Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with
Speaker:Bruce
Speaker:and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Scarborough.
Speaker:And together with Bruce, we have written three dozen cookbooks, including the latest, the
Speaker:You can pre-order it on all the big sites, Barnes and Noble, that big Amazon thing that exists,
Speaker:You can pre-order it.
Speaker:It has 125 air fryer recipes, but more importantly, seven.
Speaker:Hundred and four photographs.
Speaker:Oh my god, ed,
Speaker:every step of every recipe say you will get it right every time.
Speaker:And you can watch Bruce literally cook.
Speaker:It's him doing it.
Speaker:He's standing there.
Speaker:Uh, you, it's his hands.
Speaker:It's him doing it in front of a our counter in.
Speaker:Our very kitchen making.
Speaker:We wanna know what our kitchen looks like.
Speaker:Get a book to the
Speaker:recipe he's on, on our dishes, in fact.
Speaker:So, I mean, this is really done.
Speaker:It was done with a professional photographer.
Speaker:It, he did a great job, as Eric always does.
Speaker:Did a great job on the book.
Speaker:But shout out to Eric Medkit.
Speaker:You should follow him on Instagram.
Speaker:His feed is wonderful.
Speaker:Beautiful food shots, but you should, you should follow us on Instagram too.
Speaker:Well, yeah, of course.
Speaker:But beyond that 704 photographs, look and cook Air Fryer.
Speaker:Bible available for pre-order now.
Speaker:But we're not talking about air fryers necessarily.
Speaker:In this podcast, we're gonna talk about why people don't cook.
Speaker:The number one reason why people.
Speaker:Don't cook anymore.
Speaker:It's an intriguing reason.
Speaker:We have, of course, our one minute cooking tip.
Speaker:Bruce has an interview with you and Lou, the author of Vegetarian Vietnamese, which I'm very excited about, and we're
Speaker:People don't cook for the most part because they're afraid of failing.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:People watch social media, they see these so fascinating.
Speaker:Beautiful.
Speaker:Full videos and they feel bad about themselves because they can't make it look that way.
Speaker:I watch a lot, as you can imagine.
Speaker:I have a TikTok channel cookbook, mark, and I watch a lot of cooking videos.
Speaker:Of course, my very handle cookbook Mark is gonna give me a lot of cooking content.
Speaker:So on TikTok, I see a lot of stuff, and what I see is either unbelievably gross stuff,
Speaker:Yeah, I, I don't want to impugn anyone's taste, but for me, this is the.
Speaker:This is the kind of food I grew up with and I just can't deal with a block of Vel Veta and three cans of cream, of celery
Speaker:So I see a lot of gross stuff, but the other thing I see is a lot of unbelievably aspirational stuff.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I, there's this French baker that I see all the time, and he's un well, he's very sexy, but he makes the most.
Speaker:Unbelievable pastries.
Speaker:He's always got like a, you know, 20 kilo bag of flour over his shoulder and he's pouring it from
Speaker:And it's so aspirational.
Speaker:I'm even I, and having written all these cookbooks, even I look at it and go, oh my gosh, I could never do that.
Speaker:You know, 14 hour lamination process to make this quan.
Speaker:And it, I mean, it's beautiful to watch him do it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But it's so daunting.
Speaker:So you look at that and you think, oh, I could never do that.
Speaker:And then you try to cook and it gets messed up.
Speaker:So it's interesting.
Speaker:There is, uh, the seafood company, seapak, S E A P A K, they sell frozen fish and they commissioned.
Speaker:A poll from one poll and they did a survey and it was really interesting because now of course they wanna find reasons
Speaker:But what came outta this poll is very useful for everybody in the industry to know.
Speaker:64% of people asked said they've had at least one.
Speaker:Major mishap in their kitchen.
Speaker:Uh, I I have no, I have I, and I'm a professional and I have
Speaker:Me too.
Speaker:Bruce had a rehearsal with this.
Speaker:You've heard me talk about this with this Baroque group, these things with, he had an all day rehearsal.
Speaker:I said, I'll make dinner that night.
Speaker:I made a big pot of Marcella Hasan's Bolognese, which.
Speaker:I used to have the recipe a hundred percent memorized.
Speaker:I used to make this all the time.
Speaker:Um, it, and it's one of these five hour bolognese recipes.
Speaker:It's insane.
Speaker:So basically all day.
Speaker:But I made chickpea pasta to go with it.
Speaker:Chickpea spaghetti.
Speaker:And I undercooked the spaghetti.
Speaker:The spaghetti.
Speaker:I wouldn't say it's a major fail.
Speaker:I mean, we ate, we had friends over and we ate it, but the spaghetti was not.
Speaker:Completely tender.
