Bánh-mi, a Vietnamese submarine sandwich
on a baguette. Photo © Ppy2010ha |
Dreamstime.

When Europeans colonized Asia, they brought Western bread to the table. In French Indochina, Vietnam, that emblem of French cuisine, the baguette, was introduced; as were sandwiches.

Baguette-based sandwiches were called bánh mì (pronounced bon MEE), a Vietnamese word that refers to all types of bread. For sandwiches, it is made in individual portions, like hero sandwich rolls. The recipe is more airy than the conventional baguette, with a thinner crust. It actually uses a combination of rice and wheat flours, cutting back on the gluten.

In recent years, bánh mì have made their way west, to the U.S. From hole-in-the-wall bánh mì sandwich shops to trendy lunch bistros to Whole Foods Markets, these fresh, tasty sandwiches have become the rage in neighborhoods lucky enough to have them.

More often than not, pork is the meat of choice. But the defining characteristics of these sammies are their abundance of pickled vegetables and fresh herbs.

Chef Johnny Gnall shares the basics of making bánh mì—just in time to serve them as Super Bowl fare.

Bread

Some cooks hold that the bread is the most important part of this sandwich, so go out of your way to find the right type. If you don’t live near a Vietnamese bakery or grocer, look for semolina flour rolls, which give you more room for fillings than a classic baguette. The roll should be crisp on the outside (if not, then juices from the ingredients will make it soggy) and very soft on the inside.

Vietnamese bakeries create a roll that is more crust than center (as opposed to American breads that tend to be the opposite). So if you have a roll with an excess of soft white inside, tear some out: You want as much room for your fillings as possible!

Pork

Braised is the name of the game here: a slow braised pork shoulder works great, cooked to the point that you can pull it apart. The seasoning is up to you, but there’s nothing wrong with keeping it simple: salt, pepper, maybe a few chiles. Once the pork is mouthwateringly tender, pull it apart so that you can build layers easily. Let it drain for a few minutes to remove wetness that will create a mushy sandwich.

Pickled Vegetables

Here’s an easy recipe to pickle vegetables. As for choice of vegetables, you can’t go wrong with carrots and cucumbers. You can julienne both or, for contrast, thinly slice the cucumber in circles. Radishes are also a great addition; and pickled onions make almost anything better.

Fresh Cilantro

You really won’t find a bánh mì sandwich without cilantro. Its leafy, flavorful goodness helps to round out the other flavors in the sandwich and makes it taste just right. But if you are not a cilantro fan, follow your own path by substituting other fresh herbs. Basil, mint or parsley will do the trick.

Spread

Every sandwich needs a spread. Chef Johnny’s favorite for bánh mì is sambal- (chile paste) or sriracha- (hot sauce) flavored aïoli (garlic mayonnaise).

Just whisk together aïoli (store bought mayo works fine, whether or not you add garlic) and your preferred amount of the spicy paste or sauce. If spicy isn’t your thing, try honey, a little soy sauce, even some teriyaki sauce. Just mix in small amounts at a time: You want flavor, but you don’t want a teriyaki sandwich.

A RECIPE TAILORED TO PERFECTION

Once you’ve perfected the basic bánh mì sandwich, feel free to make it a bánh you, personalizing your culinary creation to suit your needs.

Gluten-free? Turn the bánh mì into a wrap with a corn tortilla or rice paper. Watching the cholesterol? Substitute chicken or fish for the pork and use a lowfat spread.

You can even leave the meat out altogether and just up the amount of veggies and toppings. It may not be traditional, but it’s tasty.

Now start building: bread, spread, pork/other protein, veggies, herbs, spread. Enjoy!

Check out all the types of sandwiches in our delicious Sandwich Glossary.

The Year of the Dragon is considered the luckiest year in the Chinese Zodiac.

And it began yesterday, when millions of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and other Asians rang in the New Year with fireworks, feasts and family gatherings.

We considered ourselves lucky with a seat at a delicious dinner at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market restaurant in New York City.

We left with this recipe for Jean-Georges’ signature Ginger Fried Rice. It was on the menu when he opened the restaurant in 2004 (Year Of The Monkey), and has remained a popular dish to this day.

Made with leftover jasmine rice, fried egg, leeks and fresh ginger, this crowd pleaser is a delicious side with almost anything. It’s also equally enjoyable as a cold or warm rice salad with strips or cubes of chicken or other meat, shrimp, scallops or other seafood.

