The CBVeg Food Blog

Sharing Vegan and Vegetarian recipes as a first gen Canadian Born Vietnamese.

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Motherland Monday: Bánh Tráng Đà Lạt

Vietnamese Street Food Pizza from Da Lat

Instructions:

On medium heat. Put a sheet of rice paper on the griddle. It’ll wrinkle a little bit nut use the back of a spoon to keep it flat.

Add the egg mixture and spread it across. This will help your toppers stick together.

Add toppers of your choice. The traditional method pictured above uses Taiwanese sausages, pork floss, crispy shallots, fresh green onion, and mozzarella slices.

Remove from the griddle and it’ll be ready to serve. You want to work fast so that the egg doesn’t make the rice paper soggy. It should remain hard and crunchy.

Storytime:

Da lat is this beautiful city that sits on a mountain and is known as “the city above the clouds.” It’s climate is very cold but lots of humidity. Lots of flora and fauna in that region that also include evergreens because it’s literally.... considered much more colder than Canada and no one really discusses this??? Literally the floor tiles in the hotels require fuzzy socks and shoes because you cannot walk barefoot at all??? (Most of Vietnam is extremely hot and wearing shoes in the house is frowned upon). It’s also a place with a ton of paranormal activity and has an indigenous village you can visit because they’ve made it a tourist spot. As such, you can visit and support their community.

They’ve got a lot of really interesting dishes that is a combination of spicy Chinese and vietnamese cuisine. In recent years they’ve developed a street food called Banh Trang Nuong, which is literally rice paper grilled and the toppings is quail egg, Taiwanese sausages, pork floss, green onions, crispy fried shallots, and laughing cow cheese.

This is my adaptation on it because I can’t have cheese, and I don’t have quail egg. So for all you nonasians at home who want to give this a try, pick up rice paper, shallots, green onions, eggs, laughing cow cheese, and any kind of hot dog or jerky, and go to town. It’s super crunchy and tastes great.

You can easily make this vegan by using vegan eggs, cashew cheese, mushrooms.. whatever you like really. Below was my earliest attempt at making one of these. I used tomato and pesto. I realized quickly that you should not go overboard with ingredients. Tomato is too think and extra sauces will easily slide out. Don’t over do it.

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Foodie Friday: Salt Cured Eggs

On the 30th day of Quarantine, I watched an episode of how to make Bon Appetite’su Salt Cured Eggs at home and I wanted to make try. Not only did I want salted eggs, I wanted different flavoured salt eggs.

Top left to bottom :

-salt and maggi soysauce

-green onion, red Chili, sesame, soy and hoisin sauce, and salt

-adobo salt

- Montreal steak spice and salt

- garlic, Japanese Chili, and seaweed salt

- Italian spice mix, garlic, rosemary, olive oil, apple balsamic and salt.

Instructions:

Take regular salt or any salt of your choice and put it in a container, then create a divot in the salt with the egg so the egg yolk can rest there.

If you’re feeling bougie you can make different flavoured salts like me.

Separate the egg white from the yolk and gently put the egg yolk in the resting place. Then cover it completely with salt and store it in the fridge.

Note: Some people cure with salt and sugar. The salt draws out moisture and kills bad bacteria while the sugar feeds to good bacteria. The Japanese method of curing eggs is using a mixture of soysauce and mirin, or using white miso paste and using a cheese cloth to keep the eggs from mixing with the paste. For a Korean-style cured egg, you can also cure with gochujang for an extra kick if you like heat.

Wait for two days for the salt to draw out the moisture.

Set the oven to 250 degrees F. Remove the egg from the salt and lightly rinse off the salt in a bowl of water, and lightly pat dry with a paper towel. Be very gentle! I personally left the seasonings on without rinsing just to see.

Put the eggs on a rack and let it dehydrate in the oven for about 1hour&15 minutes. To store them, put them in a container and keep them in a cool dry place.

What can Cured Eggs be eaten with?

It depends on the dish, but all eggs cured in salt can be eaten straight. I tried it on toast and it was tough to spread the mixture and the consistency was like sticky taffy, but it was flavourful. This one was cured with Maggi soysauce, and I added toasted black sesame and cayenne pepper for added flavour.

If you are soaking it in soysauce and mirin or white miso paste, it’s recommended to put it over white rice and green onions and some fresh veggies, or ramen. That doesn’t need to be dehydrated at all.

After the dehydration process it should come out like gruyère cheese when you grate it. Serve as a cheese substitute over pasta dishes, noodles, salad, or use in a homemade pesto.

My pesto recipe using salt cured egg will be posted next Foodie Friday.

Sources:

https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/225294/what-are-cured-egg-yolks/amp

What Are Cured Egg Yolks? - Chowhound

https://www.tastecooking.com/salted-egg-asias-parmesan-better/

The Salted Egg Is Asia’s Answer to Parmesan

Curing egg yolks in salt might seem like a culinary novelty, and is a worthy alternative to parm on your pasta. But it can and should be so

https://practicalselfreliance.com/salt-cured-egg-yolks/

Salt Cured Egg Yolks

Cured egg yolks have all the richness of fine cheese, along with a salty tang that comes from the curing process.  They’re equally at home f

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/cured-egg-yolks

Cured Egg Yolks Recipe

Have yolks left from a recipe? Get curing. Don’t want to wait? Cure the yolks and freeze the whites in ice cube trays.

