Sweetened condensed milk lends its rich, creamy magic to everything from crispy carnitas to homemade yogurt.
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This microwave eggplant recipe from Andrea Nguyen requires none of the usual fuss of salting and straining the nightshade beforehand. Cooking a whole eggplant in the microwave effortlessly, evenly, and quickly cooks its flesh to soft, silky tenderness while preserving its antioxidant-rich skin. Cut into thick slices and drizzled with generous spoonfuls of flavorful sauce, microwave eggplant is an easy and delicious side dish that comes together in 20 minutes flat. Just be sure to poke holes all over the eggplant before microwaving it to prevent it from exploding.
Inspired by a dish from 2018 F&W Best New Chef Kevin Tien, cookbook author Andrea Nguyen's sensational grilled shrimp are brushed with a garlicky, basil-infused butter during grilling. The shrimp get an extra punch of flavor from the dipping sauce, which is spiked with Thai green chiles and tempered with sweetened condensed milk, which lends a beguiling, creamy roundness that tames the feisty, fiery condiment.
Perfect for entertaining, these grab-and-go sliders star tender carnitas topped with a creamy tomatillo-avocado sauce sandwiched between pillowy homemade rolls.
A cross between Chinese milk bread and Portuguese and Hawaiian sweet bread, these tender rolls are easy to make and are perfectly sized for sliders. Sweetened condensed milk pulls double duty in this recipe, adding a subtle sweetness to the rolls and a rich, glossy sheen to their tops.
Cookbook author Andrea Nguyen first sampled Vietnamese yogurt coffee in Hanoi years ago. To make it, Vietnamese-Style Homemade Yogurt is swirled with coffee and sweetened condensed milk to make a drink that's creamy, tangy, and bittersweet with a caffeinated boost. This refreshing drink is best presented in a tall, slender glass. The yogurt starts out floating on top; when stirred, there's a beautiful marbled effect. Employ inky, robust coffee made from a dark or medium-dark roast for Viet flair. For a more generous serving, simply double the recipe.
One of the best things I ate recently was Rachel Yang’s nori fried rice at her restaurant, Joule, in Seattle. I was so bowled over by its richness and piscine umami-ness, I went home to Santa Cruz, California, and worked up a version of my own. You don’t need anything fancy for the nori dust. Just whirl up sheets of sushi nori with a small amount of coarse salt in a blender. Then deploy the nori dust to add vegetal savoriness and visual flair; it’s a nimble seasoning and handsome garnish. To ensure the rice grains take on flavors and fry up to a delicate deliciousness, use dry-ish rice. Long-grain and medium-grain are my go-tos, but feel free to try this with basmati or even leftover takeout rice. Fry it in two batches to ensure the grains cook fast and evenly.
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With China being right next door to Vietnam, there are many Sino-Viet dishes that have worked their way into the Vietnamese repertoire and become favorites. Satisfying roast duck–egg noodle soup, called mi vit tiem (“mee veet team”) in Vietnamese, is one of them. It’s super popular in Saigon (my birthplace, aka Ho Chi Minh City), but it’s also time-consuming to make from scratch (you have to roast a duck).To work the hearty noodle soup into my regular rotation, I developed an easygoing roast chicken iteration for my book, Vietnamese Food Any Day. All the ingredients come from the regular supermarket.Then I got to thinking about leftover Thanksgiving turkey and came up with this recipe, which uses an Instant Pot for the broth to extract maximum flavor fast. People often make turkey soup with the holiday bird’s uneaten parts and bits, so why not cook up an Asian noodle soup?The trick is to help the American Thanksgiving turkey take a turn toward the East. It’s achievable with a hefty amount of ginger and aromatics like star anise and Chinese five spice, plus soy sauce and sesame oil. Chinese rock sugar typically adds a slight sweet roundness to the broth to create an umami-rich finish, but I’ve found that Fuji apple can achieve that result, too.Dried shiitake mushrooms lend savory, earthy depth. Thin, delicate ones from the regular supermarket soften in about 15 minutes. (If you use fancy, thick mushrooms from an Asian market, expect a longer soaking time.) When dried mushrooms are unavailable, use fresh shiitake or cremini mushroom, and add ¾ cup water to the Instant Pot before cooking.For the turkey parts, simply use the backbone, add a wing or two and maybe the neck and gizzard if they’re available. You can combine raw and roasted parts, if you like. This is a great recipe for whether you’re roasting a traditional whole bird, using a spatchcocked (butterflied) turkey, or the separate parts.Once the broth is done, you can hold it in the fridge for days. Over the post-Thanksgiving weekend, serve up bowls of roast turkey–egg noodle soup, which I’d call mi ga tay (“mee ga tey”), which literally means egg noodle soup with Western chicken.
I’m a cook who loves to hover over a pot and observe the transformation of ingredients, but let’s face it, most people just want to get into the eating action. That’s where modern, time-saving appliances like pressure cookers such as the Instant Pot come in. They can’t do everything well, but they’re fabulous for certain things, like dishes that normally require long simmering and slow cooking.This Vietnamese beef stew (bo kho, pronounced “baw caw”) from my book, Vietnamese Food Any Day, is the perfect example. It appeared in the February issue of Food & Wine prepared in a Dutch Oven with a three-hour cook time. This French-inspired stew is a dream simmering on your stovetop with the aromas of lemongrass and star anise wafting through your home. But you can still enjoy the same flavor in about half the time with a little help from your Instant Pot.I quickly discovered that adapting traditional recipes for the pressure cooker isn’t as simple as cutting regular cooking time. Appliances require you to adjust to their functionalities. Here’s a quick rundown of the changes I made to the recipe and why. And don’t worry if you don’t own an Instant Pot; you can get the original Dutch oven version of the recipe here.Pressure cookers extract and meld flavors fast. But there’s a lot of hedging and guessing because once the lid is locked in place, you can’t see what’s going on inside the pot. Cooking happens as pressure builds, during actual pressure cooking, and while the pot depressurizes. From past experiences with pressure cookers, I guesstimated that the beef would require about 40 percent of the normal cook time (1 hour and 15 minutes) for the beef to become tender-chewy. That’s why in the recipe below, the beef is cooked at high pressure for 10 minutes and naturally depressurized for 18 minutes; also factored in is a little cooking time at the front end as the pressure builds.There’s a difference between a regular stovetop pressure cooker that ventilates and whistles while it works and an electric multicooker like the Instant Pot that operates in silence. Whereas some evaporation happens in stovetop models, there’s little to no moisture loss in machines like the Instant Pot. To compensate, I cook with less liquid in a multicooker than in a regular pressure cooker.During the last step, when you’re simmering the beef with the carrots, that’s when things start to slide back into comforting and familiar. The lid is off while things bubble away—you can the verify the meat’s tenderness and witness the cooking first-hand. At the end of the day, the Instant Pot recipe conversion was a success. My home still smelled wonderful—and I had an entire extra hour all to myself. Combining old-school recipe with a modern appliance turned this weekend project into a deliciously doable weeknight ditty.