Vietnamese Beef Pho 2

Authentic South Vietnamese Style Pho. A comforting richly seasoned beef broth is ladled over rice noodles and thinly sliced beef. Add hot sauce and plum sauce to taste and top with cilantro, basil, lime juice and bean sprouts

INGREDIENTS:
5 pounds beef knuckle, with meat
2 pounds beef oxtail
1 white (daikon) radish, sliced
2 onions, chopped
2 ounces whole star anise pods
1/2 cinnamon stick
2 whole cloves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 slice fresh ginger root
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 1/2 pounds dried flat rice noodles
1/2 pound frozen beef sirloin

TOPPINGS:
sriracha hot pepper sauce
hoisin sauce
thinly sliced onion
chopped fresh cilantro
bean sprouts (mung beans)
sweet Thai basil
thinly sliced green onion
limes, quartered



DIRECTIONS:
1. Place the beef knuckle in a very large (9 quart or more) pot. Season with salt, and fill pot with 2 gallons of water. Bring to a boil, and cook for about 2 hours.

2. Skim fat from the surface of the soup, and add the oxtail, radish and onions. Tie the anise pods, cinnamon stick, cloves, peppercorns and ginger in a cheesecloth or place in a spice bag; add to the soup. Stir in sugar, salt and fish sauce. Simmer over medium-low heat for at least 4 more hours (the longer, the better). At the end of cooking, taste, and add salt as needed. Strain broth, and return to the pot to keep at a simmer. Discard spices and bones. Reserve meat from the beef knuckle for other uses if desired.

3. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Soak the rice noodles in water for about 20 minutes, then cook in boiling water until soft, but not mushy, about 5 minutes. Slice the frozen beef paper thin. The meat must be thin enough to cook instantly.

4. Place some noodles into each bowl, and top with a few raw beef slices. Ladle boiling broth over the beef and noodles in the bowl. Serve with hoisin sauce and sriracha sauce on the side. Set onion, cilantro, bean sprouts, basil, green onions, and lime out at the table for individuals to add toppings to their liking.

Vietnamese Springs Roll

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 (6.75 ounce) package dried rice noodles
8 rice wrappers (8.5 inch diameter)
8 fresh mint leaves
8 cooked medium shrimp, sliced in half lengthwise
1 1/2 cups bean sprouts
3 tablespoons fish sauce, or to taste
1/2 cup cilantro leaves

DIRECTIONS:
1. Place the rice noodles in a large bowl of hot water until cooked, about 15 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Fill a large bowl with hot water, and soak the rice wrapper sheets one at a time until softened, but still rather firm; about 20 seconds. Place the sheets on a large dish cloth, separate from each other. Place a mint leaf into the center of each wrapper. Place two shrimp halves over the mint leaf, top with a small handful of the noodles, and 5 to 6 bean sprouts. Season to taste with fish sauce, and garnish with cilantro leaves.

2. Roll them, burrito style, by folding the bottom of the wrapper over the filling in the center. Fold in the left and right sides, then roll the entire thing away from you tightly.

Sherry Chicken Curry

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into chunks
1/2 cup cornstarch
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large onion, cut into chunks
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup cooking sherry
2 cubes beef bouillon
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons curry powder
water to cover
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup coconut milk

Directions:
1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Coat chicken with cornstarch and place in skillet with garlic, onion, salt and pepper. Add sherry and beef bouillon and let liquid reduce a little.
2. Stir in peanut butter and curry powder and add water to cover; add ginger, reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, then lastly stir in coconut milk and serve hot.

