Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

Bánh Khot - Crisp rice flour cupcakes with shrimp and scallions, served with lettuce, mint and basil.

If not for Wandering Chopstick’s recommendation, I would never have ordered this dish. In fact, I may not even step into Vung Tau Restaurant in San Jose because:

1) I don’t know how to pronounce the restaurant’s name.
2) I don’t know how to pronounce Bánh Khot.
3) Crisp rice flour cupcakes doesn’t sound appealing to me without a picture.

Last weekend, I stepped out of my comfort zone, took the plunge and ordered Bánh Khot as recommended.

I was pleasantly surprised at what was served. Actually I did not know the proper way to eat it! There was a separate plate of lettuce, mint and basil served with the Bánh Knot. We had to ask the waiter “Er… how do we eat this?” He patiently explained that we can cut the Bánh Knot into half (cos it was steaming hot), put it on the lettuce with a piece of mint and basil, wrap it up like you would for a tortilla, then dip into the sweet sauce and DIG IN!

I tried my first Bánh Khot “wrap” without the mint and basil cos I thought I wouldn’t like the taste of that combination, but for the second round, I added a leaf of mint and basil and whoa! the taste absolutely changed! The flavors of the mint and basil complemented the juicy shrimp and fragrant crisp rice cupcakes very well and gave a light refreshing lift to the tight aromatic package “wrap”.

According to Wandering Chopsticks, Vung Tau is a coastal town so seafood is their specialty. Banh Khot is one of Vung Tau’s specialty dishes. It is made from rice flour with some coconut milk. Shaped into small, round rice cupcakes by hand, it is crispy and delicious with a shrimp in the middle. This particular dish must be eaten with the assortment of green garnishes (lettuce, mint and basil) used to wrap around each morsel.

Mint and basil are characteristic of Vietnamese cuisine, commonly eaten in salads, raw spring rolls and phở and this post is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Küchenlatein.

Vung Tau Restaurant is a Vietnamese family business.

Vung Tau Restaurant
535 E Santa Clara St
San Jose, CA 95112
(408) 288-9055

Vung Tau II Restaurant is the second restaurant they opened. The menu may differ slightly from the original Vung Tau Restaurant.

1750 N Milpitas Blvd
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 934-9327

I have this block of silken tofu sitting in my fridge for almost 2 weeks already. I bought it because J was supposed to be away on a short business trip and I thought I would make a tofu dish for myself. The trip was canceled and so the silken tofu was left in the fridge, forlornly looking at me each time I opened the refrigerator door.

Since mom is in town, I pushed the cooking responsibility to her and asked her if she could make something out of minced pork and tofu.

Mom: Give me 3 shitake mushrooms.
Me: Ok. I have green onions too. You want?

Mom: Yes. And I will also add dried sole, dried scallops and salted fish.
Me: Yippee! I like the flavors of all that together.

Without any recipe book for reference and all knowledge of cooking stored in her experienced brain, she started preparing the dish as I stood aside, taking notes.

Ingredients (Serves 2-3):

- 1/4 lb minced pork (seasoned with a dash of salt, pepper, corn starch and mixed with 2 cloves garlic, sliced, and 3 slices of ginger, julienned)
- 3 shitake mushrooms, cut into pieces (I had dried ones, so they need to be pre-soaked in water first)
- 1 tbsp dried sole (pre-fried)
- 1 tbsp dried scallops (pre-fried)
- 1 tbsp salted fish (pre-fried)
- 3 stalks green onions, cut into 1″ diagonals
- 1 block silken tofu, cut into 1″ cubes
- 1/2 bowl water
- cornstarch solution (1 tsp cornstarch mixed with 2 tbsp water)

Seasoning:

- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- 1 tsp dark soy sauce (for color)
- 2 tsp oyster sauce

Cooking Method:

1. Heat up 2 tbsp oil and stir fry minced pork until fragrant.

2. Add shitake mushrooms and light soy sauce and mix well.

3. Add dried sole, dried scallops and salted fish and mix well.

4. Add dark soy sauce and oyster sauce, mix well and allow to cook for 2-3 minutes then add green onions and mix well.

5. Add silken tofu and allow to cook for about 30 secs, then add 1/2 bowl water, cover saucepan and allow to boil. (No need to mix tofu with rest of the ingredients as you will break up the tofu.) Continue to boil for about 4-5 minutes to allow the tofu to absorb the gravy, otherwise the tofu will taste plain. (You may want to do a taste test here to see if you need more light soy sauce to increase the saltiness or more water to dilute the saltiness.)

6. Drizzle cornstarch solution over gravy to thicken the gravy. Gently shake the saucepan to allow the cornstarch solution to be mixed with the gravy.

Thanks to Tigerfish’s green onions and ginger condiment post, I realized that green onions (also known as scallion, a variety of onion) is actually an herb!! I use green onions quite a bit, so this is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kalyn’s Kitchen. Green onions grow to reach about 20 inches in height and grow well in warm climates. Both the green and white portions of green onions can be eaten and the bulb portion is the part that is most often used as a drug. Green onions has traditionally been used only in Asian folk medicine and its usage for its medicinal properties is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Mom prefers Chinese food to anything else, so last weekend, J and I brought her to Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in San Francisco to eat dim sum. This branch is much smaller in size compared to the one in Milpitas, CA. The restaurant opens at 10am, but there were already a group of hungry vultures waiting outside the restaurant’s un-opened doors before 10am.

The restaurant was too small to accommodate the typical dim sum carts, so all the dim sum were served by non-smiling, Cantonese speaking waiters/waitresses. Mom said there used to be a Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in Singapore too (located in Shenton Way area?) but they were knocked out by strong contenders like the Tung Luk Group and the Crystal Jade chain of restaurants.

We had a friend join us for dim sum. She works as a pediatrician in San Francisco so we needed to bribe her to give us free pediatrics consultation after the baby is born. After all, the dim sum bill for the 4 of us only amounted to US$42 with taxes and tips included, so it was a good deal.

Of course we didn’t drive all the way up to San Francisco (are you nuts?!) just to eat dim sum. This was just part of the one-day San Francisco “tour itinerary” for mom. We also brought her down the curvy wurvy Lombard Street, Chinatown and took pictures with her at the Golden Gate Bridge.

All these pictures below are not current. San Francisco last Sunday was pretty windy, so we did a “car tour” to save mom from the gusty winds that she was not used to.

Lombard Street (Picture taken in Dec 04)

Lombard Street is America’s crookedest street. Cars can only drive down Lombard Street at 5 miles/hour.

San Francisco Chinatown (Picture taken in Sept 04)

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside Asia. There was some sort of festival (Mooncake Festival??) at the time this picture was taken, that’s why the road was closed and there were throngs of people. Sept 04! - that was how long ago I was in SF Chinatown! We brought mom to Chinatown to show her how difficult it is to get parking and so that she will never ever ask me to go there again when I tell her I cannot find a particular ingredient in Ranch 99.)

Golden Gate Bridge (Picture taken in Dec 04)

Everybody who has been to San Francisco would at least have a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, wouldn’t you? BUT… is yours as picturesque as mine? Bwahahahaa… ok… I confess. All the above pictures were taken by J, not me. It was only late last year that I started using his camera cos he moved on to a new hobby.