Recipe: Homemade Coconut Snowballs

You've probably seen these in Chinese grocery stores or, if you're lucky, in pot lucks. These glutinous rice coconut snowballs can be filled with a variety of things like toasted ground peanuts, black sesame, sesame and sugar, or coconut and sugar. I've noticed that many cultures have a version of this. It's called nom plae ai in Cambodian, for instance; in Thai, it's kha nom tom; and banh bao chi in Vietnamese.

Here's the recipe Mom wrote down many years ago. She knew exactly what everything meant. I've seen her make this a few times so I'll try my best to break it down.

Tasty Back to Back Dinners: 1 of 2 PPNS

Last weekend, I felt as though I got a mild case of a stomach virus; feeling fatigued and weak. I had no appetite and had issues staying hydrated. While on my break on Saturday, I sent Richard a request to make some kind of soup: chicken, pho, Phnom Penh noodle soup (aka PPNS) or something. There was no reply. Andrew and I agreed to go to Sea King for some food if dinner wasn't something I could eat. We were about to leave when I called home to double check:

"Hey, what's for dinner tonight?"
"Phnom Penh noodle soup."
Yuhssss!
"Okay, we'll be coming home soon."

We were both excited cause we were really hungry. We decided to go to Sea King the next night.

I became giddy when I walked into the kitchen and saw that all the prep work was ready. And I became overjoyed when the pork bone seafood soup tasted remarkable. Sometimes the soup can be disappointing. This was luckily not one of those times.

There was sliced raw beef, chicken, and shelled shrimps. The accompaniments we had were green onions, fried garlic oil, and preserved cabbage. There was satay sauce, Sriracha, and hoisin sauce too for dipping sauces. And for everyone who wanted to eat the dry version of Phnom Penh noodles, there was oyster sauce and dark soy sauce. A meal like this is one of the reasons why our fridge is stocked full of condiments.


We cooked the sliced chicken in the clear soup. We shouldn't have if we wanted to keep the soup clear.  Meh. I cooked the soaked rice noodles in a separate pot of boiling water for about twenty seconds. Then I pressed the cooked noodles with the back of the ladle to get rid of most of the noodle water, before dumping the cooked noodles into a waiting bowl. Andrew cooked some chicken and shrimp for me since he was making his bowl before mine. I added some green onions and tossed in some raw sliced beef.


Once Andrew was finished with his bowl, I topped my bowl up with some hot pork bone seafood soup and headed to the dinner table. There, I added the final touches of the fried garlic oil (with fried garlic) and preserved cabbage. Not many words were exchanged during dinner. It wasn't necessary.

Mom's Chicken Curry

Mom made a pot of chicken curry last month and invited my grandparents for lunch. While she usually chops the pieces of chickens into bite-sized bits, we requested that she leave them whole. Whenever she'd make this curry with bite-sized chunks of chicken, we'd always find fragments of broken bone in our curry. Not fun.

Here's a brief rundown of how Mom makes her curry:

Chopped onions are sautéed with minced garlic and curry paste. Then the meat, in this case it was chicken drumsticks, peanut butter and fish sauce goes in. Coconut milk and water are added before seasoning to taste with sugar. The curry is then simmered for a few hours, with certain root vegetables and vegetables thrown in at during times to prevent over-cooking. Mom has used things like: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, string beans, eggplants and bamboo shoots.  For the best results, this curry is made the night before and then it's gently simmered for a few hours the following morning/afternoon.


There are two main ways our family eats this curry: with bread or with vermicelli noodles. We rarely eat the chicken curry with rice though. I prefer eating this curry with the Japanese somen noodles. I like the texture much better than the wiry vermicelli noodles we sometimes use. The somen noodles are the same noodles I like to eat Vietnamese bun with.

The somen noodles does require more attention though, because after it has been boiled, it needs to be rinsed off in cold water, and then the water needs to be squeezed out to prevent the soft noodles from becoming waterlogged.


Warmed up in the toaster oven, our favourite bread is a nice baguette.




The curry is usually so satisfying!

