Bánh Chưng | Earth cake for Lunar New Year

Bánh Chưng is a traditional Việt dish for Tết | the Lunar New Year.  Back in the nascent days of Việt Nam's tribal past, legend has it that after defeating the Shang dynasty incursion, the 6th Hùng Vương king (ca. 2300 BC) decided to choose his successor among his sons by a cooking contest; yes, a prehistoric Top Chef competition with the winner being crowned king.  Primogeniture had no valency in pre-Sinic Van Lang; patrilineal confucianism came later.  The winningest son who was 18th in birth order and poor to boot was visited by a nữ tiên | a goddess who advised him to use the simple ingredients of the people, wrap it in banana leaves and boil it.  So he chose gạo nếp | glutinous rice, đậu xanh | mung beans, and pork, shaped it vuông vuông | square creating Bánh Chưng which in ancient Việt cosmology represents the earth.  He also made bánh dày | mochi in the round to represent Heaven.  I know that seems puzzling to imagine the earth as square and Heaven round.

Flying over north VN

Bear with me here as I diverge through my anti-halcyon grad school years.  I took a seminar on the Sacred Feminine in Southeast Asia with Dr. Ashley Thompson who kept emphasizing that there were Indic yonis & lingam all over Southeast Asia including VN which utterly befuddled me at the time (how is a square pedestal a yoni?).  And I finally puzzled out the connection between cosmic geometry and everyday objects; on the geographic level, a rice paddy is roughly square in shape when on level land, a metonymic connection to earth; on the symbolic/metaphoric level, a square set on its corner, is a diamond or rhombus, the universal symbol of the yoni.  Now, thanks to Ashley and the Sacred Feminine (sounds like a great band name) my secret sixth sense to wit is: (sigh) I. See. Yonis. Everywhere. (I'm talking about you, Crystal Vulva Cathedral) which is a damn sight better than seeing lingam everywhere let me tell you.

Linga-Yoni at the Cát Tiên sanctuary,
Lâm Đồng province, Vietnam

To the indigenous Việt cosmology, the vault of heaven is encircles the earth.  Hence  bánh dày | mochi in the round.  (I said, "She was more like a beauty queen from a movie screen.  Dont mind but what do you mean I am the one Who will dance on the floor in the round?")

Aside: bánh tét is a related dish which was purportedly derived during the Nam tiến | the Southern expansion period (17th C VN's version of Manifest Destiny conquest).  It can have the same savory ingredients as Bánh Chưng or alternately contain a sweet mixture of sticky rice & banana.  Significantly enough the Southern region in VN retains more Indic cultural influence via the conquest of Cham & Khmer kingdoms (and more Sinic influence via the Ming dynasty refugees who settled the area).  It is unsurprising that the cylindrical shape should therefore represent the linga, completing the cosmic dialectic.  (Oh, and thanks internet for showing me that I am not the only one to make this connection so you can stop looking at me like I am prurient, all you Việt Kiều.)

biggest Linga and Yoni in Southeast Asia

During my childhood, Ông Bà Ngoại |my maternal grandparents and Ông ngoai in particular would make dozens and dozens of Bánh Chưng the week before Tết.  Ông Ngoại would set the banana leaves in a frame and skillfully wrap dozens of Bánh Chưng (Ohio St, Auburn Dr, 54th).  Then he'd light a small bonfire in the backyard and boil them in a clean galvanized steel trash can.  The cooked Bánh Chưng would be distributed among the Phamily and the community.

I have been wanting to make Bánh Chưng ever since I became a mother to continue the tradition; and once my grandparents' passed, as a part of their legacy, but life got in the way and I was daunted.  This year with my ascending energy, I gave it a go though it was a few weeks after Tết.  I kinda winged it, loosely referring to some instructions I wrote down from my mom and Bach Ngo's cookbook, using what ingredients I had: pork belly instead of shoulder (too fatty, not enough meat), no shallots (hard to source organic ones).  I didn't hull the mung beans because it just seemed like a lot of work and anyway it's just more fiber; I didn't precook them either because of the time and not wanting to cook all the nutrients out.  I struggled with wrapping (darn banana leaves kept splitting when I was wrapping it and my corners were not tight so there was some water that got in).  Then I posted my results on Facebook and got lots of feedback from my aunty Len and my mama (who I let weigh in this post with her advice).  I suggest looking up youtube tutorials on wrapping as I haven't mastered this.  The one drawback is the ones from Việt Nam use fresh banana leaves that have a different texture & length than the ones we can source here.  Frozen banana leaves can be found in an Asian or Latino market (especially the Caribbean ones) and occasionally I've seen fresh banana leaves.

