Yeah, I know that the title of the recipe involves beef and pork, but really those aren’t the stars of the show. The stars of the show are all of the local vegetables and herbs that go into the bowl on top of the steamed broken rice, long before the grilled beef and pork even come into the picture.

What vegetables, you ask? Well, some of our very own radishes, for one thing. Aren’t they the prettiest things? All shades of pink, rose, purple and carmine with icy white. Kat got to pull some of them her very own self–her favorites so far are the long narrow fuchsia and white ones called, “French Breakfast.” Mine are the large round violet ones: “Plum Purple.”

But those radishes only tell part of the story. Please note the plethora of mixed baby greens we sheared carefully from our salad bed in our community garden plot.

Purple mizuna, various baby lettuces and burgundy colored tatsoi are included in the big pile of salad greens Kat and I cut for dinner. Two days later, you could barely see where we had harvested–the plants grew that fast.

We also picked a great many herbs from the bed dedicated to them in the garden: spearmint, cilantro, basil, lemon basil and lovage.

And then, in addition to our own herbs and vegetables, we had fresh local tomatoes, (From Star at Shade River Farm–she starts them in the middle of winter in her solar greenhouse) cucumbers, turnips, red cabbage, carrots and scallions from the farmer’s market. Counting all of that and the steamed broken jasmine rice, this dish is way more vegetative than its name would imply.

But, it is based on the classic Vietnamese dish, Lemongrass Beef. Which, again, is a name that is somewhat misleading because the name doesn’t really tell you what all is going to be happening in your bowl, so maybe it’s traditional or something to just not talk about the rice, vegetables and herbs that outweigh the meat in the dish by many ounces.

When I say based on, I should clarify–it’s loosely based on Lemongrass Beef. The meat is grilled instead of stir-fried, and while the rub contains lemongrass, there is a finishing sauce I made to use while the meat is sizzling on the fire that contains very little that resembles the original recipe.

The sauce is made of a combination of fish sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, honey, whiskey, vegetarian (or if you aren’t allergic to seafood like I am, regular) oyster sauce, and Thai sweet chili sauce.

A word about that last ingredient–it’s meant to go on grilled chicken and it’s lovely that way. But, I like it even better with pork, and it’s really good on top of a bowl of Lemongrass Beef. The sticky-sweet, lightly tangy and fiery scarlet sauce is so good that it is addictive–which is why we gave it the nickname, “Cracky-Crack Sauce” at our house.

The marinade/barbeque sauce really made the grilled meats taste fantastic. Don’t get me wrong–the rub I put on the beef and pork made them tender and taste fantastic–I mean, it’s fresh lemongrass, lemon juice, garlic, ginger and scallions–how can it make anything bad? But the sauce when added at the end, really gives it the extra added oomph that tips the meat over the top.

Finally, you need to make nuac cham–a spicy, fragrant Vietnamese sauce that is like one of the best salad dressings in the world. As the final touch, it enhances not just the grilled meats, but the rice, the vegetables and the herbs. It’s great stuff. AND, it’s easy to make and keeps nicely in the fridge for about a week, though I like it best the day it’s made or the day after. Also, before serving, I like to bring it to room temperature so that the fullness of flavor is expressed.

It sounds like lots of work–making two sauces, a marinade/rub, grilling meats, making broken rice or plain jasmine rice, and prepping the vegetables and herbs. But, really, the vegetables and herbs can be cleaned and cut a day before, the nuac cham can be made a day before, and the marinade and finishing sauce can all be made up to two days before. That leaves just the grilling, rice cooking and assembly for the day you serve the meal. That isn’t so bad, and the payoff is you get lots of fresh local vegetables and herbs, some rice and really tasty grilled meat in amounts that feed a whole crowd of your friends and family. The finished dish looks impressive and theirs something to please everyone.

Vietnamese Style Grilled Beef and Pork
Ingredients for the Marinade/Rub and Meat:

4 stalks of lemongrass, bottom third only, tough outer leaves removed and sliced thinly
3 cloves fresh garlic, peeled
1″ piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 fresh Thai chili
2 scallions, white and light green parts, sliced
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon fish sauce
pork tenderloin, trimmed and cleaned of excess fat and silverskin
1 1/2 thick piece of top sirloin/ London Broil

Methods:

Grind all solid ingredients into a paste, then mix with lemon juice and fish sauce.

Rub onto meats, then lay the meats into a shallow pan and seal with plastic wrap. Allow to marinate for at least three hours, preferably more, up to overnight.

