Growing up in Allentown, PA, my family would take trips down to Washington, DC to visit my great aunt and uncle. As an active kid, I always dreaded going down to DC because I had to spend most of the time cooped up inside my great aunt and uncle's apartment. The highlights of the trips were the amazing home cooked Vietnamese meals prepared by my great aunt. Her roasted chicken (ga ro ti) and sticky rice were my favorite dishes.

It's been over two decades since I had ga ro ti. I never see it at restaurants (at least in San Francisco), as most Viet places serve grilled chicken (ga nuong) with five spice. So last week, I decided to make Vietnamese roasted chicken. I called up my parents to get advice. Unfortunately, neither of my parents make the dish and my great aunt passed away several years ago. My dad said, "marinate it in soy, fish sauce, garlic and a little sugar"...like every other Viet dish, not much help there. I was on my own with this one.

I remember my great aunt pan fried her chicken low and slow. I believe this "roasting" method was used because traditional ovens weren't available in Vietnam back in the day, unless you were wealthy. My great aunt's chicken had an extra crispy skin and the meat was shreddable by hand, almost like a confit. To get this texture, the chicken needs to be cooked longer than normal.

I tried the pan frying technique and produced a good ga ro ti, but it required a lot of time and flipping of the chicken (props to my great aunt!). I debated covering the chicken, but was afraid the skin would get soft from the moist heat. Next, I tried browning the chicken in an oven-proof skillet and then finishing it off in the oven. I liked this method best. It produced a nice crispy skin and I didn't have to stand by the stove top. If you are thinking, why don't you skip the pan frying and just roast it in the oven, then my answer is... I have more control over browning with a skillet and the brown bits in the pan can be de-glazed to make a flavorful dirty sticky rice with scallions.

Hungry Bear and I enjoyed the ga ro ti so much, we made it again for Sunday night dinner along with the dirty sticky rice, stir-fried hollow greens and a light carrot cake for dessert. The chicken had a nice salty, garlicky flavor with a crackling skin. I never eat all of my chicken skin. I usually try a little and then pass the rest to Jane, who likes everything full fat. But the skin on this roasted chicken was so good, I wasn't sharing it with anyone! The perfect complement to the chicken was the dirty sticky rice, which has scallions and all the wonderful flavors from the de-glazed frying pan!

My great aunt's ga ro ti will always be number one in my heart. I may not have re-created her roasted chicken exactly, but I got pretty damn close!

SNDsters: Jane, Mark, Hungry Bear, Chuck

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After Hungry Bear made her Hawaiian marinated chicken last week, we still had three pounds of unused chicken thighs. I needed to figure out what to make with them before they went into the freezer, where they would be forgotten. We are really bad with frozen meat and don't plan ahead enough to thaw it out.

I had a craving for green chili chicken stew, but couldn't find a recipe to my liking. Hungry Bear loves sweet potatoes, so I made braised chicken curry with yams, which is based on a Ming Tsai recipe. I've been tweaking this curry over the years. The dish calls for orange-flesh sweet potatoes, a.k.a. garnet yams.

The biggest changes to the original recipe are the omission of the banana and adjustments to the curry powder. I think there is enough sweetness from the yams, so there's no need for the banana. I've also adjusted the amount of chicken stock and added peas for some color.

The key ingredient is the curry powder. Ming recommends this Madras curry powder, but I'm not a fan of this brand or other brands found in most supermarkets. They're not bad, but I prefer a hot curry powder mix that we picked up at Bombay Bazar, a local Indian market. My issue with the Madras curry powder may also stem from the quantity used in Ming's recipe, 1/3 cup or 5 tablespoons. That's way too much. And it doesn't have any heat. Okay, my definition of heat is a little lot skewed.

The modified braised chicken curry recipe is finally dialed into our tastes. It's easy to make and it's one-pot cooking. There's a nice balance of heat and sweet from the yams and peas. Served over rice, it's a very filling and satisfying dish. If you leave the sweet potatoes a little firm, they'll retain their shape and the curry will look nice and pretty. On the flip side, if you cook the yams a little longer, they'll get mushy and thicken the sauce. Either way, it's a great curry to try out.

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Last August, my parents came out to visit me in San Francisco. One of our excursions was to the Serramonte Farmer's Market, our favorite farmers' market for fresh fruit. My mom was very excited when she saw the fabulous blueberry vendor. She immediately bought a couple of quarts of blueberries and made three blueberry kuchens for us and friends.

The kuchen was simple to make and it was absolutely delicious. Hungry Bear got the recipe from my mom, but sadly, we didn't make a kuchen before blueberry season ended. We thought we'd have to wait until summer before finding high quality, reasonably priced blueberries again.

A few days ago, we were trying to survive the craziness at Costco and stumbled upon big packages of fresh blueberries. Hungry Bear declared that we should buy some blueberries and make a kuchen! It turns out the blueberries are from Chile and the growing season down south is November to March. So much for eating local, as the blueberries looked too good to turn down, and we needed a blueberry fix badly!

We searched our email archives and found the blueberry kuchen recipe my mom sent and made it yesterday for dessert. It was really easy to make and only required fifteen minutes of prep time and forty or so minutes of baking. Our kuchen turned out great with a nice golden crust and a not too sweet, jam-like blueberry filling. Fresh blueberries were added on top of the filling and each bite of the kuchen sent us to blueberry heaven!