Plan ahead when you make the rice, and make enough protein for leftovers to go with the Ginger Fried Rice.

Now you don’t have to go to Spice Market to
enjoy the Ginger Fried Rice. Photo courtesy
Spice Market.

GINGER FRIED RICE RECIPE FROM SPICE MARKET NEW YORK

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. In a large skillet, heat 1/4 cup oil over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp and brown. With a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels and salt lightly.

2. Reduce heat under skillet to medium-low and add 2 tablespoons oil and leeks. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until very tender but not browned. Season lightly with salt.

3. Raise heat to medium and add rice. Cook, stirring well, until heated through. Season to taste with salt.

4. In a nonstick skillet, fry eggs in remaining oil, sunny-side-up, until edges are set but yolk is still runny.

5. Divide rice among four dishes. Top each with an egg and drizzle with 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil and 1 teaspoon soy sauce. Sprinkle crisped garlic and ginger over everything and serve.
 
HOW MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF RICE HAVE YOU TRIED?

Check out our Rice Glossary.

The original Iron Chef cooking show, devised by Fuji TV in Japan, ran from 1992 through 1999. We were mesmerized each week, as two Iron Chefs had less than an hour to cook a multi-course gourmet meal based on the ingredient of the week (which remained a surprise until the filming began).

What emerged in each episode was food so glorious, many viewers would have given anything just to be able to taste it.

Seven different chefs competed over the run, but during our viewing years, the three stars were Iron Chef Chinese, Chen Kenichi; Iron Chef French, Hiroyuki Sakai; and Iron Chef Japanese, Masaharu Morimoto. Each chef owns a restaurant in Japan (Kenichi a Chinese restaurant, Sakai a French restaurant, Morimoto a Japanese restaurant).

Iron Chef French, Hiroyuki Sakai. Photo courtesy Fuji TV.

The host and comic relief, Takeshi Kaga, was not a real “eccentric millionaire” with a castle and a culinary academy, but a well-known Japanese actor, Shigekatsu Katsuta.

While we loved all the Iron Chefs, we had a special fondness for Chef Sakai, based on the niceness he projected as well as the style of his food. He also has the most wins, and was named “King of Iron Chefs” after winning at the show’s grand finale.

Yesterday, thanks to Benihana restaurant, we met our favorite Iron Chef, who is executive culinary advisor to the restaurant chain. The occasion was an intimate lunch for journalists, and it reminded us how fun a lunch or dinner at Benihana can be.

The meal can also fit into most diets, as each table gets a personal chef who can customize the ingredients on the menu—top-quality beef, chicken, seafood and vegetables—to one’s diet (hold the butter, add the monounsaturated safflower oil). There are no tempting desserts (just ice cream and sorbet) and no bread.

Don and Betty Draper dine at Benihana in
an episode of “Mad Men.” Photo courtesy
AMC.

BENIHANA: FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

Although we spotted a few private rooms used for business lunch meetings, Benihana is a communal experience. Whether your party is large or small (or just you), you sit around the teppanyaki (griddle/flat top) table as your chef prepares your meal: grilling, slicing and flipping until the cooked food is moved from the grill to your plate. Adults and kids alike will be mesmerized.

Benihana was founded in 1964 in New York City by Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki, an alternate on the 1960 Japanese Olympic Wrestling Team.

Aoki moved to New York on a wrestling scholarship. The Big Apple had little Japanese cuisine at the time. Aoki devised the concept of fusion cuisine and theatre: meals theatrically prepared by a knife-wielding chef/entertainer at a teppanyaki table surrounded by guests. His menu took American favorites—steak, seafood and chicken—and served them Japanese style, cut into bite-size pieces.

Our chef, Carlos, amazed us by flipping a raw egg back and forth on the flat side of a cleaver; then, as a final show, flipping the egg into the air and landing it on the blade edge of the cleaver, breaking the egg in half. Pretty amazing stuff. (The eggs were used in the house’s signature fried rice.)

The meal begins with a delicate Japanese onion soup, followed by a salad with very tasty ginger dressing. The restaurant has added a sushi menu (there’s also a sushi bar), and the sushi we had was delicious.

WE FINALLY GET TO TASTE IRON CHEF FOOD

As much as we enjoyed our seafood entrée, the star of the lunch was a special creation prepared by Chef Sakai: Cercle de St. Jacque. A flat cake of seafood and vegetables—langoustine, live scallop, squid and seafood mousse with lotus root, taro root and chives, bound with a long strip of cucumber, the circle of seafood was garnished with a white miso seafood sauce and black Italian truffles. It’s not yet on the regular Benihana menu, but we’ll be the first to order it if it appears.