Nasi Lemak

Ingredients:
For the rice:
2 cups coconut milk
2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 (1/2 inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
salt to taste
1 whole bay leaf
2 cups long grain rice, rinsed and drained

For the garnish:
4 eggs
1 cucumber
1 cup oil for frying
1 cup raw peanuts
1 (4 ounce) package white anchovies, washed

For the sauce:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 shallots, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons chile paste
1 (4 ounce) package white anchovies, washed
salt to taste
3 tablespoons white sugar
1/4 cup tamarind juice

Directions:
1. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, stir together coconut milk, water, ground ginger, ginger root, salt, bay leaf, and rice. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, or until done.
2. Place eggs in a saucepan, and cover with cold water. Bring water to a boil, and immediately remove from heat. Cover, and let eggs stand in hot water for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove eggs from hot water, cool, peel and slice in half. Slice cucumber.
3. Meanwhile, in a large skillet or wok, heat 1 cup vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Stir in peanuts and cook briefly, until lightly browned. Remove peanuts with a slotted spoon and place on paper towels to soak up excess grease. Return skillet to stove. Stir in the contents of one package anchovies; cook briefly, turning, until crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on paper towels. Discard oil. Wipe out skillet.
4. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in the skillet. Stir in the onion, garlic, and shallots; cook until fragrant, about 1 or 2 minutes. Mix in the chile paste, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the chile paste is too dry, add a small amount of water. Stir in remaining anchovies; cook for 5 minutes. Stir in salt, sugar, and tamarind juice; simmer until sauce is thick, about 5 minutes.
5. Serve the onion and garlic sauce over the warm rice, and top with peanuts, fried anchovies, cucumbers, and eggs.

San Diego Vegetarian Restaurant

San Diego Vegetarian Restaurant
A Friend of mine is going abroad to San Diego, CA, next week for a vacation. Before he go there, he keep asking me how he gonna find san diego restaurants with an Asian Cuisine. As a second largest city in California ang eight largest city in the United States i think he can find it easily. But i almost forgot that he's a Vegetarian. Whoops. There are so many restaurants in San Diego that serve Asian Cuisine but not that many that serve Vegetarian Cuisine.

Just as i thought before, there are so many san diego dining guide but only few who mention about Asian Vegetarian Cuisine. What people need is a guide that customizable according to the people need. I told my friend "Go to the Chinatown, you'll find what you need there", but what if he was far away from the Chinatown?it's a big city he don't want to waste that much time. Here are some Asian Restaurant that serve vegetarian cuisine :

Mandarin Dynasty
1458 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92103
(619) 298-8899

Vegan Zone
859 Hornblend St
San Diego, CA 92109
(858) 272-1913

*PS the informations brought to you by CafeSanDiego (www.cafesandiego.com)

How to Cook with Wine

Wine can be used as a flavoring, as in wine jellies or in soups, stews, braised foods, reductions and more to add robust interest and thickening power to recipes. These recipes use at least 1/4 cup of wine.
The first thing you can do with wine is marinating. Wine can be included in a marinade for meat, fowl or fish. Usually the wine will be mixed with other ingredients such as oil, aromatics, (garlic, ginger, onions etc.), herbs/seasonings, and/or additional flavoring agents such as Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, soy sauce, citrus juices, etc. Wine can also be the sole fluid in a marinade. Coq au vin, the classic French dish of chicken braised in red wine, starts with marinating the chicken in wine overnight. You can use a wine-based marinade, (or any marinade for that matter), to make a sauce for the final dish. However, you must always bring a marinade that was in contact with raw meat to a full boil for a few minutes to ensure the demise of bacteria.

Remember, wine is acidic and acids can "cook" the flesh of seafood and break it down. For a wine based marinade, do not marinate fish more than 30 minutes and shellfish for more than 10. Moreover, do not use reactive metals, (aluminum, copper, cast iron), when marinating/cooking with wine since they can chemically react with acid. Stainless steel, enamel, glass, or anodized aluminum is the way to go.