Random Tidbits: May - June

Grandma Tea's jang (aka lo mai gai, nom asom, sticky rice with mung beans and pork) is the best in our extended family. Nobody can make it taste as good.


I typically don't go crazy over them like Lucy. But on one particular day, I fried up some of Mom's batch of jang and had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Perhaps I was lazy to make anything else. Perhaps.





We had a large spread of food during one of our extended family dinners last month. Before that, Mom tried out a new batch of ham chim peng. They were still quite dense. I think that we need some double-acting baking powder or just give the dough more time to rise before frying.


Lucy helped make the prahok khati (aka minced pork curry with anchovies). It's different from gapit pao, which is made without the anchovies. We ate the prahok khati with sliced cucumbers and rice.


There was also salt and pepper shrimp and a large hot pot of samlor maju (Cambodian sour soup) with skate. My aunt also brought over bo kho.



We ended up having leftovers of a few things. Since we had some bo kho, I soaked some noodles and had it for lunch the following day. My aunt added her homemade spice blend in addition to the bo kho seasonings, which made it more fragrant and spicy.



We started to plant some herbs in our garden. This was the basil plants after a few days of being close to the flowers -- they got snacked on by little critters! That's my basil! I don't know youuuu!



How about some homemade baozi? Mom woke up super early and decided to make some. She experimented with adding canned beans and chickpeas. It tasted fine to me.





For Andrew's birthday dinner, Mom made a layered mung bean dessert called banh da long in Vietnamese. She made two types: one was softer than the other.



I had lunch with CA the day after. We opted to share the condensed milk brick toast at My Sweet Tea for dessert. When it arrived, we were both glad that we shared one order. We thought it was too much but then proceeded to inhale it in under five minutes. Woops.

The rain still hung around Ottawa. It wasn't as hard as the torrential rain we had the evening before, but it still rained hard, although it was brief.

We had a BBQ pork rib dinner. The pork ribs were baked in the oven for about two hours before getting a turn on the BBQ. We made a sauce using the pan drippings, onions, sugar, ketchup, and BBQ sauce.




Lucy and Jimmy brought some chocolate cake. We couldn't finish it, despite the pot of strong jasmine tea. The cake reminds Lucy and I of Matilda. Oh gerd, where's Mrs. Trunchbull? I definitely added some peanut butter to my slices of cake afterwards. It tasted like a peanut butter cup, except that the proportions were the other way around: more chocolate than peanut. It was so good!

Homemade Banh Sung

Banh sung is like the unknown cousin of bún cha gio. Just like bún cha gio, the dish includes: vermicelli noodles, nuoc cham, a variety of herbs and veggies, spring rolls, and another type of protein. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the noodles are thicker in banh sung and bouncier than the noodles in bun cha gio. There's also an additional coconut milk-based condiment. I asked VN and she didn't know what I was talking about. My parents then informed me that the dish, in fact, is from Cambodia.


The dish started early in the afternoon with making spring rolls. Shredded cabbage, carrots, diced onions, oyster sauce, sugar, and a bit of sesame oil were quickly stir-fried together. Once the flavours were right, we left the pan off the heat to cool off.


While we waited for the filling to cool, a package of vermicelli were cooked and drained. The vermicelli noodles were tossed with a bit of vegetable oil to prevent sticking.

The coconut milk-based condiment sauce was made by frying some sliced green onions in vegetable oil, coconut milk, salt until aromatic. The sauce was slightly thickened with a cornstarch slurry.


We took out some frozen spring roll wrappers/skins to defrost. This brand is not bad at all. Mom and I sat down to roll the spring rolls once the filling cooled off.


Half of the container of wrapped spring rolls were deep-fried until blonde. They were popped into the freezer for future meals after they drained and cooled down. The other half were fried until golden.




Mom also marinated some pork earlier. Her marinade is closer to the Vietnamese sweet-ish marinade with fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar (Mom used homemade simple syrup), and a bit of oyster sauce. The pork chops were cooked on the barbeque outside. The pork chops were so fragrant! I feel bad for our neighbours.


We ran around the house grabbing some of our homegrown herbs: stinky fish herbs, thai basil, and Vietnamese coriander.


