Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Bun Cha (Hanoi Grilled Pork with Cucumber Dipping Sauce)

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Whoa, this is a great dish. The mild-flavored grilled pork is perfectly matched with the sweet and spicy cucumber sauce. This is pretty much the real-deal recipe, though I did swap in rice noodles for rice vermicelli, as the rice noodles have a little more bite to them.

Please note that the recipe has a three-hour-minimum marinade time.

What you’ll need for the pork

  • 2T fish sauce
  • 1T dark sugar, such as muscovado, brown or even palm sugar
  • 1 large shallot, finely chopped (use onion, in a pinch)
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 2t palm or white sugar
  • 1 lb. (500g) ground pork
  • 8 oz (250g) rice noodles or vermicelli, cooked and warm
  • A small bunch each of cilantro, mint and holy basil leaves
  • 4 oz (125g) bean sprouts (I skipped these due to food safety risks)

What you’ll need for the cucumber dipping sauce

  • Half a medium cucumber, peeled, deseeded and grated
  • 0.25 cups lime juice—fresh from a couple of limes is best
  • 2 fl. oz (50ml) cold water
  • 2T fish sauce
  • 2 large garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 small Thai chili, finely chopped—deseed it for less heat, if you wish
  • 0.75t caster sugar—palm sugar is a good substitute

What to do for the dipping sauce

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until use. Stays good for a few days when covered in the refrigerator.

What to do for the pork

Melt the sugar and 1T of the fish sauce over medium-low heat—stir often. When the sugar has melted, let it cool for a bit before pouring it into a medium bowl. Add the shallot, garlic, palm or white sugar, and remaining fish sauce; stir well. Mix in the ground pork with your hands to ensure all the ingredients are evenly distributed. Don’t overmix or the pork will be tough. Cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 3 hours or up to overnight.

When you’re ready to cook, fire up your grill or oven’s broiler. If grilling, clean and oil the grates. If broiling, line a rimmed sheet pan with foil and put cooking grates on the foil. Spray with cooking spray.

While things are heating, shape the ground pork into little flattened patties about 1.5” in diameter. Place on the grates and cook for about 3.5 minutes before turning them over for another 3.5 minutes. They should be 165 degrees F inside when they’re done.

For serving, divide the rice noodles between serving bowls before topping with the pork, bean sprouts (if using) and herbs. Spoon the dipping sauce over the whole lot before serving.

Curry Shrimp Rolls

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Curry shrimp rolls are a wonderful appetizer. Also known as firecracker prawns, the shrimp are dipped in a red curry/fish sauce blend, which gives them their fiery kick.

There’s no real secret to making these turn out spectacularly. Just make sure to score the underside of the shrimp so they initially lie flat.

Here’s how to wrap the shrimp:

What you’ll need

  • Large prawns or shrimp (8 – 12 count per pound. Smaller shrimp don’t work well for this recipe)
  • 1 large wonton wrapper for each shrimp
  • 2t red curry paste
  • 2T fish sauce
  •  1 egg white, lightly beaten
  •  Neutral oil, for deep-frying
  •  Thai sweet chili sauce, for dipping

What to do

Begin heating your oil to 375 degrees F in whatever vessel you’re using for frying.

Peel and devein your shrimp, if that’s not already done. Make a series of shallow, crosswise cuts along the underside of the shrimp. Cut just enough into the shrimp to sever the muscle that curls the shrimp when it cooks. They will still curl a bit, after they cook, though. Be careful not to cut all the way through.

Mix the curry paste and fish sauce in a small, shallow bowl. You’ll need to dredge each shrimp in the curry sauce and wrap it in a wonton wrapper before frying.