Just like a marinade, wine can be a constituent of the fluid medium or the only fluid used in any of a variety of wet cooking methods, namely steaming, simmering, poaching, braising, and stewing. Fish, shellfish, and chicken for example, can be steamed using wine. Let's take mussels for example. Saut some onion and garlic in oil, add a cup of white wine and bring it to a simmer. Place a steamer insert into the pot and add the mussels to it. Cover and steam until the mussels open. Pour the steaming liquid, fresh parsley, salt and pepper over them and serve. Were you to place the mussels directly in the fluid, then you would be simmering them.

Poaching is basically simmering only at a lower temperature. The difference between poaching, simmering, and boiling is the temperature of the liquid. Poaching is from 160 to 185 degrees, simmering is beyond 185, and boiling is when you obviously achieve a full boil. Virtually any white fleshed, non-oily fish can be poached either in wine or a combination of wine and other fluids, such as a court-bouillon, a broth made from water, wine, vinegar and/or citrus juice, aromatics and herbs. But it must be done at the proper temperature. If you wander into the simmering range or worse yet a boil, you can obliterate the fish. Another delicious example of poaching with wine is pears poached in red wine.

Braising and stewing frequently employ wine. Braising usually involves cooking a larger piece of meat, semi submerged in fluid, at a low temperature for an extended period of time. If the meat was cut into bite sized pieces and completely submerged, then it's stewing. The aforementioned dish coq au vin is chicken braised in red wine. Or the wine can be mixed with stock as in osso buco, braised lamb shanks, or any of a number of stews.

Probably the most well known use of wine in cooking is to make a sauce. After roasting or sauting a protein, remove it from the pan. Place the pan over a high flame and add wine. Scrape off the flavorful brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan as the wine comes to a boil. This is what's known as deglazing. Add stock, (optional), aromatics, herbs, salt and pepper. Simmer until it's reduced to at least half. Melt in some butter at the end, strain it, and pour it over your food. For a thicker sauce, you can reduce it even further or thicken it with roux, arrowroot, or cornstarch.

Bringing the wine to a boil facilitates evaporation of the alcohol, which begins to vaporize at 178 degrees. Reducing the wine by simmering continues the evaporation of the alcohol, (and water for that matter), and thus concentrates the flavor of the wine. This is precisely why the quality of the wine matters in cooking. If you concentrate an already poor tasting wine, you merely intensify its unpleasantness.

The idea that all or most of the alcohol is evaporated when reducing wine is largely apocryphal. You would actually need to simmer wine for a number of hours to approach complete vaporization of the alcohol. For example, ten minutes of simmering will only eliminate about half the alcohol.

Additional uses of wine include incorporation into a vinaigrette. Simply substitute some or all of the acid in the vinaigrette recipe with wine. Sometimes dishes are finished with a dash of wine to add a last minute touch of flavor. Often this method embraces a fortified wine such as Sherry, Port or Madeira. Fortified wines have had additional alcohol added to them and usually are sweet, (but not always), and have more intense flavors. Numerous soups, stews, casseroles, and even desserts are completed with a splash of these wonderful elixirs. I like culminating my black bean soup with a splash of dry sherry. Or you can make a sauce from fortified wines such as veal Marsala.
One of the wine instructors from my cooking school regularly proclaimed: "Wine is food." Cooking with wine is the ultimate expression of that declaration and elevates the enjoyment of wine to new heights.

Here some simple steps :

• Unless the recipe specifically calls for it (like in a dessert), use a dry wine, not a sweet one.
• In general, use a white wine with fish, chicken and pork dishes, and a red wine with beef, but you can certainly experiment. White wine is probably more versatile for cooking than red.
• Add wine to dishes when you want an acidic note. A little wine in a cream sauce, for example, can temper its richness.
• Use whatever wine you have on hand. You don't need to use the same wine in the sauce as the wine that will be served at the table. Since you're cooking the wine, grape variety isn't a big deal.
• Pick a decent, but not stellar wine for cooking. Don't use a wine that you wouldn't want to drink and don't use a wine that you really want to drink.
• Avoid using "cooking wine" from the supermarket; it contains added salt.