Ingredients for Grilling Sauce:

1 tablespoon high quality fish sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 tablespoon bourbon or whiskey
1 tablespoon vegetarian or real oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce

Method:

Whisk together and allow to sit at room temperature for at least an hour before use–if you make it a day or so ahead, warm up to room temperature before using it.

To grill the meats–prepare a charcoal grill for very hot indirect grilling, and cook the meats in the section not directly over the flame, turning at least twice until they are nearly done. At that time, move them closer to the actually burning coals, and brush several times on both sides with the sauce, allowing the outside of the meat char and crisp up a bit.

Ingredients for the Vegetables, Herbs and Rice:

3 cups broken jasmine rice
a big pile of mixed lettuces and other salad greens–at least 8 ounces, cleaned, dried and chilled
whatever fresh vegetables you want to use such as carrots, radishes, baby turnips, snow peas, cucumbers, and tomatoes, all cleaned, dried and chilled.
1 cup of cilantro leaves
1/2 cup of mint leaves
1 cup Thai basil leaves
1/4 cup lovage leaves
1 recipe nuac cham
sweet chili sauce

Method:

Cook the broken rice: In the rice cooker, put 3 cups of rice and water. (Always use equal parts rice and water for broken rice.) That is that. You put it in the rice cooker, shut the lid down on it, push the button and walk away.

If you are cooking on the stove top, the proportion of broken rice to water is exactly the same. Put the rinsed rice into a pot with three cups of water. Bring to a boil, give it a nice stir, clap a tight lid down on it, turn the heat down to the lowest setting possible setting and cook for twenty minutes. Let it sit for five minutes off heat, then fluff with a fork.

The lettuces and greens should be torn into bite sized pieces. Choose greens that are a good balance of color, texture and flavor. I like to add some baby bok choy or tatsoi and mizuna to the greens because they are very flavorful and have great textures.

The root vegetables should be peeled if needed, if not, they should be well scrubbed, and then cut into a thin julienne. Snow peas should be stringed and then cut into julienne to match the root vegetables. I like to peel the cucumbers and seed them, then cut into julienne. Tomatoes, if they are full sized, I just cut into thin wedges, while cherry tomatoes get simply sliced in half.

To serve, I slice the meats thinly on the diagonal and set them on platters on one end of the serving surface. I leave the rice in the rice cooker, with the lettuces in a large bowl near it on the other end. Then, the vegetables and herbs are in separate bowls arrayed in between the two ends, with the nuac cham and chili sauce after the meat.

Pass out bowls and let your guests fill them as they see fit. I find it’s tastiest to put the greens in first, then the steamy rice, then the vegetables and herbs covering the rice, with the meat on top, and the sauces drizzled joyfully over the top.

If you have leftovers, and that’s a big if, you can make a cold salad out of everything with a big dose of cold nuac cham as a dressing the next day. I ate it for breakfast and it was a delightful eye opener.

When it is so hot and humid and sticky that you cannot bear to turn on the stove, and the thought of eating something warm makes you vaguely queasy, salads are the traditional cold food solution in the West.

But, you know, I really like one of the Eastern takes on the matter, because not only is it cooling, fresh, light and crisp like a salad, you also get the kid-like pleasure of eating with your fingers!

Salad rolls, also called garden rolls, summer rolls and uncooked spring rolls, originated in Vietnam, but their popularity has spread them to Thailand and beyond. The classic recipe is made with chilled boiled shrimp and cold roast pork, combined with bean sprouts, herbs (Thai basil is a classic), lettuce, and cooled, chilled thin rice noodles, all rolled up together in a rice paper wrapper and served ice cold with some kind of dipping sauce.

But that is the classic, and as excellent as it is, I have never tasted a recipe that I couldn’t adapt happily.

I’ve made vegan versions with avocado instead of the shrimp and pork, and those are awfully tasty. I’ve taken out the pork and used fresh mango slices instead, which tastes amazing with the crisp-tender sweet boiled shrimp and the bright flavors of the emerald green herbs. (The truth is, as much as I adore pork, and love Vietnamese style roast pork, in the summer, I prefer salad rolls without it, because it is heavier than I would like.)

The one necessary component to this recipe which cannot be substituted is the rice paper wrapper. These round, translucent, paper-thin creations are easily found in most Asian markets and even some supermarkets in the international food section. They are sold in clear plastic disc-shaped packets, and come about thirty to a package.

When you open the package, you will notice that these fragile little see-through circles made of rice flour and water, rolled thinly and set to dry in the sun on a basket (you can see the texture of the basket imprinted in them, which is pretty cool) are quite crisp. How in the world can you wrap anything in these, you might think to yourself.