Bánh Chưng

makes three 9x9 inch "cakes"

• 10 cups of organic, sprouted glutinous brown rice (alternately called sticky rice, sweet rice, mochi rice)
• 1 lb organic sprouted mung beans
• banana leaves washed & dried and then blanched
• optional 8 shallots
• 1/4 c. Red Boat fish sauce
• Celtic or grey salt
• 1/5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2-1/2 lbs of sustainably raised pork shoulder or ham, cut into 2 inch cubes
• coconut palm sugar
• optional coconut milk (full fat kind, not the dairy alternative kind)
• cotton kitchen twine
• 24 qt stockpot or pressure cooker
• Bragg's amino acids or Coconut secret amino acids
• lard or coconut oil

RICE RICE BABY 

Soak rice & mung beans separately overnight in filtered water.  Drain the water separately (can be composted).  You may proceed with the recipe from this step or to boost the nutritional value, sprout the grains by  and rinse 1-2 times a day for 2-3 days until the germ sprouts a little tail.

Pulverize shallots, fish sauce, salt & pepper in a food processor, mortar & pestle or with a hand blender.  Add to the pork and marinade for several hours or overnight.

If you do plan on cooking the mung beans, boil them for 10 minutes.

Mama Says: 

cook bean , add salt while cook, add sugar after cook, smashed the cooked bean, add little coconut milk, form to the same size of banh chung, 1" thick, if you want savory, add fried onion, pepper. 

cook sweet rice halfway in batch with salt, this way easy to roll. 

I didn't bother seasoning the beans or parboiling the rice.  Extra steps but my result was plainer so I'd add shallots, more fish sauce & salt next time.

REFUGEE EDUCATION #1 Ba-Na-Na

Wash and dry banana leaves.  The frozen kind are softer than the fresh kind.  According to my mama: "Deep [dip] banana leave in the boiled water To soften it and also sterile the leave, dry the leave both side with paper towel." [2/1/2015 note: Mom also says use banana leaves from Thailand, not the Philippines and to cut off the rib for pliability.]

A traditional khuôn | mold for Bánh Chưng is a square frame with a an interior box like a springform pan.  You can use a 9x9 baking dish as the mold as I did, make a wood one, or DIY one from cardboard as my mama does.  

Mama says: 

use the cardboard cut a long strip and make it to square box, tape it at the one corner to make the mold,1st layer one piece of leave 15" long, 2nd layer 4 pieces of leave center overlap on top the 1st layer, the outside of leave it outside . put the square box on top of the leave not straight side (xeo xeo) tear two strips of banana leave, the width same size of one side of the box, put banana strip crisscross inside the square box, put cooked rice on top the banana strip, pat the rice to make it solid at the base, put cooked bean & meat or what ever!!!,top with another layer of cooked rice pat it down. fold the banana strips to make the square, pull the cardboard out now you already have one small square banh chung, now just fold the outside banana leave, just like gift wrap. tight with string. cook with boiled water for 2.5 hrs it done.

I boiled in a pressure cooker for 3 hours since brown glutinous rice takes longer to cook than white glutinous rice.  Since my pressure cooker is small, I could only fit 1 Bánh Chưng at a time so this was a 3 day cooking process!  (Still not as bad as the time I decided to make a 10-course dinner for my 30th birthday which entailed a 5 page workplan, a week of prep, 10 lbs of pork, and 3 or 4 days of cooking and borrowing a friend's oven for the second roast.  Oh and kalua pork juices charred in the ovens, the nước mấm spilled all over my then-boyfriend, now husband's car causing him to ban kalua pork and fish sauce for a while.  I of course got drunk in relief and exhaustion at the party and ate not much of it.  I don't do such crazy things no more.)

To serve, unwrap the banana leaves.  Slice into wedges if eating so fresh and so warm warm.  The days after, it's customary to fry it so you'll want to slice them for even coverage.  I use a little lard or coconut oil and fry in my All Clad skillet or my enamel coated cast iron.  My aunty Len uses her panini griddle to make the perfectly toasted Bánh Chưng with wedges.

