A Rice Bowl with Vietnamese Flavors

This is not an authentic or traditional dish. Rather, it uses good technique and flavors to get to the final product.  I created this dish because it embodied flavors I was in the mood for and used up things I had on hand.  I decided I wanted a Rice Bowl, a bowl with rice on the bottom topped with various vegetables and meats unified by the final sauce or broth. I looked through a couple of cookbooks for ideas and concepts that resonated with my cravings and supplies. 

Big Bowl by Bruce Cost

Classic Chinese Cuisine by Nina Simonds

The Complete Vietnamese Cookbook by Ghillie Basan

The Wagamama Cookbook by Hugo Arnold

They all had dishes of interest, but Nina Simonds had a Stir-Fried Beef with Vegetables over Rice recipe on page 43 that gave me a framework and a feel for ratios that proved the most useful. She used 3 cups of stock for her sauce, but I didn't want my rice bowl to be that saucy so I made a smaller batch. Adjust sauce amounts up or down to match your preference.

I had the tail end of box of large button mushrooms (about five or six left), some green beans and about 10 oz of pork I wanted to use. 

The green beans have a longish stir fry and minced garlic and ginger tends to burn in that situation so I cut them in slices so they'd stand up to that prolonged cooking, something commonly seen in Italian cooking (minus the ginger).  The pork, I decided to go with an onion and black pepper stir fry; and the mushrooms, I would stir fry at lower heat and seasoned with oyster sauce.

1 1/2 cups long grain rice

5 or 6 large button mushrooms, sliced thinly

1 pound green beans cut into 1-2 inch pieces

1 onion, sliced julienne

10 oz pork, sliced julienne

3 tablespoons cooking oil

large handful of spinach including some mixed mesclun if you like

Pork Marinade

1 1/2 teaspoons light soy

1 1/2 teapsoons shao hsing wine

1/2 teapoon corn starch

zest of 1 lime grated finely

1/4 teaspoon dried basil, crumbled between your fingers.

Seasonings

2 inch finger thick ginger peeled  and sliced thinly (or equivalent amount of thicker ginger is fine too of course. That's just the size of the knob I used.)

4-5 cloves garlic peeled and sliced thinly

1 tablespoon soy sauce, divided (or to taste)

1 tablespoon shao hsing wine

salt

pepper

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

Sauce mixture

2 cups chicken stock

1 small star anise

1 clove

small pinch of cinnamon

2 tablespoons palm sugar or brown sugar

2-3 tablespoons fish sauce or to taste

1 1/2 tablespoon ketchup

dash of sriracha sauce to taste 

corn starch slurry to thicken to preference

juice of 1 lime

Start the rice cooking, then combine all but the last two ingredients of the sauce mix. Let that simmer along about the same amount of time the rice cooks. If you're using a rice cooker, most have longer cycles than will take for the sauce to cook. The sauce only needs about 15 minutes of cooking, which is about what the stir frying steps will take so match the timing of your rice, sauce, and stir frying.

Heat a wok over high heat until smoking. Add about a tablespoon of oil around the edges to coat the wok. Add the green beans and stir fry 2 minutes. Add half the ginger and about half of the garlic. Stir fry another 2 minutes. Add the shao hsing wine and a splash of soy sauce. Cover and let steam 1 minute, then finish stir frying to your desired doneness. The beans should have brown spots and a few black blisters.

Remove green beans to a serving bowl.

Return the wok to high heat. You shouldn't have to clean the wok as there will be no small bits or sauce stuck to the wok. Add about a tablespoon of oil around the edges to coat the wok.

Add the pork and spread out to let sear for 60-90 seconds. Meanwhile, season with some ground black pepper to taste. When the pork has picked up some sear, stir fry another minute or two and remove to a serving bowl. 

Add a little more oil to the wok if you think it needs it.  Then add the onion to the wok, and about half the remaining garlic and the rest of the ginger.  Stir fry for about 2 minutes with a splash of soy sauce and more pepper. Then add the pork back to the wok and stir fry another 60-90 seconds for the pork to pick up some of the flavor of the aromatics. 

 

Remove the pork and onions to a serving bowl.

Return the wok to the heat, add the rest of the oil and lower the temp to medium high. Your wok will have some bits from teh pork and onions, but that's OK. Just get cooking quickly before those bits burn. Add the remaining garlic, and the mushrooms. Stir fry until the mushrooms have picked up some color., about 2 minutes. Season with a little salt and pepper, and reduce the heat some more. Stir frequently, but not at the level of a true stir fry and keep cooking. The mushrooms should darken, give up liquid and shrink after a few more minutes. When the moisture has cooked off, add the oyster sauce and reduce the heat to low. 