Thanks to Benihana, part of our fantasy—the opportunity to taste Chef Sakai’s food—has been realized. If anyone wants to send us to Tokyo to dine at his restaurant, La Rochelle, we can be packed in an hour.

There are 63 Benihana restaurants in the U.S., and several overseas. Check the company website to find the one nearest to you.

The New York City location, on West 56th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, is convenient to City Center, shopping, Central Park and much more.

White miso paste. Photo courtesy Nagano.

Challenge yourself in the kitchen this year by trying a new ingredient each month. To start the year off, here’s a suggestion from our consulting chef, Johnny Gnall: miso paste.

Miso, a thick paste most often made from fermented soybeans,* is a traditional Japanese seasoning with which most Western cooks are unfamiliar.

If you’ve eaten at a Japanese restaurant, you’ve likely enjoyed a bowl of miso soup. If you make fish recipes, you may have tried a variation of the exquisite miso-glazed cod that chef Nobu Matsuhisa made so popular in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

But miso rarely finds its way into American home kitchens. This is a shame, because it is a versatile and complex ingredient that can add depth and flavor across the culinary spectrum.

*In addition to soybeans, rice and barley can be used. Salt and the fungus kojikin complete the recipe.

Savory and salty, miso paste is low in calories and fat yet rich in protein, vitamins and minerals, making it an important part of Japanese cuisine. This healthy ingredient was a favorite of the Samurai, the noble warrior class that existed from the 12th century until pre-industrial times.

It endures as a common ingredient in Japanese dishes, from pickled foods, sauces and spreads to the dish Americans know best, misoshiru or miso soup.

But miso can be an important culinary tool beyond Japanese cuisine. Chef Johnny often uses it simply to add umami to dishes that would otherwise lack that certain something.

MISO & UMAMI

The most common characteristic of miso, and arguably its defining attribute, is that elusive fifth taste: umami.

Umami refers to that taste in foods that is often described as a “brothiness” or earthiness on the palate. Mushrooms and meat are the best-known ambassadors of umami. Here’s more to help you understand umami.

Despite the difficulty one may have in describing it, umami plays an important role in cooking. Often you taste something and notice it lacks “strength” or seems “flat.” That absent quality you can’t seem to put your finger on is, quite often, umami.

Red miso paste. Photo courtesy Nagano.

The umami in miso can play an important role in perking up just about any world cuisine, requiring only cooks who are bold enough to try it.

TYPES OF MISO

Miso is available in different forms or flavors, such as red or white miso paste.

The differences depend on exactly which ingredients were used in its fermentation (such as rice or barley), the amounts of such ingredients, and how long they were fermented. Red miso paste, for example, is often fermented for a year or longer, whereas white miso paste is fermented for a much shorter period.
 
HOW TO USE MISO PASTE

You can make your own homemade miso soup, of course, but try it in American recipes. The beauty of miso is its versatility. It can be the star, providing its own unique flavor out front, or it can be one of many ingredients, lending that umami quality to a dish in need.

JUST DO IT!

The flavor and umami from miso can be unbelievably satisfying, which makes it a great tool to have on hand. Yes, its sodium levels can be high; but compared with salt, you get far more flavor and complexity with less overall sodium, as well as bonus healthy minerals, beneficial bacteria and protein. You’ll even pick up some antioxidants.

So the next time you are at the grocery store, head to the international foods aisle and locate the miso paste. There may be several varieties to choose from; choose any one to start. Different brands and types will have different levels of salty and/or sweet.

Then, add it to anything you feel could use a boost of umami flavor and won’t hurt from a bit of saltiness.

Get to know miso as more than just the soup you eat before the sushi. It may just be the secret ingredient you’ve been looking for: You just may become mad for miso—and that’s a good thing.

With the kids home through the New Year, here’s a way to keep the holiday spirit going for lunch or dinner:

Christmas quesadillas!

The idea comes from Red’s All Natural, makers of burritos and quesadillas.

Keep a box of the quesadillas in the freezer. Then, heat them (the microwave works fine) and top with green guacamole and red cherry or grape tomatoes, halved.

If you don’t have guacamole, try fresh green herbs, spinach or other greens, or for a fusion dish, pesto. For the cherry tomatoes, you can substitute sundried tomatoes, red bell peppers or sliced roasted peppers (pimentos).