Fried.  Obviously too hungry to do pretty staging & lighting.

It is traditionally eaten with pickled leeks and soy sauce (there's a memory in there somewhere about pickled leeks, Jacqui and Auburn Dr.).  I use Bragg's or when I'm really avoiding soy, coconut aminos or celtic salt.  The Southern way of eating it is with a little sugar.  My stepdad and husband who both hail from the Mekong delta do this and I could never really get into it.

Cooked Bánh Chưng can be frozen and resteamed. Leave it in its banana glory and slip into a freezer bag.  

Tutorials on wrapping and molds:

• Gói bánh chưng bằng khuôn thông minh
• khuôn bánh chưng | earth cake frame tutorial here

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Leilani’s Original Almond Dipping Sauce Recipe

This is a bonus recipe that accompanies my Goi Cuon recipe.

Leilani’s Almond Dipping Sauce

Makes almost 2 cups of sauce

This is my very own recipe that I've been using for over 10 years!  It's based on my mom's peanut dipping sauce which consists of chunky peanut butter, hoison sauce, lime, garlic, chile & water.  My secret ingredient is swapping almond butter instead of peanut butter.  This is inspired by my mom's use of slivered garlicky almonds or crushed macadamias (really whatever she has on hand) as a garnish on lots of different dishes that call for crushed peanuts.  Also I eliminate the hoison sauce which is really just wheat, starch/thickener, color/caramel, and MSG, and instead use molasses instead which is a nutrient-rich sweetener.  If you cannot tolerate any cane sugar, try using organic dried mission figs or dates and use an immersion blender or food processor to mix it.  The measurements are rough estimates of what you will need. Adjust according to your taste.

Ingredients:

• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3-6 dried organic unsulfured apricots or prunes or 3 tbs fruit syrup*
• 1 c. crunchy or creamy almond butter
• 2-3 teaspoons chili garlic sauce or fresh diced chilies to taste
• juice from ½ lime
• 1 ounce sliced or minced almonds
• fresh coconut juice (or water)

In a small bowl, mix molasses 6 tablespoons almond butter, chili, lime and garlic. And water until the consistency resembles yogurt. Stir until almond butter is dissolved. Add additional almond butter and water until desired thickness is obtained. Adjust seasonings to taste. Garnish sauce with chopped almonds.

We eat this with our spring rolls and with noodles.

*3/1/2014 This is a substitute for hoison sauce.  I've recently watched Dr. Robert Lustig's TED talk where he lists the 56 names of sugar.  Blackstrap molasses was listed so I am now removing that from my recipe and in considering the sugar content of fruit, I've also removed dried figs and dates as alternatives.

Try my new recipe for making almond sauce:

Leilani’s Rustic Almond Dipping Sauce

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Aioli Remoulade Sauce

My amazing vintage Republic of VN platter shop goodwill.com find; it's older than I am!

Aioli Remoulade Sauce

Vietnam hugs the coastline and fresh seafood is omnipresent in the cuisine.  One of my favorite seafood meals of all time is steamed Dungeness crab.  Whenever I've had this eating out, I've been sorely disappointed by the frozen crabs; live crabs steamed at home is so much better, cheaper, and satisfactory.  Every Thanksgiving we eagerly await the opening of Dungesness crabbing season.  The traditional accompaniment for steamed crab is muối tiêu chanh | salt pepper lemon juice.  In my Phamily, we have the custom of eating crab with aioli remoulade.  I'm not sure how this remoulade became my Phamily's preferred condiment perhaps via our years in Hawai'i.  I rarely eat dairy from any species as both me and my daughter have a sensitivity/allergy (no, it's not lactose intolerance, it's not the protein that bothers us, it's probably the free glutamates).  One of the advantages of being in the Bay is access to quality, premium products.  So I do make occasional exceptions for butter especially when it's Spring Hill organic cultured grass-fed butter or Petaluma Creamery organic butter from nearby Marin County.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1/2 c mayonnaise
• 1/2 lemon juiced or more
• minced garlic
• sea salt

Melt butter in a saucepan on low heat.  Add minced garlic and sauté until fragrant.  Add mayonnaise and blend.  Turn off heat and add lemon juice and sea salt to taste.

Don't worry if your garlic turns green while cooking; it's chemistry, not putrefaction.