Stir to mix and let cook slowly for a few minutes, with occasional stirring. I wanted to concentrate the mushroom flavor in the mushrooms with the sauce, not leave them crisp tender as in most stir frying.

Put the spinach in a serving bowl. 

While the mushrooms finish cooking, complete the sauce. Bring the sauce to a boil. While it's coming to the boil, remove the star anise and clove. When the sauce is boiling, thicken with the slurry to your liking. I mixed it pretty thin, just to add some body to the sauce. Then stir in the juice of 1 lime and remove from the heat. 

Everything should be done now and you're ready to eat.

Build your rice bowl in layers with rice in the bottom, the spinach leaves next, then the beans, mushrooms and top with the pork and onions. The heat from the rice and other cooked items will start wilting the spinach.

Ladle in some hot sauce to your liking, I used about 1/3-1/2 cup of the sauce, which will help the spinach cook.

My son went for the all mixed together approach to the dish.

Smoked Salmon

Perhaps more in the kippered style than what you might think of with the cold smoked nova or lox, this is a hot smoked salmon cured in salt and brown sugar.

And this is the way I like salmon best as it's just not a fish I normally enjoy eating.  I really like it this way though, particularly on a bagel with some cream cheese, red onion, and capers.

So what do I mean by cured? Curing in the general sense is a process that transforms the meat's texture and flavor while usually improving how well it keeps. Wikipedia gives a good overview of what the common  curing ingredients do.

I first started doing this with a recipe from Steve Raichlen in his excellent book How to Grill.  It turns out this identical recipe is also in the cookbook that comes with Traeger Smokers as well so I don't know who is the original author of it. But it's a pretty good recipe and simple. 

While using the same concepts, I've switched up the cooking and timing to meet my preferences. You should do the same. Try it his way, my way and then adapt to get the salmon you like best.  

I like the thinner parts and edges best over the thicker parts of the salmon. And my technique emphasizes that. I've taken to skipping the alcohol marination as I don't drink alcohol so I never have it on hand and it's not that critical to the finished dish. In the past, I've used a fruit juice soak with some added bitters and lemon juice. But where I use more pepper and more smoke, those flavors are lost anyway.

I cut the fish so there's more surface area and it's thinner so I need more of the curing mixture to cover it all than in Raichlen's version.

Phil's variation on Raichlen's theme of Smoked Salmon

3 pound fillet of salmon, skin removed

2 cups brown sugar

3/4-1 cup coarse kosher salt

3 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper

In a small mixing bowl, combine the sugar, salt, and pepper, breaking up clumps as you mix them together.  

 

Horizontally slice the thicker part of the salmon so you get a long narrow piece and the broad piece of about equal thickness.  

Spread about 1/4 of the sugar mixture on a rimmed baking sheet in a shape about the size of the fish.  Lay the salmon on the mixture. Cover with the remaining curing mix. Cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours.  

If your fridge is small, you may have to cut the fish to fit in smaller containers, but the process is the same.  

If you're smoking on a gas grill or larger smoker, you can leave the fish in long pieces. My smoker is smaller though so I need to cut up the pieces, which also works well for fitting smaller containers in the fridge. 

I'll often layer the multiple pieces of salmon in the container for curing as you'll see in the pictures.

 

After the curing time is up, the cure will have drawn out moisture from the fish, dissolving much of the salt and brown sugar. The liquid will be dark brown, from the molasses in the brown sugar. When you remove the salmon, note how it's firmer and more rigid and the color has darkened. Those are some results of the curing action. 

 About 1 1/2 hours of curing

Full Cure

Rinse off the liquid and any solid lumps of sugar and salt. But don't rinse off all the pepper. Be sure to leave the amount of pepper you want behind. 

 

Raichlen smokes his salmon at a hotter temperature than my smoker reaches so it takes about an hour to hit his level of doneness on my equipment. One time I forgot to set the timer and let it smoke for two hours and liked that even better. So I do that every time now. 

Set up your smoker and smoke the salmon at 225-250 for two hours. Alder, hickory or nut woods are my preferences for smoking salmon.

After two hours of smoking it will look something like this

Use a large spatula and carefully remove the salmon to a rack or plate to cool. It will ooze some juices and fat so if you use a rack, set it over a baking sheet or something.  The salmon will be fragile so move it carefully.

Then put in a container or zip locking baggie and refrigerate. Best served cold.