Deck the halls with quesadillas! Photo
courtesy Red’s All Natural.

Red’s All Natural quesadillas are crafted with antibiotic and hormone-free meats, fresh veggies, beans and spices. The four flavors include bean and cheese, buffalo chicken, pulled pork and steak. Learn more at RedsAllNatural.com.

Feliz Navidad!

Two of the seven Crazy Cuizine varieties.
Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

We live in a city where delivered food of every type is a way of life. Chinese food, sushi or Korean BBQ can arrive at our door in 30 minutes or less.

But in half that time, we can remove the Crazy Cuizine from the freezer and microwave our own.

Crazy Cuizine is a line of frozen Asian entrées—Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes—that you can find at select Costco locations and BJ’s Wholesale Clubs nationwide, and at some regional chains.

About The Entrées

Ready to heat and eat, the line comprises sauced meat dishes—mostly chicken—that are high in protein and free of preservatives, trans fats and MSG.

The entrées can be microwaved in five minutes or less—one-quarter of the time it takes to microwave an appropriate amount of conventional rice. That a heaping plate of tender meat can be available in a few minutes is a great convenience.

Microwaving rice will take you 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the amount (smaller amounts take less time). Don’t spend the money on frozen, ready-to-microwave rice packages. They may save you 10 minutes, but it’s not worth the added expense. Here’s how to microwave conventional rice for pennies a portion.

What You Need To Add

While the line claims “authentic recipes,” some of the authenticity needs to be added.

Orange chicken is ready in five minutes. Photo courtesy Crazy Cuizine.

The ingredients are U.S.-sourced and the dishes are produced at the company’s state-of-the-art facility in Southern California. The chicken is all-natural white meat, and has very good chicken flavor. Some are sliced, some are breaded.

The sauces tend to be adaptions of the same recipe, thick and slightly sweet. The choices include:

 
The 20-ounce boxes have a suggested retail price of $8.99.

Given that we pay between $5.00 and $6.00 for an order of six poststickers, delivered or in-restaurant, the 28-30 pieces from Crazy Cuizine are a bargain.

Learn more at DayLeeFoods.com.

If you only eat tacos at restaurants, you’re missing out on an easy-to-make lunch or dinner item that can expand far past its Mexican roots. Today, anything rolled in a tortilla becomes a taco—from octopus to leftovers of almost any type.

Dating back thousands of years, corn tortillas were the bread of Mesoamericans. In addition to providing sustenance, tortillas were also torn into pieces and used in the absence of utensils to scoop up other foods. The word “taco” derives from a Spanish word meaning “light snack.”

Each region in Mexico has its own cuisine, which extends to taco fillings. Mexican fillings vary widely from the typical selection at an American Tex-Mex restaurant.

One of the lesser-known joys of tacos is how they turn everyday leftovers into a special meal.

Take a look at our “taco template” and start using your leftovers to create delicious tacos.

Also check out the history of tacos.

A shrimp taco. Photo courtesy
EatWisconsinCheese.com.

Here’s a universal recipe for tacos: fish, chicken, beef, whatever.

If you dine at Japanese restaurants, you’ve probably seen a bento box. Bentos provide a selection of smaller bites. A traditional bento consists of fish and/or meat, pickled and/or cooked vegetables and rice. In the U.S., dumplings, sushi and fruit are often included.

The bento comprises a box-shaped container with compartments. The boxes range from beautiful lacquer to plastic lunchbox to disposable take-out containers. They can be one level, as in the photo, or stacked. The defining feature is the variety of foods.

Bento is more than restaurant fare: Japanese homemakers prepare them for family members’ lunches, as well as for their own. The goal is to provide an attractive variety of foods.

So today’s tip is: Think bento, with American ingredients, for lunch or dinner.

A restaurant bento box. Photo by
Blue Lotus | Wikimedia.

A variety of foods makes any meal more interesting, and is recommended by registered dieticians and other experts.

You can whip up your bento from scratch, and/or use up leftovers. It’s easy to incorporate healthy foods. You can serve the foods on one plate, or put each item on a small plate or other dish.

Consider an assortment of small-portion foods including:

 
By the way, the word “bento” originates from a slang term in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279 C.E.) meaning “convenient” or “convenience.”

To us, it means “tasty variety.”

Check out some of our favorite international foods.

Ramen are Japanese wheat noodles. In Japan, ramen dishes are fine cuisine, and innovation is the name of the game. Ramen recipes are closely guarded secrets.