Speaker:So I guess that's a bit of a fail.
Speaker:Well, it was a fail, but almost a third of the people surveyed said, because of these fails, they feel
Speaker:I find that sad.
Speaker:And what were the things that happened?
Speaker:Well, burning food was the top of the chart.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So you burn and we've all burned something followed by, and I love this one, burning a pot.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You can't say anything.
Speaker:Oh, that was a long time ago.
Speaker:In New York, once we put a pot on the side, when we lived in Manhattan, we put a pot on of water to boil it.
Speaker:To make ice tea or something.
Speaker:I think so.
Speaker:I don't remember exactly what, and we went away to the theater for.
Speaker:Hours to the theater and came home and there was this really wild metallic smell in the apartment.
Speaker:And we walked in the kitchen and there was this pot glowing.
Speaker:Oh my God, it's amazing.
Speaker:They haul 17 story building and burned to the ground and um, you know, basically, basically we ran water
Speaker:And in this survey, three in 10 people, so just under a third, who cook, say they are embarrassed by their cooking.
Speaker:And this is.
Speaker:This really, really very sad.
Speaker:I think this speaks so much to uk, US Canadian, uh, culture.
Speaker:I think it speaks to European culture, probably to other places as well, but I'm not as familiar with that culture.
Speaker:This is just a.
Speaker:An endemic problem.
Speaker:People think that they're not doing it right and they're going to be embarrassed.
Speaker:It's so interesting.
Speaker:We've moved away from Victorian morality, away from Victorian sexuality, away from all this
Speaker:That I grew up in, in the American South, and yet people are still.
Speaker:Embarrassed.
Speaker:Embarrassed by something as silly as cooking.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And of course, as I said, this was a frozen seafood company that did this, you know, that sponsored the survey.
Speaker:And they want to come out of this saying, oh look, we should be really pushing our food.
Speaker:And so if you're embarrassed by that, don't cook.
Speaker:You should buy our seafood and serve that for dinner.
Speaker:That's not an answer for every day.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:And there was good news that came outta the survey.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:70% of the people in the survey actually, uh, watch cooking tutorials.
Speaker:And I can say that we know this, but Bruce does classes for ButcherBox, which is a drop.
Speaker:Shipment meat company, organic grass fed the
Speaker:subscription meat service.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And he does cooking classes for them.
Speaker:And they are always packed to the gills with people watching
Speaker:thousands Register for my online classes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And we do classes for milk.
Speaker:Street.
Speaker:In fact, we have an air fryer class coming up.
Speaker:We do.
Speaker:Um, it's a, it's a very limited enrollment, I think just down to 25 or something.
Speaker:25 people.
Speaker:And by the way, if you're interested, you can go to Milk Street, look at their workshops.
Speaker:You'll find Bruce and Mark with a level 2 0 1 more advanced air frying class.
Speaker:Use the code Air Fryer 15.
Speaker:If there are still spaces available, you'll get a discounted.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I have to tell you, the last time I looked, there was one space available.
Speaker:So, alright, so you know, I.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:But anyway, the last time we did an air frying class was to open to more general people at, at Milk Street,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It was gone.
Speaker:It was gone.
Speaker:It was totally filled up.
Speaker:So people are clearly liking online cooking tutorials.
Speaker:And, uh, this is, we know this from our end of the business, 61% other people in the survey
Speaker:Oh, thank goodness.
Speaker:I have to tell you, if you don't know, cookbook sales are up.
Speaker:Across the board in the industry and hard cover cookbook sales are up the most, which is really fascinating.
Speaker:So what we wanna do now is give you some tips to avoid some of those really common mistakes so that you don't feel bad about your
Speaker:So, One of the big mistakes that came out in the survey is people said they forgot a crucial ingredient.
Speaker:So how do you avoid that?
Speaker:Well, mis plus is away.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:Set up all your ingredients before you start cooking.
Speaker:Chop your onions, chop your celery.
Speaker:Don't start sauteing.
Speaker:And then the next thing is add your two pounds of cubed beef.
Speaker:And then you're gonna first go to the refrigerator and take it out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, so at this concert dinner that I gave, which I'm sure you've heard about on this podcast for Bruce's
Speaker:There's three recipes from our book, the Instant Pop.
Speaker:I made a vegan chili.
Speaker:I made a ba get this, a bacon and bean chili.
Speaker:It was so good.
Speaker:And then I made this firehouse chili, which is maybe with fresh tomatoes, not canned tomatoes.
Speaker:And it's not firehouse cause it's hot firehouse, like what you would make in a fire station.
Speaker:Um, and I made all of these three chilies, but I spent a morning laying all my ingredients out on sheet pans.
Speaker:You're all ready to go, so that when the instant pots were ready to go, cuz these sees cooked in like 10
Speaker:In traditional French cooking.