Here are the instructions for wrapping, or you can just follow the photos above. To wrap a shrimp after dredging it in the curry sauce:

  1. Lay a wonton wrapper diagonally on your work surface. Take the bottom corner and fold it about 75% to the top corner.
  2. Lay a shrimp, tail-down, with the “head” starting at the top of the folded-up corner. A fair amount of the shrimp’s tail will stick out.
  3. Fold the left corner over the shrimp, making it snug within the wrapper.
  4. Fold the topmost corner down over the shrimp. That top corner you folded down will be even with the bottom fold of the wrapper.
  5. Brush some egg white across the wrapper to the right of the shrimp and roll the shrimp up in the remaining flat part of the wrapper. The egg white should seal the wrapper.

When the oil reaches temperature, fry the shrimp in batches by carefully lowering them into the oil by their tails. Don’t crowd the oil. Fry them for 5 – 7 minutes or until the shrimp is cooked through. Remove from the oil with a wire spider and drain on a paper-towel-lined plate.

Let them cool a bit before serving with Thai sweet chili sauce.

Brown-Butter Shortbread Cookies

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Here’s a bit of a different and delicious take on shortbread. The key ingredients that really make a difference are the copious amounts of brown butter and milk powder. The brown butter imparts a nutty flavor, and the browned solids make for a great texture.

Maybe don’t be too concerned about cutting these so they’re of equal size and shape. There’s something to be said about weird-shaped cookies.

These are based on a recipe by America’s Test Kitchen

One option for cutting the sheet of dough.

What you’ll need

  • 2.5 sticks (20T) unsalted butter
  • 2 cups (284 grams) all-purpose flour
  • 1t table salt
  • 0.5t baking soda
  • 0.5t baking powder
  • 1.33 cups (265 grams) sugar
  • 0.25 cups (21 grams) nonfat dry milk powder
  • 2t vanilla extract
  • 2t water

What to do

To brown the butter, melt it in a 12-inch heavy-bottomed frypan over medium-high heat. Cook, swirling the butter often, until the solids in butter are color of milk chocolate and have toasty aroma. This process will take a few minutes; keep an eye on it, as it can go from browned to burnt very quickly. Remove the frypan from the heat and transfer the browned butter to bowl of stand mixer and put that in the refrigerator. Depending on the size of your mixer bowl, you may not be able to get it into the refrigerator. If that’s the case, just put the butter in a glass bowl and put that in the fridge. Let it cool in the refrigerator until opaque in color and completely cool. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and begin heating the oven to 325 degrees F while the butter cools.

Meanwhile, whisk the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together in medium bowl. If you cooled the butter in a separate bowl, just scrape it into the stand-mixer bowl. With the mixer’s paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar and milk powder on medium-high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and water and continue mixing until fully combined, scraping down the bowl with a silicone spatula, as needed. With the mixer running at low speed, gradually mix in the flour mixture until combined.

Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces. Cover one piece in plastic and place the other in the center of a large sheet of parchment paper and press it into about a 4-inch square. Place a second large sheet of parchment over the flattened dough and roll it into a *10-inch square, about 0.25-inch thick. Remove the top piece of parchment.

Using pizza cutter or chef’s knife, trim away outer perimeter of the dough to make clean edges. If you follow their prescription: Cut the dough in 3 equal strips lengthwise (about 3 inches each), then cut into 9 equal strips crosswise (about 1 inch each).

Slide the sheet of parchment onto a baking sheet (leaving the cookies touching). Repeat with the remaining dough.

Bake the cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until the edges are just golden, 16 to 24 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through baking. Once you hit the 16-minute mark, check them for doneness every minute.

Let the cookies cool for 10 minutes in the sheet pan. ATK’s instructions say to cut the shortbread at the scored marks to separate, then let them cool completely. I let them cool, then broke the cookies off at the score marks. Either way seems effective.

The cookies can be stored at room temperature for up to 10 days—as if they’d last that long. *Here’s where you can get a bit creative with the cookie shapes. It’s really hard to roll the dough into a roughly-shaped rectangle, so I didn’t try. I just got the dough evened out at 0.25 inches thick, and didn’t care about the shape. You can see in the photo the cuts I made. The weird shapes still tasted delicious.