Most people living in Chicago have heard about the French Vietnamese restaurant “Le Colonial”. My husband picked this place to celebrate my 25th birthday (Yes, I said “25”!). According to Google, it is “Chicago’s noted up-scale French-Vietnamese restaurant which vividly recaptures the beauty, romance and spirit of French colonial southeast”. After colonizing the country for over 100 years, the French did play a big role in developing the Vietnamese cuisine, from introducing sauté, to baguette bread…etc. What I had in Le Colonial was definitely Vietnamese food at a French price. I think the sad truth is that probably a lot of Americans think Vietnamese’s dietary choices are very “exotic”, so they call it French Vietnamese and serve it with red wine, and that tricks all the cougars and sugar daddies into going to the foofy Gold Coast hot spot, and it has $$$ in Zagat’s so it must be good.
After Joe Mama showed me our dinner bill, which look more like our telephone number, I decided to attempt to create the same enchanting "French Vietnamese" culinary experience in my own kitchen at a Chinatown price tag.
First Course - Sate Beef Summer Roll
Marinade for the sate beef:
Sate sauce and fish sauce (in place of salt). You can find bottles of Sate Sauce in most Asian grocery store. Sate sauce is great for stir fry as well.
Vietnamese Caramel Sauce
Caramel sauce (nuoc mau, pronounced "nook mao") is one of the cornerstones of Vietnamese cooking. It is what gives the grill meats their bitter sweet taste and nice coloring. All you need is a pot, sugar, water and a brave heart. Basically, you melt the sugar in the pot, and cook it till it is almost burned (turning black), and then add boiling water to the caramelized sugar. The end result is this black liquid, which does not look very appetizing, but does magic on the grilled meats. One word of caution, “Nothing burns like burned sugar!!!” So be very careful!
Main Course - Lemon Grass Chicken with Coconut Rice
Two stalks of lemon grass (peeled and chopped up)
2-3 pounds of chicken (quartered)
3-5 cloves of garlic (you can’t go wrong with using too much garlic)
Juice of 1 lime
Fresh Thai basil leaves (2-3 sprigs, chopped)
2-3 table spoon of fish sauce
Ingredients for Coconut Rice (Lovehandle original recipe)
2 cups of Thai Jasmine rice
½ can of coconut milk
2 sprigs of fresh basil roughly chopped
1 strand of lemon grass, cut to 1 inch length
¼ cup of raisin
1 table spoon of honey
1 link of fresh Italian sausage
Banana leaves
De-casing the sausage and cook it in a pan under low heat till the meat is browned, add in the rice and cook for 2 minutes. Add enough water to cover the rice, stir in the remaining ingredients. Cook the rice till it is half way done and turn off the heat. Wrap the rice mixture in banana leaves (I will leave the creativity to you, you can wrap them anyway you want.) Cook the rice and banana leaves parcels in a steamer for another 15-20 minutes till the rice is done.
Grill the marinade chicken and beef. Make sure you put down a sheet of foil paper on the grill first and put the chicken on top of it. That way, the chicken will not get burned easily. When the meat is almost done, brush the meats with the caramel sauce. The sugar will crystallize during the cooking process and gives the meat a nice shine and pretty caramel color.
Dessert- Hasma Soup
