Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Shredded Cabbage and Fresh Mint

Like chicken soup, chicken salads have a place of everyday honor in cuisines around the world. I adore the mayonnaise-dressed versions of my Southern childhood (and adulthood), but I’m in love with this Vietnamese take on the cool-chicken off-the-bone dish, with its ribbons of crisp raw cabbage, fish-sauce/pepper kick, and bright refreshing flavor-splashes of fresh herbs. Traditionally this dish includes rau ram, an herb treasured in the kitchens of Vietnam. You may find rau ram in Asian markets as well as at farmer’s markets, and if you like tending herbs, it’s a rewarding, low-maintenance one to grow at home. I’ve found plants at the Carrboro Farmer’s Market here in Piedmont North Carolina. Its long, spear-shaped leaves grow widely spaced on segmented stems, and it often sports two distinctive marks on its leaves; but not always, so consider that a clue but not an absolute when seeking rau ram. Here is how it is packaged and sold at a local Asian supermarket:

Here is rau ram, cooling its roots in a jar of water, and displayed on a plate to give you an idea of how the stalks and leaves look when freed from their plastic platter:

If you don’t find rau ram in time to make this salad, you can make a delicious version of the classic dish using fresh mint in place of rau ram. For more information on this aromatic and pleasingly astringent and bright tasting Vietnamese herb, visit food writer and cookbook author, Andrea Nguyen here:

http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/

Your cookbook shelf should already be home to copies of her two essential books:

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2006)

Asian Dumplings (Ten Speed Press, 2009)

But if it is not, fix that, preferably at your nearest actual, or most beloved online, independent bookseller’s place of business. And now, time for a lovely, tasty and pleasing chicken salad:

Nancie’s Chicken Salad, Vietnamese-Style, with Shredded Cabbage and Fresh Mint

This simple assembly of everyday ingredients produces a marvelously refreshing dish. The signature Vietnamese herb called rau ram is a perfect complement for the chicken and other seasonings, but fresh mint is lovely if you don’t have rau ram. If you want to prepare this ahead, and can be a little fussy about it, consider mixing the dressing and preparing the herbs, vegetables, chicken, and peanuts. Pretty close to serving time, combine everything in a big bowl, toss well, and enjoy.

1 pound boneless chicken breasts, or 2 cups cooked, shredded chicken

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar, or freshly squeezed lime juice

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

3/4 cup very thinly sliced onion

1/2 cup fresh mint, cilantro, or basil leaves

1/2 cup rau ram leaves (optional)

2 cups finely shredded green, savoy, or napa cabbage

3/4 shredded carrots

3 tablespoons coarsely chopped roasted and salted peanuts (optional)

Put the chicken in a medium saucepan and add 2 to 3 cups of water, enough to cover the chicken by about 1/2 inch.  Bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, reduce the heat to maintain a lively simmer, and cook until done, 10 to 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, combine the lime juice, fish sauce, vinegar, sugar, and pepper in a medium bowl, and stir to dissolve the sugar and mix everything well.  Add the onion and toss to coat.  Set aside for 20 to 30 minutes, until you are ready to complete the dish.

Transfer the meat to a place to cool, reserving the broth for another use, such as making soup or cooking rice.  When the chicken is cool, tear it into long, thin shreds.  Coarsely chop the mint and the rau ram, if you are using it.  Add the shredded chicken, cabbage, carrots, mint, and rau ram to the bowl of onions and seasonings and toss to coat everything well. Mound the salad on a serving plate and top with chopped peanuts, if you are using them.  Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Serves 4

This recipe comes from Quick & Easy Vietnamese by Nancie McDermott (Chronicle Books), Copyright 2006, all rights reserved.

Taiwan Summer Travels

Taipei's Taoyuan Airport knows how to welcome travelers like me with their minds on Taiwan's fantastic food.

After a long but diverting and worthwhile journey across one continent, one ocean and a good chunk of a second continent, we arrived in Taiwan at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday night. Though I slept only a few hours on the plane, the excitement of completing the journey and Being Here!!! at last dissolved my exhaustion. I stayed awake unpacking, planning activities (yes, that’s heavily focused on meals and snacks, though not completely) for several hours, then slept well until 7 a.m. Our brimming-full Sunday is zooming by — I imagine the cartoon clock with the hands whizzing around the face. Here’s a kickstart on this first day, lunchtime visit to the food court at Shinkon Mitsukoshi Department Store, where we feasted on noodles, dumplings, rice, and fruit smoothies.

Vendors dish up an extraordinary array of Taiwanese, Cantonese, Japanese, Italian, Korean, and other cuisines. It's always busy, lively, and delicious.

Here’s my favorite lunch item for today.

Pork Chop Noodle includes a salt-and-pepper porkchop, thinly-sliced and perfectly fried, with a side of soup noodles with minced pork, and stir-fried lettuce.

Then it was quick reading-and-nap session in air-conditioned comfort, followed by beauty salon indulgence and then visit to our cousins’ home, where their warm welcome came with cool sliced fruit. More photos on my Facebook page. Gotta go — time for dinner!

Pear, apple, and banana, peeled and cut for us to enjoy with tea.

