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.

Actually, it's cardamom, cumin, coriander, chili pepper, peppercorn and red onion roasted cauliflower. It's easy to make and has wonderful flavors from the Indian spices. The past few months, we've seen purple and orange cauliflower at the grocery store and finally tried them in this roasted cauliflower recipe. Wouldn't you want colorful cauliflower too?

Purple cauliflower looks nice and pretty raw, but turns dark when cooked, like most other purple fruits and vegetables. We couldn't taste any differences between the white, purple and orange cauliflower, but the spices and caramelized red onions are the predominant flavors in this dish.

According to this All About Cauliflower article, purple cauliflower...

"cooks faster than white cauliflower and has a little milder taste. When cooked, its color changes from purple to green. Purple cauliflower can be substituted for white in most recipes."

We recently went to Ubuntu in downtown Napa, which is one of the hot new dining spots in wine country. Ubuntu is a vegetable restaurant and yoga studio. What can I say, we're in California. The yoga classes are held upstairs, but you have to walk through the restaurant to get to the studio. Imagine clearing your mind and body with some yoga, and then walking downstairs to dine on daily-harvested organic food, with a focus on farm-fresh produce. Brilliant!

We really like the fact Ubuntu labels itself as a vegetable restaurant and not a vegetarian place. Unlike many vegetarian places that try to make vegetables into meat substitutes, Ubuntu simple celebrates the beauty of the vegetable itself. We've dined at Greens and Millennium, two vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco, and walked away unimpressed. Ubuntu on other hand left us wanting to come back for more. Two of the highlights of our meal were...

• Cauliflower in a cast iron pot
  roast-puree-“couscous”, vadouvan spice, toast
  
• Chickpeas with burrata
  olive vinaigrette, pepper quenelles with mint and bread crumbs

Both dishes were delicious and I was taking notes with each bite, knowing that I wanted to try to recreate them at home. We were impressed by the presentation of the chickpea salad, especially the beautiful red quenelles of pepper puree. The crunchiness of the breadcrumbs in the puree was a surprise. We were expecting them to be a little soggy since they were mixed in with the puree, but somehow they remained crispy.

We love garlic and use it in just about every savory dish we make. We also cook in mass quantities and I always dread peeling the garlic. I hate it when my fingers get sticky from the garlic juice and the skins stick to my finger. It's not a difficult task. It's just mundane.

We recently discovered Trader Joe's The Emperor's New Cloves — one clove per head garlic. It's super easy to peel and doesn't have a sticky skin. I'm guesstimating one clove of this garlic is about five to six normal cloves of garlic. It's sold in a little wicker basket and contains six heads of garlic for $1.69.

As far as taste, it's a little milder than white-bulb American garlic. And it's perfect for roasting. It's so much easier and better than roasting normal heads of garlic. You don't have to deal with all the skin, squeezing and mess. The roasted one clove per head garlic is just one big lump of sweet, mellow garlic!

A few weeks ago, I had a major craving for pulled pork after seeing this pulled pork sandwich from Simply Recipes. I love any big hunk of meat that is slow-cooked or braised. But after looking at the ingredients in the recipe, I was hesitant to make it because it seemed too vinegary.

I have a low tart tolerance and generally dislike anything with a lot of vinegar. And I have major issues with BBQ sauce, Tabasco and other vinegar sauces that dare call themselves hot sauces, but that's a sore subject for another time. When I have barbecued meat, I make sure the BBQ sauce is on the side. I want to taste the meat first and the sauce second!

Instead of making pulled pork with a traditional vinegar or tomato based sauce, I decided to create a Vietnamese pulled pork with my favorite Vietnamese ingredients. I used the flavors from my mom's braised chicken in caramel sauce with lemongrass and chili peppers (ga kho xa ot) as the inspiration for my pulled pork. My mom's ga kho xa ot is my favorite Vietnamese dish and it's the first thing I eat when I visit my parents.