In the U.S., most ramen dishes comprise packaged ramen noodle soups. Known best as inexpensive fare for college students, there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. The hot, chewy noodles can provide almost as much comfort as a hug from mom. In these recessionary times, ramen is more than a hug: It’s a deal of a meal.

The bad rap of packaged ramen soup comes from the spice packet used to flavor the broth. What’s so bad about it? More often than not, beyond the dried soup ingredients, it includes an unconscionable amount of sodium, a cocktail of unpronounceable ingredients and a kick of MSG. Yikes.

The next time you come across a package of ramen soup, take it home, ditch the shady silver spice pack and improvise. There is no end to what you can add to the broth, so get creative and turn your ramen into “fine cuisine.”

Turn instant ramen noodles into something special. Photo © Olga Nayashkova | Fotolia.com

 
Ditch The Broth, Keep The Noodles
Feel free to eliminate the broth altogether; after all, ramen is simply pre-cooked egg noodles.

How about a little Ramen Carbonara? Render a quarter pound of diced pancetta in a pan. Cook the ramen according to the package instructions, using boiling water with a half a teaspoon of salt stirred in. When the ramen is cooked, add it to the pancetta with the pan on medium heat, and add one uncooked scrambled egg.

It’s important to stir constantly once the egg is in the pan, as this will allow it to coat the noodles rather than simply turning into scrambled eggs.

Finish with some grated Parmesan cheese and coarsely ground black pepper. And even though this sounds like dinner, it is more or less bacon and eggs, so feel free to eat it for breakfast.

FOOD 101: TYPES OF PASTA

Ramen is one of the many types of pasta made worldwide. Check out our Pasta Glossary for photos of many types of pasta.

Spooky quesadillas? Sure, and they’re easy-to-make Halloween food—a light dinner for trick-or-treaters or for anyone staying at home who wants some Halloween fun (adults: enjoy them with a pumpkin ale).

Watch the video below to see how the Food Network’s Sandra Lee turns a quesadilla into a “spookadilla,” using tomato-basil tortillas. (Look for tomato-flavored tortillas from The Tortilla Factory or Tumaro’s Tortillas, two of our favorite brands. Their tortillas have flavor in addition to color.)

Sandra demonstrates two options: A jack o’ lantern face cut into a tortilla and a face added with vegetables. What she leaves off, in our humble opinion, is the “blood”: the salsa or tomato sauce that makes a basic pumpkin face spookier.

We like the veggie decorations as a creative, make-your-own spooky food activity (not to mention, it hopefully gets people to eat their veggies). Sandra uses quartered tomato slices for the eyes, sliced pimento-stuffed olives for the nose and sliced mushrooms for the teeth. (Feel free to add your own selections.) Put the sliced veggies in bowls—on a turntable, perhaps?—and let the revelers create.

To spice things up on Halloween, try Cabot Habanero Cheddar. An easy substitute: mix crushed red pepper flakes or minced jalapeño into shredded cheese.

Shredded Cheese Vs. Shredding Block Cheese

You’ll often read that grating your own cheese is a cost saver. Yes, but you may be saving just a penny per ounce.

At FreshDirect.com, for example, Kraft shredded cheeses are $4.49 per eight-ounce package, or $.56/ounce. Kraft Cracker Barrel Cheese varieties are $5.49 per 10-ounce block, or or $.55/ounce.

The real reason to grate your own is a broader choice of cheeses. We love the whole variety of Cabot flavored Cheddar cheeses: Garlic & Herb, Horseradish, Hot Buffalo Wing, Hot Habanero, Smoky Bacon, Tomato Basil and Tuscan. The company also makes reduced-fat Cheddars: 50% Cheddar, 50% Jalapeño, 50% Pepper Jack, 75% Cheddar and 75% Habanero, all so good that you’d never guess they were reduced-fat.

To easily grate cheese, we use this OXO Good Grips box grater. It has a detachable container that catches, measures, and stores (with a snap-on lid) the grated cheese.

To those who read ingredient lists: Shredded cheese typically contains anti-caking agents—calcium carbonate, microcrystalline cellulose or potato starch, for example—which prevent the shreds from sticking together. These are natural ingredients, unlike chemical preservatives that some consumers seek to avoid.

On to the spookadillas!

FOOD TRIVIA

Jack o’ Lanterns were not originally pumpkins. To keep away spirits and ghosts on Samhain, people placed candles in their windows, using hollowed-out turnips and other vegetables as the holder.

Get spooked: more Halloween trivia.