Asian Cooking: Vietnamese Food: Caramelized Pork Belly W/Eggs Thit Kho Tau Or Kaw!

Asian Cooking

Vietnamese Food

 



 

 

 

This week it's  Vietnamese food! Whoohoo! I LOVE my Asian cooking! Everyone knows I LOVE my Asian cooking! Everyone knows I LOVE my Vietnamese food! I love the flavors of Southeast Asia in my Asian Cooking. This week I am making Vietnamese food again. I am making a dish that I was introduced to by my friend Saveda Lee on her Youtube channel. This week I am making caramelized pork belly with eggs. This dish is called Thit Kho Tau or Thit Kho Kaw. This is a true 100% Vietnamese dish that is also very popular in Cambodia as well.

Thit Kho Tau is enjoyed year round in Vietnam but it's really popular during the lunar new year and this year it's the year of the Dragon! Happy New Year! Happy New Year of the Dragon! (Chúc mừng năm mới và năm hạnh phúc của con rồng!) Thit Kho Tau originates from South Vietnam. The name Thit Kho Tau literally translates into braised pork in light sauce. I think that's very interesting because when I made this dish during my research the sauce gets to be a nice dark brown and if you add some thick soy sauce to it for coloration then it will get even darker.

As in other cuisines around the world Vietnamese food like this dish of Thit Kho Tau uses certain ingredients. The traditional cut of pork for this dish is pork shoulder although my friend Saveda who turned me onto this dish uses pork belly. Well! Fat is where the flavor is with Thit Kho Tau. I live by the frame of mind that there are no rules in the kitchen and this holds true with Asian cooking as well. In my research I found people using pork tenderloin, pork short ribs, pork belly and pork shoulder. This just goes to show you that there are no rules in the kitchen.  So with this recipe for Vietnamese food I decided to use one and a half pounds of pork belly and one and a half pounds of pork shoulder. Well, I do have to watch out for my girlish figure you know! No matter which cut of pork you decide to use if you cut off to much fat then you will certainly lose so much of the wonderful flavor of this recipe. So resign yourself to eating this dish and loving it as much as I do with the fat. Remember! You aren't eating this dish everyday of the week! You can handle it!

Asian cooking is so versatile and that is why I love to cook it so much. The base of this recipe is all Saveda's recipe and then I am going to add a couple of little things here and there to give my own little twist to the recipe but believe me this recipe is all Savy's! So if you love Vietnamese food as much as I do I would urge you to try this excellent recipe! This recipe as far as I am concerned is Vietnamese soul food and the soul of Vietnamese food! This recipe is best served with a side dish of Chinese pickled mustard greens which are called Kiam Chai or Hum Choy or Chrouk Spey and/or pickled bean sprouts called dua gia (pronounced yua ya) these are some of the favorite mon chua or pickled dishes of Vietnamese people when eating thit kho tau.  Make this dish! Enjoy this dish! Make this dish you own! Enjoy the video! And thank you Savvy for a great recipe!



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Malaysian Food: Nasi Lemak: My Nasi Lemak Recipe

Malaysian Food: Nasi Lemak

 

 

This week I am making Malaysian food a dish that is considered the national dish of Malayasia! This week I am going to prepare Nasi Lemak. I am doing this to fulfill a request by one of my Youtube viewers named Deeya Kaur. She is Malayasian and she has been watching some of the Asian dishes that I make and eventually she hit me up to make a Malayasian food. I asked for a suggestion from here and I got two words in reply: Nasi Lemak! I have never had Nasi Lemak nor had I even heard of Nasi Lemak before and I thought I knew Asian food. I had never experienced Malaysian food of any type and I guess now was as good a time as any. So I did some research on Malaysian food and Malaysian dishes of different types and I focused on Nasi Lemak. So this week I am going to make my Nasi Lemak recipe. I think I am going to be adding lots of Malaysian food to my Asian cooking repertoire in the future as the food looks absolutely delicious! So here it is! My Nasi Lemak recipe.

Naturally, Nasi Lemak has it's humble beginnings in the cuisine of Malay. The term Nasi Lemak means "fatty rice", not to worry there is no fat in the rice except for the content of the coconut milk and it is delicious! If you want to break the meanings of Nasi Lemak down even further you can say that Nasi Lemak means "rich" or "creamy". Originally, the way this coconut rice was cooked was by soaking the rice in the coconut milk or cream and then the mixture was steamed. Flavor is added to the Nasi Lemak by the addition of something called "screwpine" leaves or "pandan" leave. Generally the coconut rice is cooked with one or two of these leaves knotted up and put in the pot with the rice to cook. These leaves impart some of the traditional flavor to the Nasi Lemak dish. There are some additional herbs that can be added to the Nasi Lemak rice that will give it an even more spicy flavor and aroma and those herbs are lemon grass and ginger.

Nasi Lemak is traditionally served on a plate or platter that is loaded with side dishes that are wrapped in banana leaves. In most modern iterations and recipes we find that the Nasi Lemak is served on a plate or platter with a banana leaf on top and the side dishes put on top of the banana leaf. Such Nasi Lemak sides dishes as regular or seedless cucumber slices, some small fried Ikan Bilis or anchovies, roasted peanuts or roasted peanuts mixed with some friend anchovies or Ikan Bilis, quartered hard boiled eggs, and of course some hot and spicy sambal sauce. There are other sides that can be used as well such as fried chicken, fried fish, pickled vegetables, Kangkong vegetable, beef rendang, or even cuttlefish in chile called "sambal sotong". Nasi Lemak is all about whether you want your Nasi Lemak to be at some level vegetarian or not. Since Nasi Lemak is the national food of Malayasia you can find it just about anywhere. In schools, in restaurants, and even in street vendor stalls all over Malayasia! I am making my Nasi Lemak with a variety of side dishes like hard boiled egg, quail eggs in sambal (Sambal Telur), grilled ono fillets, sliced cucumbers and cashews in sambal (cashews dalam sambal). There are other side dishes that you can have with Nasi Lemak, things like fried chicken, chili cuttlefish, and vegetables of all kinds. It really is up to you to make your Nasi Lemak that way you want it to be! It is all up to you and you should try this dish at home yourself and make it yours! Enjoy!

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