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Chè bắp hột ngăm vôi | Nixtamal & tapioca pudding

Native corn harvest

What follows is a recipe for chè bắp | a sweet corn pudding made with tapioca pearls and coconut milk.  In order to make this a more nutritious dish, I will use corn kernels made from organic, heirloom native corn grown in my front yard and nixtamalized (alkalinized to be digestible and maximize its nutrients, very similar to hominy).  I hardly know how to write this recipe without getting into childhood memories, cultural foodways, and contemporary life.  So here goes:

Maize Foodways

While in current times, corn is so ubiquitous it can be invisible in American foods (about which Michael Pollan has tried to raise awareness), and worldwide, corn is one of the top 3 cereals/grains produced, its globalization, genetic modification, and industrial agricultural practices have combined to make corn a sugar-dense, nutritionally empty frankenfood.  But rather than dismiss corn altogether, it behooves us to remember its history and cultural practices in its consumption.  Before the current popularity of quinoa, chia, goji, maize was one of the original globalized "superfoods."  Cultivated in Central America over 7,000 years ago maize sustainined major civilizations from the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Iroquois, Navaho, and Zuni.  In the 15th Century, colonization and the Columbian Exchange spread maize to all corners of the earth.

While superfoods are great at introducing new foods to our omnivorous diets, they come with the serious problem of being stripped of their cultural foodways & context.  When corn was globalized during the colonization era (aka "Enlightenment"), the cultural foodways of nixtamalization--storing/cooking it with ash or slaked lime/calcium carbonate to unlock its nutritional value--were not brought with it, which means that untreated corn is largely indigestible. Hence when you eat whole corn kernels, the kernel is visible almost whole as the end product of digestion to put it politely (for the impolite, this means corn poop). 

Nixtamalization. . . The alkaline steeping and wet milling of corn for table use remain distinctly American practices. Although corn has spread across the globe, the preparation of nixtamal and hominy has stayed in the Americas.  "Beautiful Corn: America’s Original Grain from Seed to Plate," by Anthony Boutard

Native corn in my front yard

When maize was introduced as a new crop staple in Africa and Europe 500 years ago supplanting native grains and tubers, the eating of it caused widespread pellagra.  While we'd think in this day and age, we'd have figured out that corn needs to be nixtamalized to be a nutritious staple grain, even still there is a "disease" called kwashiokor in South Africa which only afflicts children who have weaned and eat mostly corn-based food and low protein.  It still befuddles me that the practice of alkalizing maize to make it digestible and nutritious has not been exported to countries where corn has become a staple and thereby prevent widespread famine and nutritional deficiency rather than band aid solutions like niacin fortification after the fact.

Aside: Kinda makes you think about the recent waves of globalized foods and what missing/lost/forgotten foodways may affect its consumption.  For example the practice of sprouting grains and seeds to counteract the anti-nutrients and maximize their nutritional value has largely been lost through industrialization. Get on that UNESCO.

Me and Mrs. Corn, Mrs. Corn, Mrs. Corn

we got a thiiiiiing goin' on.

In Việt Nam, where corn now is the second most important crop after rice, corn is mainly a snack food; corn is eaten untreated on the cob or in chè bắp, and surprisingly, as nixtamal mixed with sweet rice & mung bean (xôi bắp).  I'm not sure when the nixtamalization was introduced and why it is in a delimited way.

I have very fond memories of chè bắp | corn coconut pudding in my childhood.  My ông bà | grandparents grew multi-colored native corn in Việt Nam which was introduced via China tradeways during the Ming Dynasty from the Columbian Exchange over five hundred years ago (sorry Mac from Night Court, corn was not an American introduction) and one of the treats they would make after harvesting is chè bắp.  Stateside, mom would buy sweet corn on the cob and shave off the kernels.  She'd simmer the kernels and the cobs together with sugar for what felt like forever til cooked.  Then she'd remove the cobs and add coconut milk to the kernels, garnishing with toasted sesame seeds.  We 3 kids would fight over who got to gnaw the sweet nubs left on the cobs.  One year when I was 10, I received a small packet of popcorn seeds as something like a cracker jack prize.  We were living with my ông bà ngoại|maternal grandparents, two of my aunties, one cousine, and three uncles that year on Auburn Dr. (I am horrible with dates and had a nomadic childhood, so I mark time by where I lived at the time); we three siblings and mom shared futon mattresses in the living room.  I gave the seeds to my  bà ngoại who along with my ông ngoại had transformed the backyard and the part of the publicly owned hill behind it into a terraced subsistence garden (this is before hipsters mainstreamed urban and guerilla gardening, back when it was denigrated, still illegal and mainly done by people of color, refugees, and immigrants).  My bà ngoại stuck the 3 seeds in a small strip of dirt along the front fence.  I was amazed to watch them sprout.  I don't remember if we ate them but if ông bà ngoại had to stretch the meager ears among 12 people, most likely she made chè bắp.

