The Humble Kitchen

Where I live I am never terribly far from a Vietnamese sandwich, but if you are not so lucky, take comfort in the knowledge that they are simple enough to make at home. There are many variations including pork belly, sausage, meatball, ham & paté, chicken, egg, tofu and fish cake, just to name a few. Here I’m using turkey.

For 4 sandwiches you will need:

• 4 demi baguettes or 2 French baguettes cut in half
• Roasted turkey, or chicken, sliced thinly & seasoned with soy sauce
• Mayonnaise (homemade recipe follows)
• Cilantro stems and leaves
• English cucumber sliced thinly on the bias
• Pickled carrot & daikon (recipe follows)
• Tomato sliced thinly (optional)
• Jalapeño or other chili sliced thinly (optional)

Preheat oven to 400º. Butterfly the demi baguettes, slather generously with mayonnaise and put in the hot oven for 5 minutes. Once warmed and crunchy, layer on turkey, cucumber, pickled veggies, cilantro, tomato and chili, if using.

Pickled Carrot & Daikon Radish

½ cup water

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup distilled white vinegar

½ cup julienned carrot

½ cup julienned daikon radish

In a small pan on high heat, combine water, sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil. Once cooled mix well with julienned carrot & daikon (julienne carrot and daikon with a grater attachment and a food processor) and season with salt. Let sit in the fridge for 30 minutes, up to overnight.

Quick Mayonnaise

Using store bought is fine, but if you are up to it, try the homemade, it is really delicious.

You need an immersion blender and a cup just big enough to fit the blade.

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon water

1 teaspoon lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup canola oil, cold pressed preferably

Place everything but the canola oil in the cup and blend just to mix. With the blade running, slowly, slowly pour in the canola oil, moving the blade up and down ever so slightly as you go. Once you start drizzling in the oil the whole thing only takes about 20 seconds.

-Jennifer

This is something my mom came up with many years ago, after finding Jufran Banana Sauce at the store, and not really knowing what to do with it. We did use it like you would tomato ketchup, then she had the idea to slather it on chicken, along with some Lingham’s garlic hot sauce, lime juice and cilantro. Once she put in too much hot sauce and added coconut milk to mellow it, and chicken euphoria was born. Karen came up with the name.

It is difficult to give exact measurements, my mom and I are the sort of cooks who add a little of this, a splash of that, but that is the sort of cooking that makes sense if you’re doing it everyday. Anyway, it’s easy enough to give it a taste and adjust accordingly. We sometimes make extra sauce because it is so delicious over rice.

You’ll need a few skinless, boneless chicken breasts, let’s say four to serve 4-6 people. Pound them flat and cut into thirds, or quarter them if they are big. Alternately you could use chicken tenders.

1 large Jafran Banana Sauce (not the hot one, unless you like things very spicy)

Lingham’s garlic hot sauce, to taste

1 14 oz. can coconut milk

garlic

1 bunch cilantro

a few limes

garlic salt

jasmine rice & a green vegetable

While your rice cooks, pound out your chicken, season well with garlic salt. Heat a large pan on medium high heat, add a pat of butter and some chopped garlic. As soon as the garlic is fragrant add the chicken.

Once the chicken has browned flip it over. Give the second side a moment to brown, then add a full bottle of banana sauce. Stir it well and add hot sauce to taste, start with a tablespoon or so. Stir again and add a few tablespoons of chopped cilantro stems and leaves, and the juice of a lime. Finally, pour in the coconut milk. Give it a stir.

Now let this bubble away, the sauce will thicken slightly and the chicken will cook through. Meanwhile make your green vegetable, we like sugar snap peas or snow peas with it. Cut up an extra lime to serve on the side. Once everything is ready, give your sauce a taste and decide if it needs any more hot sauce, lime or salt. When you’re happy, sprinkle on some cilantro leaves and dig in.

-Jennifer

Now that my daughter is older, and my Grandparents are no longer with us, I notice our Christmas traditions evolving. We still open presents on Christmas Eve, we still pop open Christmas crackers and wear paper crowns. But this year, my now teenage daughter jokingly suggested on Christmas Eve we should eat sushi, watch Silence Of The Lambs, then open presents to make us feel better. I though why not, sounds like fun. So that is exactly what we did, and it was fun. A new family tradition? We’ll have to wait and see.

Christmas always makes me nostalgic. When we were kids we lived next door to my mom’s parents. They were from Arkansas and Oklahoma, and though my mom couldn’t wait to leave Oklahoma and move to California, she still mentions the thunder storms, her own grandmother’s cooking, and other childhood memories. I suppose I’d like to keep some family traditions alive, so occasionally I will make something like chicken and dumplings for dinner, and ask my mom is it’s anything like her grandmother’s.

So on Christmas Day I indulged these nostalgic feelings, and made fried chicken. I had luckily found a copy of Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc At Home, (which is sold out until February!) and one of the first recipes in it is fried chicken. This recipe is a process, but well worth it. First there’s a twelve hour brine. Lemons, thyme, parsley, honey, bay leaves, pepper corns, garlic, I tell you the smell of the brine alone was glorious. I wanted to dab it behind my ears.

There’s no way the chicken and brine was going to fit in my fridge, so I used Alton Brown’s trick of making the brine with half the water, then once it was cool I added the remaining water in the form of ice, which kept the whole thing nice and cold in an ice chest overnight.

After twelve hours the chicken pieces are rinsed and left at room temperature for an hour and a half. I dredged in well seasoned flour, dipped in buttermilk, dredged again. The instructions are very specific about oil temperature and timing. This chicken is delicious. Hands down the best I’ve ever made or eaten. I cannot wait to try another recipe from this book.

On the side I made some simple mashed potatoes with buttermilk, and collard greens. My dear friend Jean had made these collards for me recently, and I can’t get enough of them. Saute onion and the chopped stems of the collards in olive oil until soft. Throw in heaps of minced garlic then add the chopped collards & a handful of chopped dried cranberries. Once the greens are cooked to your liking add seasoning and a tablespoon or so of soy sauce. The soy sauce really makes the dish. Delicious and beautiful.

For dessert, a family recipe, brownie pie. This is really a pecan pie, but we’ve always called it brownie pie. It’s good no matter what you call it. It’s a basic recipe, but in comparing it to other recipes I think ours is less sweet. For the pie crust I used the new ipod app Ratio . Don’t get me started on the wonders of this app. I took Michael Ruhlman’s advice & added an egg and some chopped pecans to the dough. You can use whatever pie crust you prefer.

2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 eggs, well beaten
½ cup sugar
¾ cup dark corn syrup
1 cup chopped pecans, more for decorating top if desired
1 unbaked pie crust

Melt chocolate and butter together. Mix sugar and corn syrup with beaten eggs, then blend in chocolate and butter mixture. Add pecans and a pinch of salt. Pour this into an unbaked pie crust. Bake at 300º for 40-50 minutes. Pie is done when a toothpick poked into the middle comes out clean, and there’s no more wobble. A dollop of whipped cream is an unnecessary but welcome addition. Simple and a pleasure to eat.

-Jennifer