Bun Bo Hue

Last weekend I embarked on one of my occasional cooking projects. I call them projects because I find myself baffled over where to find ingredients at the store, and exhausted but still standing at the kitchen stove past 1 a.m. At that point I’m bemoaning my weary feet and reminding myself how hard it would be on my body if I cooked for a living. (I have to tell myself this every so often because I find the thought of owning a pastry shop very enticing!)

In February, I was up past midnight churning raspberry lambic ice cream for DessertFest2007. Saturday and Sunday, it was all about Bun Bo Hue. This spicy beef and pork noodle soup is a specialty of Hue in central Vietnam. It’s the dish I often beg my mom to make when I visit her in L.A., and it’s the dish I gobbled up two mornings in a row when I traveled to Vietnam in 2005.

I started off studying Andrea Nguyen’s wonderfully detailed cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, for what to buy and basic technique. Her cookbook is an invaluable resource in these instances; asking Mom would take too long and test our patience greatly.

Like most of my Vietnamese cooking endeavors – not that there have been that many – I drove to Hong Kong Market for ingredients. At the store, though, I realized I had no idea what banana blossoms/buds look like. Since I’d only seen them thinly sliced in restaurants, I called my parents to confirm. It would be the first of three consecutive calls.

I wandered over to the vast meat department. I don’t buy much red meat, so I spent some time searching for beef bones and such. I called my parents again, first to see if pork hocks cut earlier the same day were OK to buy and again to discuss seasoned ground pork. I only needed a small portion of beef, but the butcher guy wouldn’t cut me one, so I had to swing by Kroger for a piece of steak.

Bun Bo Hue requires an intense broth cooked for hours. My mom does simmer her version for a long time, but she also uses a prepackaged flavoring base to move it along. I decided that I would mostly follow Andrea's recipe and take no shortcuts. Plus, simmering beef bones would give me delicious bone marrow to enjoy! In short, I sautéed chopped onions with annatto (seeds that impart an orange color), then seared pork hocks and steak in the same big pot. Next, in two 5-quart pots – because I didn’t have a large stock pot -- I tossed in the onions, pork hocks, parboiled beef bones, lemongrass, fish sauce, rock sugar and other seasonings, and let them simmer for an hour. For the second hour of simmering, I replaced the hocks and bones with the beef. I strained and refrigerated the broth and finally settled into bed after 2 a.m.

Here’s the thing about me and Vietnamese cuisine: I’m usually familiar with the dish I’m attempting and have witnessed my mom making it a number of times. Yet there’s generally an ingredient or two I’ve never cooked with. This time, it was those banana blossoms/buds; I didn’t remove all the flowers as I should’ve. Cooking Bun Bo Hue reminded me, once again, how much time my mother used to invest in preparing beautiful dinners for our family every day.

Sunday, I made the lemongrass-chili oil with three tablespoons of red pepper flakes and added lots of freshly ground pepper to the seasoned ground pork before dropping balls of it into the boiling broth (after skimming off a bunch of fat). I also cooked thick round rice noodles and prepared a garnish plate of banana blossoms/buds, mint, cilantro and lime wedges. I sliced up onions and scallions, but omitted the traditional bean sprouts – ick! – and romaine lettuce, instead chopping up Napa cabbage for YouKnowWho. (There were probably more steps, but everything’s a blur at this point.)

Delicious! Not to toot my own horn, but this is a meal I no longer have to beg Mom for. So satisfying. I decided to pack leftovers for CabbageLover and NoLaNative and also ate some more last night.

This morning, I had my blood drawn for cholesterol testing. Oh, boy.

Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream

I've been on a cupcake-and-ice-cream kick lately. OK, not lately. Just forever. So after churning a gorgeously rosy ice cream flavored with my favorite beer, Lindeman's Framboise, I Googled furiously for another recipe to try. This Vietnamese Coffee ice cream sounded promising. I skipped the sauce and nuts 'cause it seemed like overkill, I hate frying and hey, I was making this on a weeknight after work.

So after a trip to Hong Kong Market for Trung Nguyen coffee and a stroll down the bulk-bin aisles of Central Market (where I spend waaay too much money) for exactly 2 ounces of espresso-roast coffee beans, I was ready to start. The recipe worked well except I had to strain the espresso bean-infused mixture many more times than it said to, with both a sieve and several layers of cheese cloth. Perhaps I had just overzealously cracked my espresso beans with the roller. It was therapeutic and fun!


The result was lovely and -- not surprisingly -- very rich, with a distinct coffee flavor balanced by the creamy sweetness of the condensed milk. (Oh, how I love condensed milk! It's great drizzled on Maeda-En's not-too-sweet green tea ice cream.)

Vietnamese coffee ice cream:

2/3 cup (~ 2 ounces) espresso-roast coffee beans
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
one 14-ounce can condensed milk
1/2 cup brewed Trung Nguyen coffee
8 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Seal coffee beans in a Ziploc bag. Use a rolling pin to lightly crush beans (do not grind!).

In a large heavy saucepan, combine the crushed beans, milk, cream and sweetened condensed milk. Bring to just under a boil over medium heat.

Remove the pan from heat, cover and allow the mixture to infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the infusion through a cheese cloth-lined fine sieve into a large bowl. Rinse out the saucepan and return the milk-cream mixture to the saucepan. Add the brewed coffee. Bring to just under a boil over medium heat.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, beat the yolks and salt until blended.

Whisking constantly, gradually add about half the hot milk-cream mixture to the yolks, then pour the mixture back into the saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the custard thickens slightly and coats the back of a spoon.

Immediately strain the custard through a fine sieve into a large bowl. Stir in the vanilla extract. Let cool, stirring occasionally. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, preferably overnight, to allow the flavors to develop.

Pour the chilled custard into the container of an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions. Scrape ice cream into a freezer-safe container, cover and freeze.