The girls playing in the husks at the Ardenwood Harvest Festival.

Cut forward 20 + years later to 2012, my family had a playdate with 2 other families at the Harvest Festival in Ardenwood to harvest heirloon, organic native corn.  The refugee/immigrants in us took over and we harvested a grip of native corn ears.  We didn't have a plan or idea of what to do with our booty.  So all the corn languished for a year.  I finally dragged the ears out to an impromptu corn shucking & milling bee at my homesteading girlfriend's house (there is a cosmic reason why shuck rhymes with a curse word and that's because it is brutal on your fingers to shuck dried corn on the cob.  Christina is a good friend).  I used the corn flour to make some delicious violet cornbread.   I reserved a few pounds with the idea of making hominy and a big pot o' pozole which never happened.

My corn rows

Last summer I was still recovering from adrenal fatigue burnout and I felt my energy coming back. I impulsively dug a guerilla garden in our southern-facing front lawn.  Boxed in by the Niles foothills with little tree cover, our southern-facing front yard caught the brunt of the summer sun and was scorching.  So I chose heat-loving heritage crops--watermelons and native corn, and unlike my meticulous husband, I forwent any planning or consideration of soil or knowledge/experience of gardening and dug holes in the previously green lawn.  I forwent any fancy germination, reasoning that putting seeds in the soil is an age-old practice of growing things.  I dug holes,  dropped in a few kernels of my native corn leftovers and a scoop of compost, worm casings.  Later I decided to adopt the Three Sisters model of growing corn to little success (squash did well until it frosted, legumes were way overshadowed).  In spite of me, my corn really thrived.  Losing steam, I didn't harvest it at the peak of ripeness to try eating it on the cob, instead letting it dry for milling and nixtamal/hominy.

Dried & shucked corn kernels

This week my daughter VL's kindergarten class learned about corn;  they learned how to hand grind nixtamal with a metate to make masa, and learned how to hand make tortillas.   I volunteered some beautiful cobs, kernels for planting, and Chè bắp for the potluck Corn Feast.

Gorgeous dried native corn cobs

My contribution will be a more nutritious twist on my childhood favorite--chè bắp using nixtamalized native corn using the method I found from Mother Earth News.  I botched the nixtamal the first time around, but fortunately native corn is forgiving (so not being ironic or apocryphal here) so I did a second round and achieved the right texture.

Nixtamal

The many names of CaO2: 
calcium hydroxide, slaked lime,
pickling lime, builder's lime,
vôi (Việt), choona (South Asia),
cal (Latin America).  Used in
 cooking, chews, gardening, 
and making houses.

This needs to be made in advance of the chè by a couple of days.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 lbs of dried corn
• 25 g of pickling lime (2 tbs)
• water

Put corn kernels & pickling lime in a stainless steel or enamel pot.  Add enough water to cover by two inches.  Simmer on the stove without a lid for 30 minutes to alkalinize the kernels.  Do not boil.  Remove from heat.  Cover with lid and allow to soak overnight.

Simmering in slaked lime

I was making dinner at the same time and ignored the covered pot and when the 30 min was up, I notice it was at a low boil.  Yikes. I left it overnight and went on to the next step of cooking but it was still hard, so I repeated the pickling lime simmering without a lid for another 30 min.  Native corn is coarser than sweet corn so it probably needs more than 30 min to alkalinize.

Pour off the lime mixture into the garden or compost.  Rinse kernels well.   Put into steel pot, cover with one inch of water and simmer for 40-60 minutes to soften.   Salt the water and allow to cool.  Makes about 3 lbs of nixtamal. 

Comparison of dried kernels and nixtamal

Chè bắp hột ngăm vôi | Nixtamal & tapioca pudding

Frozen coconut milk, no additives

Ingredients:

• 1 lb nixtamal
• 1/2 cup small tapioca pearls
• 1/3-3/4 c palm sugar or coconut palm sugar to taste or fruit syrup*
• 16 oz of coconut milk (recipe here)**

Rinse tapioca pearls.  Soak tapioca pearls in cold water for 20 min.