Easily–the trick is to dip them into hot (not boiling, just hot like bathwater) water, and push them down so they sink and are completely covered. (You can gently massage the rice paper with your fingertips to get them to soften faster, but you don’t need to, at least not if your water is hot enough.) Leave the rice paper in the water, swishing it about perhaps, until it completely softens, and takes on the texture of wet silk habutai (The kind of light silk fabric commonly used in clothing in the US) and is completely pliable.

Then, you gently take the wrapper out, lay it on a work surface (I use a clean plastic cutting board) smooth it out, and place your filling in the lower third of the wrapper. Contain your fillings into a vaguely cylindrical shape, which is challenging with the bean sprouts, but endeavor to persevere, and they will eventually be tamed. Fold the lower bit of the wrapper up over the fillings, then fold in the two sides, tightly–but not so tightly that you tear the rice paper.

Then, roll up the salad roll, as tightly as you can, and place it on a plate, seam side down, and there you have it! The rolling tightly part takes some practice, but I promise you that after your fifth or seventh roll, your salad rolls will begin to look prettier and prettier. And even if they are not pretty, your first efforts will taste delightful.

These salad rolls are best made fresh, right before you eat them, but you can make them a few hours ahead of time if you put them into a pan that has been lined with damp paper towels, and then cover the rolls with more damp towels. If you stack them on top of each other, make sure that you place damp paper towels between the layers so that the rice paper wrappers don’t have a chance to stick together.

Then you need to make a dipping sauce.

My favorite is also the easiest to make–it consists of equal parts of natural peanut butter (the kind that is made only of peanuts and salt) and hoisin sauce, a sweet soybean paste-like sauce, with a little bit of rice vinegar or lime juice for tang and enough sriracha sauce to add a sparkle of chili heat. I make it in a food processor, and add enough water through the feed tube to make a moderately thick but still fluid sauce that will easily stick to the rolls without either being sticky on the tongue nor dripping off the rice wrapper and making a mess of your clothes.

That is all there is to these delectable little cold bites–they are a great summer appetizer, salad course or if it really is that hot and miserable outside, entree. I’ll give you a list of possible ingredients below, and some general instructions as well as a recipe for the sauce, but really, this is not a recipe you need to follow to the letter. Unlike some people, I don’t want you to copy my every culinary adventure perfectly–I want you to strike out on your own, using my recipes as a map to possibly unfamiliar territory, and make your own taste discoveries.

The next step is the most important–eat and enjoy!

From what I have read and heard from Vietnamese friends, kho dishes are -the- comfort foods of their cuisine. This fairly broad category of dishes consist of braises, either long or short-simmered, which are primarily seasoned with nouc mau and fish sauce. These two sauces combine and cook down into a thick, gooey dark russet-brown glaze full of bittersweet, savory, salty satisfaction that coats the ingredients cooked into it and drips onto rice in rivulets of intense flavor. It is the sauce that defines a kho dish–it is meant to be intensely salty and sweet, in large part because it is meant to be eaten with a great deal of rice.

There are some who say that the origin of kho dishes comes from frugal cooks who used their culinary skills to create a dish which would stretch rare protein resources by saucing them with salty, sweet ingredients that would stimulate the diner to eat a great deal of rice. The result would be that one would need very little meat and sauce to flavor a meal of rice, thus creating a satisfying meal out of very few ingredients. (An illustration of this principle at work is seen in the beautiful Vietnamese film, “The Scent of Green Papaya,” which shows the older cook teaching the younger cook to use more fish sauce in a kho when the family they work for is short on cash. In making the dish saltier, the old cook knows that the young sons of the family will be forced to eat more rice, thus sating their hunger inexpensively.)

Whatever the origin, kho is a versatile method of cooking foods, which is well worth adopting to the American kitchen. While most often cooked in a Chinese style claypot, I found that using my Le Creuset pan worked just as well. (My claypot died a sad death a while back and has never been replaced.)

There are two ways to cook kho: fast and slow. They both require the same ingredients, and both methods end up with the same deeply flavored sauce, but the disparate cooking times are used depending upon what protein item one is cooking, how it is cut and how tender it is naturally. Tender meats such as chicken, pork loin, beef sirloin, shrimp and fish, are generally cut thinly and quickly cooked, as is tofu. Larger, less tender cuts, such as flank steak and pork belly, are generally cooked slowly for a long period of time.

Both the fast and slow cooking methods can utilize the addition of aromatic ingredients such as garlic, ginger, chilies, scallions or lemongrass; the way that these aromatics are prepared is the only difference. In both cases, the aromatics are also added to the marinade, which consists of the nuoc mau and fish sauce, in order to add their flavor to the sauce and the main ingredient during the marination period.