Speaker:And when you go to chef school, that's called Misam plus, putting everything in its place that will keep you from
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:One of the other things that people said they did
Speaker:All the time was mixing up salt and sugar.
Speaker:Bruce has one answer.
Speaker:I have a different answer.
Speaker:My answer is I have never, ever, ever kept sugar out on the counter for this very reason.
Speaker:Sugar is in a pantry or in a cupboard, not on the counter.
Speaker:I know a lot of people put things out on the counters like they're flour and the sugar and all that stuff.
Speaker:If the sugar is, if you have to go get the sugar, if the sugar is not instantly visible, you are
Speaker:Well, the other thing you could do is label it.
Speaker:You know, you can, I have no problem putting a little, tiny, little sticky note that says salt or sugar.
Speaker:If you're not sure, taste it.
Speaker:Just put a little bit in your tongue, you'll know.
Speaker:But putting salt in your coffee instead of sugar is really not a cool thing.
Speaker:And although the kits are putting.
Speaker:Salt in the espresso grounds.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And they're also putting brown sugar.
Speaker:I don't get that.
Speaker:I don't get that either.
Speaker:It comes up the machine,
Speaker:but they're putting like three or four grains of Malden salt on top of the espresso grounds before they pull it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But you don't want to mix it up and put sugar in the risotto.
Speaker:I mean, that's So taste it or label it.
Speaker:And that is a really, really good way.
Speaker:And there's one other thing.
Speaker:Um, people often use the wrong piece of equipment.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Oh, recipe for failure.
Speaker:And it is a recipe for failure.
Speaker:And really, honestly, uh, the one part of the answer here is that you have to find recipes that use the equipment that you have.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you also should consider buying, uh, I don't know, a rubber spatula and a wooden spoon.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Or a,
Speaker:because they each have different uses.
Speaker:They do.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:One will scrape the bottom of a pot while you're cooking a sauce or boiling milk.
Speaker:One won't.
Speaker:One will allow things to burn.
Speaker:One will make it more even.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it's really important.
Speaker:I know we've all made ramen in a coffee pot and a drip coffee maker.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Not really made for that, but okay.
Speaker:Don't try and like roasted chicken in there.
Speaker:It's just not gonna work.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I've seen a lot of TikTok videos.
Speaker:I'm back to that again, of people putting steaks in toasters and I'm always like, no, that's the, that's just first of
Speaker:I mean, I, I see a fire happening.
Speaker:I want to know what the bottom, where it collects the crumbs.
Speaker:What does that look like down there?
Speaker:You don't want to know who cleans that out and who, and clean.
Speaker:Nobody cleans and the toasters are tight.
Speaker:So who gets in there and cleans the coils?
Speaker:And does your piece of toast that you make then taste like a steak?
Speaker:The next one?
Speaker:Well, that's the good part.
Speaker:No, until that fat's rancid in a week.
Speaker:Oh, that's really no.
Speaker:Use the proper equipment, you won't have fails.
Speaker:We want you to succeed in the kitchen.
Speaker:We want you to be proud of your cooking.
Speaker:We think it's really important to keep cooking both for your health and for your mental wellbeing and to share food with people.
Speaker:And you can't do that if you don't cook.
Speaker:And I wanna say one last thing before we jump to our next segment.
Speaker:Bruce has a rule about cooking.
Speaker:And this, I, I've always thought was a great rule, uhoh, and that is don't, don't be embarrassed.
Speaker:And here's the other thing.
Speaker:Always have a dozen eggs.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:I love that rule when you have people over and what does that mean?
Speaker:That means if you really screw it up and you really make a mess out of, I don't know, manicotti or
Speaker:Dinner was a wreck and here we are.
Speaker:And you know what?
Speaker:A bottle of red wine and scrambled eggs and toast is a delicious dinner.
Speaker:That's, uh, that all makes for a great dinner.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Or an omelet.
Speaker:Oh my goodness.
Speaker:To me, A little cheese omelet if you screw up the roast, why not?
Speaker:Yeah, why not?
Speaker:So listen, always have a dozen eggs on hand and don't be embarrassed.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Before we get to our next segment, our one minute.
Speaker:Cooking tip, let me say that we have a newsletter and it is going out and it is not content related to this podcast, but different,
Speaker:Um, it's going out and you could sign up for that by going to our website, bruce mark.com.
Speaker:On there is a signup form for the newsletter.
Speaker:Um, and I wanna say, That while I see people signing up, I can see numbers of people signing up.
Speaker:I cannot see your name or your email address, nor can I capture it, nor can I sell it, nor can the service I use capture it or sell it.
