff pastry, discarding the scraps. Repeat with the second pastry sheet. Place the pastry circles on 2 greased sheet and refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
3. Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil (I used butter instead) in a large skillet over medium to low heat and add the onions. Saute for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onions are limp and there is almost no moisture remaining in the skillet. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper and thyme and continue to cook for another 10 minutes, until the onions are lightly browned. Remove from the heat.
4. Using a sharp paring knife or round end of the cutter, score a 1/4-inch-wide border around each pastry circle. Prick the pastry inside the score lines with the tines of a fork and sprinkle a tablespoon of grated Parmesan on each round, staying inside the scored border.
5. Place onion on each circle, again staying within the scored edge. Crumble 1 ounce of goat cheese on top of the onions. Place a slice of tomato in the center of each tart.  Sprinkle tomato with basil, salt, and pepper. Finally, place a sliver of Parmesan on each tart.
6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown. The bottom sheet pan may need an extra few minutes in the oven. Serve hot or warm.

I love cooking Tilapia… it’s the easiest fish to prepare.  It’s good fried, grilled, baked, breaded… you just can’t go wrong.  Here’s a good and simple dish requiring few ingredients.  This was served with instant Israeli couscous.

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