[thecbveg-blog]

Where I Ate Wednesdays: Tien Hiang

Welcome to the first post of "Where I ate Wednesdays," where I'll be sharing my favourite restaurants that I've been to, and give a brief overview of the establishment.

Today I'll be reviewing a restaurant from overseas, a place I've been to in 2019.

Upon entering Tien Hiang, we were greeted and seated right away. I had done my research before hand and was given the advice to book a reservation as it is always busy... now I can't remember if I actually followed through with making reservations... I think we just showed up because we wanted to see the restaurant and it happened to be not as busy. Since it was my first time dining in France, my French was not that great. I may have asked "Parlez vous Anglais?" The servers were very understanding and took the orders in English.

Below is an order of Phở with spring rolls. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the spring rolls on the menu current menu, but the soup will say, Soupe Phở, "BOEUF ET JAMBON”, TOFU, NOUILLES DE RIZ, POUSSES DE SOJA, MENTHE ET BASILIC THAÏ.

translation: Pho soup, "beef and ham" tofu, rice noodles, bean sprouts, mint leaves, and Thai basil leaves.

The spring rolls were very crunchy, vegetables were fresh, and the broth was flavourful.

SUMMARY

What is it? Tian Hiang is a family run business that serves Asian Vegan cuisine.

Where is it? 14 Rue Bichat, 75010 Paris, France

Why Tien Hiang?

There's a variety of tasty dishes to choose from with a focus on South East Asian flavours.

It's great for people transitioning into vegetarianism or veganism; A friend whom I went with, a meat eater, said it was just too damn good that you won't even notice there's meat absent from the dishes.

Excellent atmosphere and service. The staff are bilingual in French and English.

How much?

Cost ranges from $13.00 - $30.00 CAD, depending on your order

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Motherland Monday

Cá Kho Tộ Recipe

(Vietnamese Caramelized Fish)

The best way to cook and eat the fish is from a clay pot, but if you don’t have one a wok or deep pan is sufficient.

For a vegetarian version, replace the fish with:

eggplant steaks

sweet potato steaks

Unfortunately there isn’t a vegan fish sauce option, but you can try to substitute with light soysauce or omit it completely.

For additional flavour, use Coconut Water instead of regular water.

Storytime

I used to request my mother to make this for me because it tasted so good, but this is actually a dish made when you were going through tough times and you couldn’t afford much. The fish would be fresh caught if you lived in rural areas (where my mom’s family came from).

It’s so versatile that you can also use fatty pieces of pork because it’s the fish sauce and caramel base that makes the dish - that version is called Thịt Kho. 

It’s traditionally eaten with fresh veggies (popular choices are cucumber, tomato, lettuce, cabbage, Thai basil, mint leaves, and lemon balm), a sour or slightly acidic soup, and plain jasmine rice.

[thecbveg-blog]

Since the start of quarantine, my girlfriend and I have been making meals for each other. Both of our dietary restrictions in addition to cravings have made it challenging to come up with different meals to meet our needs.

• I have high cholesterol, lactose intolerant, low blood pressure, and low in iron. Also eating beef and pork make me flare up. My philosophy on eating comes from indigenous culture in that we should be eating sustainably, and think seven generations into the future. My philosophy also includes connecting with our cultural roots through food, and learning about someone’s history through their food.

• She is lactose intolerant, and cannot handle raw food, greasy/oily food, or overly sweet&salty food. Her philosophy on eating comes from the Japanese and Chinese belief that there should be enough variety, and that you shouldn’t overconsume one thing.

• For our health, we decided to transition into Pescatarian... by the end I’m hoping we end up vegetarian or vegan (although my partner is thoroughly convinced she isn’t able to fully transition.)

We quickly realized as asian women that:

There isn’t enough online representation for asian vegetarian/ vegan food bloggers. As such, the vegan food scene is heavily white-dominated.

There isn’t enough discussion on sustainable eating practices that meet dietary needs.

There’s lack of intersectionality and too much gatekeeping when it comes to whiteveganism.

Asian vegan food adapted by non-asian foodies lack authenticity and flavour.

So we decided to created a curated list of existing recipes and created our own recipes!

I’ll be posting every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

Motherland Monday

Monday’s will be dedicated to sharing traditional vietnamese recipes I grew up on, new recipes from Vietnam, and history/stories attached to these recipes.

Where-I-Ate Wednesdays

Wednesdays will be dedicated to listing restaurants I’ve been to locally and overseas that I can openly recommend and why.

Foodie Friday

Fridays will be dedicated to recipes I’ve created without the use of an existing recipe. See how badly I struggle, or see if I succeed.