In the fast-braised recipes such as the one I present here, the aromatics are sliced very thinly and are stir fried in vegetable oil until they are lightly browned. Then they are added, along with the flavored oil to the marinating main ingredient. In long-simmered, slow cooked versions of kho, they are also sliced very thinly, but are simply cooked in the liquid along with the main ingredient without any prior cooking in oil.

The marinating period, which can last from thirty minutes to several hours to half a day or more, is a necessary step in the process of creating a kho. More tender, smaller cuts of meat or tofu can be marinated for a short period of time; it is easier for the flavors to penetrate thinly sliced tender meats than it is for them to insinuate themselves into larger, tougher cuts of meat.

For my recipe, which uses very thin slices of pork loin, I stir fried thinly sliced garlic, ginger and Thai bird chilies in a small amount of canola oil, and added that to the pork, nuoc mau and fish sauce, then let the whole thing sit at room temperature for about forty-five minutes.

Cooking the kho was a cinch: I simply dumped everything from the marinating bowl, back into the pan I used to stir fry the aromatics, added a few tablespoons of water, brought it to a boil, then turned down the heat to simmer it for ten minutes. The marinade turned into a rich, thick sauce that coated the meat generously, while the meat took on a satisfying, slightly chewy texture that was full of flavor. For more tender meat, I would have cooked it for only about seven minutes, but both Zak and I liked the contrast of the chewy, flavorful meat with the fluffy, aromatic steamed jasmine rice.

At that point, it is traditional to add a great deal of freshly ground pepper–however, since I am allergic to that, I skipped it. (That is why I added the chilies earlier, after all.) I simple stirred in a generous handful of roughly chopped cilantro, and served it forth with a dish of stir-fried vegetables.

How was it?

Beautiful, soulful and satisfying. I can easily imagine making this again and again, with various different ingredients. I cannot wait to make tofu this way; the sauce was sweet with caramel and garlic, hot with chile and ginger and savory-salty with fish sauce. Tofu cooked with black mushrooms in this way would be lip-smacking delectable.

And did we eat a lot of rice with our kho?

Indeed we did. And we loved every bite.

Quick-Braised Spicy Caramel Pork

When meat is done and marinade has reduced to a thick, gooey sauce, remove from heat, scrape into serving bowl, and stir in cilantro. If using pepper, stir in at this time. Serve immediately with lots of steamed jasmine rice and a vegetable dish.

Now that I have about a cup or so of dark bittersweet delishousness in my fridge, I have to cook with it. While kuo dishes–braised dishes with gooey reddish brown salty-sweet sauce are one of the main uses of nuoc mau in the Vietnamese kitchen, the first recipe I tried was a stir-fry. Like I needed another reason to haul the wok onto the stove, but the combination of flavors promised in this recipe appealed to me: bittersweet caramel, caramelized shallots, browned garlic, fresh Thai bird chilies, lemongrass and fish sauce, all wrapped around tender bits of chicken.

How can that possibly be anything but good?

And, it is very easy to do, very quick to prepare and goes really wonderfully well over steamed jasmine rice, steamed sticky rice or steamed broken rice.

This chicken would be lovely tossed with bean thread noodles or pan-fried rice noodles, too, though one might want to add a bit more liquid to “dress” the noodles if one took that route with this recipe. Of course, if I do try that in the future, I will write about it. Reporting back is always half the fun of trying a new recipe.

I am even pretty sure it would be good as a filling for banh mi, which are those wonderful Vietnamese sandwiches on crusty French baguette that everyone always raves about. (With good reason, mind you–those suckers are tasty.) This summer when the world is bursting with vegetables, I will probably try out lemongrass chicken bahn mi for a quick and light supper, along with some cold noodle salad or maybe a soup.

Stir-Fried Chicken with Lemongrass and Chilies

Sprinkle with cilantro, take off heat and stir to combine.

It looks rather like sorghum molasses, or espresso with a swirled froth of reddish gold crema on top.

But it is neither of these things.

It is dark, it is deep, it consists of two ingredients, and while it is simple to make it is not easy.

And, it is an essential component to many Vietnamese home cooked foods.

It is called nuoc mau–which literally means “colored water,” though in English, we call it caramel sauce.

And it doesn’t go on ice cream.

It is what gives depth of flavor and color to kho, which are earthy, homey braises of meats, tofu or seafood. Salty with fish sauce, these dishes are meant to be eaten with plenty of rice, but the salt flavor is balanced by the smoke-tinged sweetness of this home made, darkly browned caramel sauce.