The only thing we had to do was put our own bowls together; vermicelli, herbs, shredded carrots, slivers of cucumbers, crushed peanuts, fresh herbs, slices of pork, nuoc cham, coconut milk sauce, and spring rolls. Did I miss anything?


Beauty!

Bun Bo Hue, Sour Soup, and Durian Cake

A few weekends ago, Aunt IS invited us over to her house for lunch. She had made a large pot of bun bo hue and wanted to see how we liked it. Richard and I didn’t go for lunch, but rather, we went in the afternoon.

After we greeted everyone, I noticed that there were two sheets of pound-like cakes cooling on the table. Aunt L brought some durian custard, which she had mashed and put in a bag. Grandpa complained that there wasn’t enough durian in some past versions, where the durian was “watered down” by coconut milk. You’d rarely find cakes made with pure durian like this.


Even though it wasn't finished yet, the cake looked more appetizing once Aunt L began to spread the durian around. It looked less like a pile of... yeah...


The second layer of cake was pressed onto the durian custard.






Whipped cream was then used to top the durian cake.

Richard and I then had a bowl of bun bo hue. Slurping down the contents was so enjoyable! As we were eating our bun bo hue, Richard said that it felt like we were eating at a street stand in Asia somewhere with Anthony Bourdain. We were both sweating before we were even done eating half of our bowls. It was a combination of the spice blend and the heat. It was a good sweat. I'm struggling to not drool over my laptop as I write this.

Dinner prep began after we finished eating. On the menu, a Cambodian sour soup with fish (known as somlaw maju in Cambodian and canh chua ca in Vietnamese), chicken and pork bulgogi, salt and pepper shrimp, and stir-fried Chinese water spinach with preserved soybeans.




I don't know how to spell it. I've seen it also spelled as samlor machu, samlar machu, and somlah machou. In any case, the soup consisted of skate wings, pork broth, tomato, Chinese water spinach, and tamarind powder. The soup was garnished with fried garlic chips, fried garlic oil, green onions, and thin ribbons of thai basil. The bowl of soup above didn't have the fried garlic chips or oil.




Uncle L fired up the BBQ in the backyard and grilled the two kinds briefly marinated bulgogi. Two platefuls of shrimps, lightly dusted with cornstarch and salt, were deep fried outside on the BBQ element too. The deep fried shrimps were served with a side of salt and pepper.

Both the beef and chicken bulgogi needed a lot more time in the marinade. I wish there was leftover bulgogi sauce to pour over the meat, or at least dip it in, but Aunt IS used up everything in the marinade. *Sad face*




Finally, the Chinese water spinach was stir-fried with minced garlic, preserved soy beans, and some oyster sauce. It was meant to be on the bland side to balance out all the dishes. (I loooove the preserved soy beans in congee and in homemade wonton soup! Ah... how nostalgic...)


Along with a seemingly bottomless teapot of jasmine tea, we ended dinner with durian cake and che dau. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that Mom brought over the batch she had made the previous evening.

Homemade Che Dau

Mom made a Vietnamese sticky rice pudding with black-eyed beans aka che dau the other day.

She boiled one cup of sticky rice, sugar, black-eyed beans (rinsed from two cans), and water together. After the pot came to a boil, the heat was turned down to a gentle simmer. Mom was very happy with how it turned out. The pudding was crystal clear for once. It’s usually murky when she makes it, but my aunt (who is Vietnamese) told her the secret solution to the problem.

“You could sell this batch!” Mom proudly gloated from the kitchen. It’s quite rare when she’s actually excited about something, so I knew it must be good.

Apparently they call this dessert che dau in Cambodia too. The only difference is that the Cambodians mix the salted coconut milk in with the pudding; whereas, the Vietnamese serve the coconut milk on the side. Since Mom wanted to show off the clear pudding, she warmed up some coconut milk and seasoned it with a bit of salt in a separate pot.

To serve, you scoop out some of the sticky rice pudding and then drizzle a bit of coconut milk. It's all self-serve in our house (unless you're the guest, of course). We ate the thick pudding while it was still warm. Mmm…!