Update February 11, 2008: The first picture in this post won the DMBLGIT Feb 2008 Edibility Award! We are very honored to win the award. It's the first time the blog has won anything! You like us, you really like us!

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I love Chinese sticky rice. It contains several of my favorite ingredients — sticky rice, Chinese sausage and mushrooms. I know I'm going to have Hungry Bear's sticky rice at least twice a year, at Thanksgiving dinner and during Lunar New Year (Vietnamese/Chinese New Year) festivities. It's become a traditional dish for us on these holidays.

I really enjoy the rich flavors from the Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, oyster sauce and soy sauce that get infused into the sweet, sticky rice. Chinese-American families often serve sticky rice in place of stuffing during Thanksgiving. It's great with turkey, roasted duck or just by itself. I didn't grow up eating this dish, but I now consider it a comfort food.

Hungry Bear started making Chinese sticky rice using a recipe from Grace Young's The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. The recipe has dried scallops and shrimp in it, which takes additional time to prepare. Over the years, Hungry Bear has altered Grace Young's recipe, excluding the dried seafood, in order to save prep time. The scallops and shrimp are a little too fishy for my tastes and I prefer my sticky rice without them.

Another common ingredient in sticky rice is chestnuts, which Hungry Bear's mom often includes in her recipe. A frequent reader, Judy, told us that her aunty used bamboo shoots in her sticky rice. Next time, Hungry Bear plans on adding either chestnuts or bamboo shoots for some variety.

Until then, I've included two Chinese sticky rice recipes. The first one is Hungry Bear's and the second recipe with dried seafood is Grace Young's, in case you want all the flavors of traditional sticky rice. I need to warn you that Hungry Bear's version makes a huge amount of rice. She likes to cook in mass quantities and all recipes are bear-size, which means they are quadrupled! Hungry Bear loves leftovers, therefore the need to cook in abundance.

I'll never complain about the large quantities because there's no such thing as too much Chinese sticky rice!

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This past week, Hungry Bear and I hosted Sunday night dinner. I love pulled pork, but I don't like most BBQ sauces. They are usually too sweet and tangy for my palate. Instead, I decided to make pulled pork with all of my favorite Vietnamese flavors. The entire menu was...

• Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey
• Vietnamese Pulled Pork Sandwiches
• Fumi Salad (Asian Cole Slaw)
• Pumpkin Loaf

The Vietnamese pulled pork was fantastic with great flavors from the caramel sauce, lemongrass and chili peppers. Although I was very pleased with the results, I want to make it one more time and tweak the recipe a little bit before I share it with you.

However, I will share our curry cauliflower soup recipe. We first had this soup last year at Chapeau!, which is our favorite neighborhood French restaurant. It was served as an amuse-bouche. We loved it so much that we had to try to replicate the recipe.

The soup is easy to make with only a few ingredients. It's a simple puree of roasted cauliflower and onions with a touch of curry powder and cayenne pepper. Our version of the soup is a golden brown color due to the slightly caramelized onions. We'd rather have the extra flavor from the browned onions than to try to keep it a creamy cauliflower color.

The key ingredients in this soup are the honey and cayenne. After drizzling the honey on the soup, don't stir it in before you eat it. The honey is not there to sweeten the soup, but rather to contrast the spiciness. The recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne, but I recommend adding as much cayenne as you can tolerate enjoyably. The soup needs to have heat to get the full effect of the soothing, sweet honey.

At dinner, the soup was a big hit and a great starter course. It will definitely warm you up on a cold day!

SNDsters: Garry, Karen, Mark, Jane, Hungry Bear, Chuck

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As I mentioned in the last post, we had ice cream cookie sandwiches for dessert last Sunday. The cookies for the sandwich are thick and chewy chocolate chunk cookies. The cookies on their own are absolutely delicious with a glass of milk or coffee. Our friends have enjoyed the chocolate chunk cookies many times, so we decided to add a new twist and treat them to ice cream too.

The thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies recipe can be found in Cook's Illustrated's The New Best Recipe cookbook. We really like this recipe because it produces cookies that have a great chewy texture. Another reason why we like the recipe is the butter is melted as opposed to softened, so there's no pre-planning required to make the cookies.

When Hungry Bear and I make the cookies, we don't use chocolate chips, but instead create chunks by chopping bars of bittersweet Scharffen Berger chocolate. Additionally, to create a jagged surface, we break the dough ball in half, rotate the jagged halves 90 degrees and jam them back together. When you click through the slideshow, you'll see a round dough ball and one that was split in half and put back together. A round dough ball will create a cookie with a smooth surface, whereas, a jagged dough ball will produce a cookie with a nice textured appearance. This is one of the tips that you'll find at Cook's Illustrated.

Back to the ice cream sandwiches, they were great and completely over the top. The sandwich is just an excuse to eat two chocolate chunk cookies with some ice cream. I don't think we'll make ice cream cookie sandwiches again any time soon. It was just too gluttonous. But I completely enjoyed my chocolate chunk ice cream cookie sandwich last Sunday!

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