Where's Andy?

He's missed class so infrequently that rumors begin to spin when he doesn't show up today. Alex thinks it's a simple case of a well-earned mental health day. "He works so much, he just needs to sleep til one in the afternoon once in a while."

We studied Vietnamese food today. The French legacy: bread! ("Bánh mì" is the sole sandwich indigenous to southeast Asia: a baguette filled with pork or other protein, topped with marinated julienned vegetables.) And there's coffee, also a gift from France. Vietnamese coffee is strong and sweet. Not as sweet as Derrick wanted to make it, though. He miswrote Chef Rhoda's recipe and added 2-1/2 cups of sweetened evaporated milk to his gallon of coffee instead of the specified 1/2 cup, much to Chef's dismay. Fortunately, the milk was thick enough to sink to the bottom of his container and Chef carefully poured off the lighter liquid, managing to salvage the entire batch.

Yesterday we had Thai iced tea. Both today's coffee and Thai iced tea start with special blends. Thai coffee (look for a package marked "Oliang Powder Mix") contains ground corn and soybeans as well as coffee. Vietnamese sometimes includes chicory, like you get from Café du Monde in NOLA. The tea consists of black tea as well as star anise, tamarind, and other spices. Both beverages are topped with sweetened condensed milk and/or cream. Chef Rhoda said she'd point out the shop where we can purchase the mixes, during our Chinatown tour on Monday.

Derrick and I cooked pho ga (chicken pho): beef is more traditional but it takes more time than we have in a class session. We cooked a chicken in chicken stock along with ginger, cinnamon, black peppercorns, star anise, and green onions, then strained and degreased the stock and added slices of chicken breast. We served it in traditional style: with garnishes of rice noodles and cilantro, green onion, mint, thai basil, bean sprouts, and jalapenos.

Sam made a recipe called "Catfish in Clay Pot," but it was seabass, and a large sauté pan. She made a spicy and sweet sauce, then added lightly browned fish fillets.
Silvia made shrimp and crab cakes, studded with large chunks of juicy shrimp and served with a sweet and spicy dipping sauce. Meghan made the spring rolls, a little hand-held salad. She got extra kudos from Chef for her beautifully minced green onions.Andrea made roast beef salad, starting with a chunk of beef filet that she seared on all sides, then sliced. The rare beef was tossed with lots of fresh herbs and red onions, and a lemongrass-jalapeno dressing. This homely-looking rice casserole was succulent and delicious. It's essentially two dishes: a stir-fry of chicken and shiitake mushrooms, stirred in to a lemongrass-flavored pilaf. We also had a black-eyed pea salad, and marinated grilled pork, served with lettuce and rice noodles. Today's delightful dessert was a big improvement over yesterday's debacle: still-warm tapioca, cooked with coconut milk, and studded with slices of banana and little slivers of water chestnuts.We ended the day with a Jeopardy-style review of the material for tomorrow's midterm, on China. We have to know the difference between choan choy (salted turnip) and ja choy (Sichuan pickled mustard greens), and that Chinkiang vinegar is similar in flavor and usage to balsamic. And that Northern China is famous for hot pot, barbecue, and buns. And that green tea is from Eastern China, where the flavor profile is soy sauce, vinegar, and rice wine. Among other things.