Boil a pot of water.  When it is boiling add tapioca while stirring constantly so they separate and they don't stick to the bottom of the pan and scorch.  Lower the heat and cook until the pearls are mostly translucent.  Add nixtamal and coconut sugar and simmer for until the pearls are translucent.  The coconut sugar will give this a nice caramel color.  Turn off the heat and add coconut milk. 

*I've recently watched Dr. Robert Lustig's TED talk where he lists the 56 names of sugar.  While coconut palm sugar was not one of the named and has a lower glycemic index, it still is a refined sugar.


**Tropical Traditions recipe for making your own coconut milk here. If you are using frozen,give the package a quick rinse before opening to remove any residue, dirt, etc.

Ăn cho Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Khao Soi ເຂົ້າຊອຍ | Laotian fermented soybean noodle soup

Well, I find that I have too narrowly defined the scope of this blog to Việt cuisine given how I cook--improvisational and fusion.  My recent millet-stuffed deboned whole chicken, duck a l'orange, gluten-free shin splints (aka thin mints), dairy-free chia avocado chocolate pudding being recent culinary successes that have not made it to the blog because the content didn't quite fit.

So today, I present one of my favorite Laotian-style dishes after nam khao | fried sticky rice salad and sai ua | lemongrass sausage--Khao Soi.  This dish consists of fermented soybeans and ground pork served over rice noodles and pork broth that I first sampled at Vietiane Cafe.  I just learned that it is actually Burmese in origin (thanks internet!).  I reverse engineered it based on taste and then because my pantry is what it is, I improv'd some of the ingredients using dang myun | Korean glass noodles instead of rice noodles since I forgot to soak the rice noodles ahead of time.  And I always add more veggies where I can.  Here, I used blanched cabbage.  The making of this dish reminds me a lot of making Hủ Tiếu Bà Năm Sa Đéc | Mrs. Five's Noodle Dish from Sa Dec (which I've also learned is Hokkien-Khmer in origin).

I stopped eating soybeans some years ago because of the phyto-estrogens and the GMO issue.  Every now and then I will make an exception for organic, fermented soybeans.  So this is my exceptional recipe for fermented soybeans.  Tương cự đà| is a fermented soybean & roasted rice powder sauce from north Việt Nam; it can be substituted with miso and natto.  Natto has a very strong challenging flavor so you may want to omit if you don't like stinky ferments.  If you wanted to be fancy, you could also add thịnh | toasted rice powder (pan-toasted, finely ground rice grains) but it's not necessary.  Read the labels for miso & natto carefully to make sure it's organic, GMO-free, MSG-free and is naturally fermented with koji cultures (rice or barley malt).

One cooking shortcut tip when I am too pressed for time to mince garlic and onions/shallots by hand, I use an immersion blender to blend quartered onion and whole garlic cloves adding enough water to make it easier to process.  Then I saute until the water steams off.  The traditional way of making seasonings in Southeast Asia is to grind spices and liquid into a paste with mortar and pestle.  I rarely if ever have the luxury of time to do this though I'm sure it tastes amazing.

Khao Soi ເຂົ້າຊອຍ | Laotian fermented soybean noodle soup

Fermented soy (From L to R: miso,
 tương cự đà, and natto.)

• 1 shallot or 1/2 sweet onion
• olive oil
• 4-6 cloves of minced garlic
• 1 lb ground pork or beef
• fish sauce
• black pepper
• sea salt
• tương cự đà and/or dollop of fermented miso and 3 oz of fermented natto
• pork broth
• rice noodles
• cabbage, shredded & blanched
• baby power greens (kale, spinach, chard)
• cilantro

Soak rice noodles in water for at least 10 minutes then cook in boiling water for 7-10 minutes until soft.

Saute shallot/onion & garlic until fragrant with olive oil.  Add ground meat and break it up into small pieces.  Add fish sauce, black pepper, sea salt.  Saute until just cooked.  Turn off the heat and add tương cự đà and/or miso & natto.  Stir until blended and remove from heat.  I add the ferments at the very end to avoid cooking off the beneficial enzymes and probiotics.

To serve, add noodles, veggies, fermented soybean mix, and hot broth to the bowl.  Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Ăn ... Ngon Lành|Eat ... Delectably!