Happy Father’s Day: Remembering James P. McDermott, The Man Himself

With Father’s Day 2011 landing deep into the month of June this year, I’ve had many reminders of it in the form of advertisements, family conversations and themed stories in magazines. At our house, the day will start with breakfast in bed for my husband, presents (watching for that UPS truck today to deliver a brand new…oh, no, wait, my husband may read my blog!) and then instead of easy at-home day and celebration dinner, we’ll be driving our daughter up to music camp in the North Carolina mountains. All day long, I’ll be thinking of my father, James Patrick McDermott, born in 1920 in New York City, and the long, happy 89 years he lived on this earth. He passed away peacefully in October of 2009, with our family all around him, while living with my sister and looking back on his life with gratitude and delight. I feel lucky to have had such a father, and to have had him in mine and my family’s life for such a long time.

I love this photograph, taken on a New York City rooftop in 1941. Possibly he was at his family’s apartment on East 53rd Street, having just feasted on Mama’s wonderful cooking, most likely roast leg of lamb enjoyed after mass. Possibly he was at his friend Vinnie’s family’s apartment in Brooklyn, having recently feasted on Vinnie’s mama’s Sunday dinner. From the grin on his face, I am certain that a glorious meal was either in the offing or a very recent memory. Daddy loved to eat; he loved to celebrate and spend time at the table; he loved spending time with friends and family, and he loved enjoying New York City’s pleasures. He felt so proud throughout his life of being a Marine, of having served his country in World War II. He loved to read, he loved to travel, he loved to have company at home and to host as many friends as I could gather together for a big dinner out. He loved classical music and opera, reading nonfiction and history, and going to the movies, particularly Clint Eastwood’s entire body of work, from “Rawhide” to “Gran Torino”. He loved his daughters and his grandchildren with all his heart; he loved to work and he loved to learn new things; he loved teaching Sunday School and ringing the bell for the Salvation Army at Christmastime, and delivering Meals on Wheels with my stepmother well into his 80′s (‘helping the old people’ as he would say). Politically, he made a right turn somewhere in his 70′s, and we chuckled over the fact that in election years,  his and my votes cancelled each other out.

Daddy didn’t worry much — he didn’t exercise, didn’t hold a grudge, didn’t look back except to recall good times gone by. “You can’t live in fear…” he would advise me when I was much younger and fretting about whether I ‘should’ go here or there, do x or y, choose a or b. I found on my own, that he was wrong on that — one can indeed live in fear; and in fact many of us do. Living in fear is easy to do; in fact it is actually encouraged in many circles. But what Daddy meant is that living in fear has a great cost, and a terrible one. He chose not to live in fear, and he was right. Nowadays, when I get stuck, I think about Daddy’s wisdom on that, and about many other lessons from him that serve me still. I wish I could go by for a Father’s Day visit, and ask him the story of this picture. Where in New York City was he, and who took it? Was it on Vinnie’s rooftop, and even if it wasn’t, what did Vinnie’s mother serve that time he and his buddies went by for a meal? Though in the last few years he didn’t remember day-to-day issues such as whether he had taken his medicines or paid a bill, he could have told me every detail around such a picture: location, occasion, what he ate, and who was along for the fun. In his last few years, he couldn’t have named my cookbooks, but he knew that I wrote them, and he was deeply proud of me, just as he was back when I got my Baptist Junior Memory Work Tournament award, my driver’s license, my first teaching job, and my first newspaper byline.

I love this photograph below, taken in my house in the spring of 2009. In it I see his walker, his hat, a newspaper, and his breathing machine, since he would be spending the night on that sofa. In front are my husband and daughter, and beside him is his nephew Tony Smith, visiting from Ireland and just about to play some tunes on his fiddle for The Man Himself. We’ve got him surrounded, with people who love him and the prospects of music, food and a good night’s rest in the offing. A good day. As he wrote on the postcards he faithfully sent out to a host of friends from my kitchen table during Southern California visits, we are clearly “Having a grand time!” Here’s to Father’s Day, and to remembering those people in our lives who have taught us, encouraged us, fed us, inspired us, and loved us. Here’s to passing that along, while having a grand time!

“Southern Pies”, now out of the oven and onto the bookshelves and countertops!

"Southern Pies" cover --- an invitation to feast your eyes and head for the kitchen

Though I’ve had my author copy for a month, and the Chronicle Books warehouse has been shipping out advance orders for a couple of weeks, today is the official start of publicity month for my latest book, “Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan”. I haven’t gotten over it yet, not even close — still picking it up, flipping through, stopping to read something here, or gaze at a photograph there, happily and proudly distracted. The words and recipes come from my hands and brain, but the images and design come from artists who make magic, who take my creation and render it into something visual, tangible, and inviting, something that catches the eye of bookstore patrons and bookclub members and online browers and says “Hey! Notice me!” in a most delicious way. My gratitude to master photographer Leigh Beisch and her team and to designer Anne Donnard of Chronicle Books is bountiful and rich, like meringue piled high on a lemon meringue pie. To celebrate the publication of “Southern Pies”, I’m planning to make a pie everyday this month, and put it out on the virtual windowsill right here in my blog for you to share, visually at least. Some pies will be from this book, and some will be from friends, from vintage cookbooks, maybe even from vendors at the farmers’ market who have some autumn fruit to share. From today, October 1 until October 31, it’s pie season here in Piedmont North Carolina, so let me know what pies you love, and what pies you’d like to see. They don’t even have to be Southern — they just have to be pies that please and delight you in some way. Here we go…!