Asian Fusion?

This week's a bit of an anomaly. I'm on spring break so therefore have been a cooking machine because: a) I have extra time and energy and b) Rob deserves it x 100.

You may have seen the Vietnamese inspired dishes I made this week. That's all because my brother took my mom and I to The Union for dinner before the Canucks game on Monday night. (It was a good night!) Not surprising given their location, they have Vietnamese, Korean, and Indian-influenced dishes on their menu. Their Banh Mi Vietnamese subs looked so good! My mom had a Bun vermicelli bowl with lemongrass chicken. It was delicious! I haven't eaten enough Vietnamese or Korean food and clearly this had an East Van spin to it, but it was awesome and got me feeling curious and adventurous to try it out a little.

To finish off my Asian-fusion cooking week, I made a kind-of Pad Thai tonight. It was good, but I'm actually just going to share the two mini-recipes that were used in all three meals and are 100% responsible for why they were more exciting and delicious than my past boring attempts at different Asian sauces, marinades, and stir-fries. I want to share them because I know I'm going to use them over and over!


Nuac Cham: the Vietnamese dipping sauce that dressed the vermicelli bowl. Not only was this the best part of the vermicelli bowl for me, it was also my new favourite sauce to have on hand to add depth to just about everything I made this week:

• added to the lemongrass marinade for chicken/prawns/tofu (more below)
• splashed into the burger patty mixture
• added to the lemongrass sriracha mayo for the burgers (made with vegenaise)
• used as dressing for coleslaw for the burgers and salad
• added to sauce for Pad Thai

Here's the actual recipe... (If you are unsure about fish sauce, you need to get over it because that's where the depth of flavour comes from and it's delicious.)

Nuac Cham

1/2 c water
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c fish sauce
1/4 c rice vinegar
1-2 t sriracha
1 garlic clove, minced


Put all ingregients in a jar, seal tightly, and shake vigorously for a minute or so until the sugar dissolves. Make a bigger batch to keep some extra in the fridge!


Next up, the lemongrass marinade that I used on chicken for the vermicelli bowls and on tofu for the Pad Thai, and well, technically in the lemongrass sriracha mayo too. It was sooo good on the tofu!

Lemongrass Marinade

1 1/2 lbs chicken, tofu or large prawns
1/2 c finely chopped lemongrass (2-3 stalks)
1/2 c onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground Chinese five spice 
1/4 c oil (we use grapeseed oil - more neutral than olive oil)
*I also added a splash of the Nuac Cham

Mince lemongrass (white part), onion, garlic, and ginger, or put in a food processor. Mix in everything else and marinate protein for 30 min to 24 hours. Bake at 350 degrees until fully cooked.


Cilantro, mint, and Thai basil also get honourable mention this week for adding a trifecta of fresh flavors to all our food.

A few pics just from tonight. Because they're supposed to make reading about food better? We're new at this...

Jessie

*If you know anything about Vietnamese, Korean, or Thai food, you know more than I do, so feel free to add what you know or correct anything offensive/inaccurate I mentioned

*Links I modified recipes from this week: Everybody Likes Sandwiches and Feasting at Home

Let's Do This!

Ugh, not another food blog!!!

If that's what you're thinking, you might just want to steer clear and move along. However, we (Rob and Jessie) are hoping this site will be a little more open-ended than just more food porn. We're not really sure what our posts will look like, but we do know that we've been inspired to share some of the tidbits that result from our creativity and joy around making food - and maybe some other creative endeavors too, who knows!

We always prefer to make food for other people. It really is Rob's love language. Of course, the majority of meals we make are our weeknight dinners for two, but we often find ourselves wanting to share those too. This usually results in left-over sharing in the staff room the next day, along with excited talk of trying new ingredients and swapping recipe ideas. So really, this is just a place for us to share with more of our family and friends more often. Jessie never feels like her instagram pictures really communicate the intended message. What we really want to say is "We just tried this for the first time and it's so easy and sooo good, here's how to make it!" or "We just learned you can use _______ instead of _______ to make ________ even better for you - so simple, try it!" What we're definitely not going for is "Hey suckers, look at the delicious food you're missing out on. Bet you wish you were here!"

Oddly enough, we were inspired by Rodney Mullen, a pro-skateboarder from back in the day. In his TED talk, he spoke about the reward of sharing his creativity with a community that built on what he did and watching it become greater than what he could do himself. He said that watching the community he contributed to use his freestyle skating and tricks like the "ollie" as a foundation to completely transform the sport was more rewarding than any of the many championships he won. Holy humble pie! So here we are, far from pro's in any of our creative attempts, but inspired by the idea of contributing something we love to our community. We'll have to see if the digital medium is as meaningful as it is efficient, but we think it's worth a shot! On a much smaller scale, we want to take what we get creative with in our day-to-day and share it with our little community so you can take what you like from it, make it even better, and then hopefully share it back. Or even better, share something new so that we can learn too!

There you have it folks, our fun little mission statement.

Now all this typing has gotten us hungry, so we're gonna go make dinner! We'll see if we deem it creative enough for our first food post...


Rob and Jessie

(More current photos to come, promise)