Last week, my brother, Trung, left me a message saying that he didn't see asparagus crab soup (sup mang tay cua) on the site. In Vietnamese, asparagus is mang tay and literally translates to "bamboo French". Anyway, I think it's one of his favorite soups.

So, I asked my mom for her recipe and she gave me the steps to making the soup. It's amazing the amount of recipes she keeps in her head. I have a hard enough time remembering just one of them. That's one of the reasons why we started documenting everything on SND.

The soup is easy to make and is essentially an egg drop soup with asparagus and crab. Like making pho, a charred onion is used to add more flavor to the stock. Hungry Bear and I don't like our asparagus mushy and brown, so I only cooked it for a few minutes. The soup turned out great and tasted like my mom's, which made me and my tummy very happy!

There you have it, Trung. Ask and you shall receive. Now, does anyone else have a Viet recipe request for my mom?

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Stuffed cabbage soup is not the most photogenic dish I've made recently. While it lacks the prettiness or sophistication of other meals, it makes up for it in flavor and comfort. I love stuffed cabbage, but it takes too long to make on a workday. So I took all the ingredients of stuffed cabbage and transformed it into an easy to make soup.

I basically made a cabbage soup with ground beef and served it over rice. The steamed rice is made separately and not cooked in the soup. A typical Vietnamese family-style meal usually consists of bowls of rice, a meat or fish dish, stir-fried vegetables and a bowl of soup (canh). The soup is ladled over the rice. Two examples of canh are bitter melon soup and sour shrimp soup.

Naturally, I applied this canh concept to my stuffed cabbage soup and had the rice on the side. The soup is a cinch to prepare and can be ready in thirty minutes. I wanted to use ground turkey in the soup, but my butcher ran out early, so I used ground sirloin instead. To allow the cabbage to shine, I only put a small can of diced tomatoes in the recipe. Remember, I have a low tart tolerance and I love cabbage.

The end result is the flavors of stuffed cabbage in the form of a hearty soup. Hungry Bear and I enjoyed it immensely, and it kept us warm and comfy for a few meals. If you ever get a craving for stuffed cabbage, but don't have the time or energy to make the traditional rolls, definitely give this soup a try.

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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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In our quest to eat lighter and less rich meals, I made Italian white bean and spinach soup today. It's been rainy and chilly in San Francisco, so a nice bowl of warm, comforting soup was perfect for dinner.

I wanted a quick fix meal and opted for canned cannellini beans. Sometimes you just don't want to presoak beans or simmer them for an hour. And instead of using the traditional pancetta or ham, I replaced it with healthier ground turkey. It's a super simple recipe that can be made in thirty minutes or less, definitely less if you aren't snapping pictures.

The soup has great flavors from the herbs, onions, garlic and ground turkey. Add a dash of hot sauce, and it's even better. We had crusty Italian country bread with the soup. It's a simple, satisfying soup that's easy to make. What else would you want, besides a bowl right now?

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Jane and Mark love braised oxtail, as do I. Every very few months, we get a major craving for oxtail, so I made it for Sunday night dinner this past week. The last time I braised oxtails, I used a Ming Tsai recipe, which had too many ingredients. Sometimes I love his East meets West fusion food, but this dish was not one of them.

I wanted a more traditional Chinese recipe and stumbled upon an aromatic Chinese oxtail stew recipe by Jennifer McLagan. The ingredient list was simple, and I really liked how the sauce is refrigerated overnight, which makes removing the fat easier. The orange zest and juice were the only things I didn't like in the recipe. I think this stems from my aversion to orange beef.

Of course, I had to screw around with the recipe and incorporate other ingredients. For ideas, I immediately thought of my favorite Vietnamese noodle soup, bún bò Hue, which uses oxtails and lemongrass. Instead of the orange in McLagan's recipe, I replaced it with lemongrass and a lime. I also increased the amount of star anise, added whole cloves, shiitake mushrooms and Thai chili peppers for some much needed heat!

My additions make the ingredient list seem long, but the dish was easy to prepare because there's hardly any chopping. Once the oxtails were simmering in the oven, the aromas were simply heavenly! The smell reminded me of Vietnamese pho from the star anise and cloves. After three hours of braising, the oxtails were very tender and the meat was falling off the bone. It was hard not to eat them immediately, but the sauce was on the greasy side and the fat needed to be removed, so begrudgingly, I strained the sauce and threw it all in the fridge.

The next day, I skimmed the layer of fat that collected on top of the gelatinous sauce. It's not a pretty process, but it makes the dish healthier. This is my way of rationalizing that it's okay to eat oxtail on regular basis. Once the sauce was re-heated, I poured it over the oxtails and added the shiitake mushrooms.

After an agonizing hour of braising, the oxtails were finally ready and were covered in a thick, dark sauce. We served them over jasmine rice and a side of bok choy. The oxtails were garnished with diced scallions and a squeeze of lime juice. They were fantastic and flavorful from the soy and aromatics. The sour lime juice was a nice addition and cut the richness of the meat and sauce.

The savory sauce was wonderfully soaked up by the plain rice. The shiitakes gave the sauce an earthy taste and a strong mushroom fragrance. We really enjoyed the added flavor and texture of the shiitakes, but they are completely optional. I called my recipe Chinese braised oxtail stew, and while the flavors are predominately Chinese, it's really a melting pot of Asian flavors, which "live together in perfect harmony."

For dessert, we intended to make something light with fruit, but somehow ended up serving root beer floats. What's that quote? "The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry." That pretty much sums up our dessert choice.

After all the rich and heavy meals recently, Hungry Bear and I agreed to cook lighter for a little bit. Let's see how quickly my love for braised hunks of meat foils this pact.

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

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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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