It is also used to flavor other dishes, including quick stir fries.

It is not difficult to make, as it only requires sugar and water, but technique is important. One must use medium-low heat, or risk burning the sugar black, and one must pay attention to when to stir and when not to stir. One can melt and brown the sugar without using water to dissolve it, but that method is much trickier and risks the formation of candy chips–incompletely melted sugar glommed together which will burn to the bottom of the pan if given half a chance.

I found that it helped that I had done pulled sugar work in my dessert classes in culinary school; some of the techniques I learned there to deal with melted sugar translated perfectly to the making of nuoc mau. It also helped to follow a detailed recipe that described very carefully and accurately the stages of browning the sugar was going to go through before the sauce was done. (I found that the best recipe is Andrea Q. Nguyen’s from her excellent cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.)

At any rate, here is my way of putting this simple, but not easy staple of the Vietnamese kitchen together, complete with many photographs illustrating the stages the sugar goes through on its way from crystalline white grains to a reddish-brown, richly-scented sauce.

Nuoc Mau (Vietnamese Caramel Sauce)

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup water

Method:

Place the sugar and 1/4 cup of water into a deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium low heat. Stir with a metal spoon until the sugar dissolves into a milky-looking liquid, as below.

As the sugar syrup heats up, small, glassy-looking bubbles will begin to form around the edges of the saucepan, as seen above. At this point, stop stirring, and DO NOT stir again. (And please, never, ever, use anything other than a metal spoon to stir melting sugar. Please never use a rubber spatula. Please. I watched someone in culinary school melt a rubber spatula into boiling sugar once. It was ugly and smelled really awful. Don’t do that–it is a hideous mess to clean up.)

If you stir again, you will cause the sugar to seize up and recrystallize, and that will not be a good thing. From here on out, if you need to stir the sugar syrup, do so by lifting the saucepan and swirling it in the air while keeping it level. This will cause some syrup to creep up the sides of the pan. In order to chase those droplets down before they have a chance to cool and recrystallize, take a pastry brush, dampen the bristles in the remaining half cup of water, and use it to brush the syrup back down into the pan.

As the bubbles form, they will head toward the center of the pan, where they will grow in size. Then, the entire surface of the sugar will be bubbling vigorously with glassy spheres and domes as it simmers merrily along.

After a few minutes, around the edges of the pan, you will see the syrup begin to darken slightly, going from clear to the color of champagne. Swirl the pan to even the color, and set it back on the stove. Eventually, the color around the edges will darken to a lager beer, then a honey color, as seen below.

Notice the color in the lower left-hand portion of the pot is more of a honey brown while the rest is more of a pale color. That tells us one of two things: either my pan has a place where it is thinner there, so it gets hotter faster, or that burner is pouring out more heat in that spot. At any rate, as the color darkens on the edge, lift the pan and carefully swirl once or twice to even the color out, then set it back on the fire. If you swirled a lot of syrup up the sides of the pan, brush them down.

Once the color of the syrup is the color of dark tea color, start watching it very carefully. This is where you come to the place where you may burn the sugar beyond use.

After the sugar has been simmering for about twenty minutes, a thin haze of smoke will steadily rise. Turn the exhaust fan over your stove on or open the windows. Watch the sugar closely as it will darken very quickly–second by second it will darken.

The sugar will take on a scarlet reddish tone–almost like wine, but with more of a yellow cast. The bubbles will take on a vivid burned orange color like the color of maple leaves in autumn or a seashore sunset–like the photograph above. At this point, swirl again and take note of the color of the syrup under the bubbles.

When it takes on the color of very dark coffee or molasses, turn off the heat and all at once add the other 1/2 cup of water. This will cause a dramatic bubbling, hissing, sputtering reaction as the sugar syrup rapidly cools. Just stay back from it and watch from afar.

Where the water pours directly into the syrup, the sugar will seize up, but don’t fret over it. It will melt again in a few seconds.

Heat the caramel back up, and stir once again with a metal spoon until the solid bits dissolve back into the syrup. At this point, turn the heat off again, and set the pan aside, allowing it to cool for about ten minutes. At this point, the bubbles will subside to an orange-red foam over the surface of the caramel that will slowly dwindle in size as the liquid cools down.

After ten minutes, pour the sauce into a heavy glass jar, seal it tightly and allow it to cool the rest of the way.

I store mine in the fridge, but you can just leave yours in a cool, dark cabinet if you like.

It will keep for a very long time–some say forever.