Speaker:I've got all the privacy locked on it, and you can always unsubscribe to that newsletter at.
Speaker:Any moment with unsubscribed buttons that I make sure appear at the bottom of every newsletter
Speaker:So if you'd like to get our newsletter, go to Bruce and mark.com and sign up there.
Speaker:Okay, up next, as is traditional, our one minute cooking tip,
Speaker:dump your metal pie tins.
Speaker:And get yourself a clear glass.
Speaker:Pyrex, yes, absolutely.
Speaker:Pipe plate.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:You will be able to see the crust browning through it.
Speaker:You'll know when it's done.
Speaker:No more soggy crust.
Speaker:Timings in recipes are just a guide, right?
Speaker:They're never exact because my stove's not the same as your stove.
Speaker:So, Using a glass Pyrex clear pipe plate will allow you to see
Speaker:pie plate, not cake pan, not nine by 13, 13 pan.
Speaker:This is pie.
Speaker:We're talking about pies because you want to see how brown they're getting.
Speaker:No more soggy bottoms.
Speaker:Also, if you're upping your, uh, Asian cooking, and Bruce is about to have an interview with an Asian
Speaker:A Pyrex pipeline is a much better vehicle for putting in a steamer.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:If you're making, uh, let's say some dish that requires it to be steamed in a vessel, ribs Ooh, ribblets and black bean sauce.
Speaker:Yeah, because you can see up into it and see how it's cooking from the bottom when you place it on the steamer basket in the walk.
Speaker:So, Pyrex s Yes, please.
Speaker:Up next.
Speaker:Bruce's interview with you and Lou, the author of Vegetarian Vietnamese, a brand new cookbook and
Speaker:Today we're speaking with you and Lou, a food photographer and cookbook author, born in
Speaker:And her latest book is Beautiful, delicious recipes called Vietnamese Vegetarian.
Speaker:Welcome, Uyen.
Speaker:Hi, Bruce.
Speaker:Nice to meet you.
Speaker:So while vegetables are a huge component of traditional Vietnamese cooking, you start your book
Speaker:So what made you wanna write this book?
Speaker:Well, I am a part-time vegetarian.
Speaker:I eat a lot of vegetarian meals and.
Speaker:I, when, when I go shopping, my bag is full of vegetables and um, I've been bought up by my mom and
Speaker:And anyway, it is such a huge part of.
Speaker:The Vietnamese cuisine, they never claim to be vegetarians, but they eat 70% vegetables and only 20% protein.
Speaker:So I thought I would, um, write a book based around plants and eating more kindly.
Speaker:It was more about being conscious to the environment and, um, seeing where we can do without meat and
Speaker:Well, your book starts off with, The best food ever to come out of Southeast Asia, chewy tapioca, skin
Speaker:Do you have any advice for people who are too afraid to try and make their own dumplings at home?
Speaker:Well, I reckon that if.
Speaker:You decide that you want to make dumplings at home and you've never done it, that you have a free afternoon
Speaker:There are so many tutorials online as well that you can look at.
Speaker:If you are not sure about pleading, just you know, just be mindful that maybe the first five or so
Speaker:This.
Speaker:Just, just so easy.
Speaker:I mean, kids are bought up folding dumplings and it's, it's just not as frightening as it seems because it's,
Speaker:You also have an ingenious appetizer recipe in your book that uses dried tofu skin knots.
Speaker:Now, I've seen these in Asian markets all the time, and I don't usually know what to do with them.
Speaker:Why don't you explain what they are and how you use them in the book with this incredibly sounding recipe.
Speaker:So they're basically tofu sheets that are pressed together.
Speaker:They're tied into a knot, and then they're dried.
Speaker:So you use them as a protein replacement.
Speaker:So instead of like chicken or meat, you know, in lots of things like.
Speaker:Phrasing dishes or stews.
Speaker:People would add them in with the meat, um, for the additional texture or they would use it to replace the meat.
Speaker:And it's, um, it's, you know, it's uh, full of protein as well and it's really delicious.
Speaker:Got that lovely bite.
Speaker:So I use them like to replace chicken wings and tofu knots.
Speaker:Kind of look like chicken wings as well.
Speaker:I coat it in flour and it's deep fried and it's with its lovely sauce and it's, it's just, it is really, really delicious.
Speaker:I.
Speaker:I'm, I'm upping myself cause it's my recipe, but, um, I always win friends of that recipe.
Speaker:It is so creative.
Speaker:I have never seen tofu skin, not deep fried like that, and that just seems like the most
Speaker:I think you were brilliant with that usage of that ingredient.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Is tofu a widely used ingredient in traditional Vietnamese cooking?
Speaker:And if so, are there many varieties of tofu?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Um, it's used all the time in Vietnamese cooking and on a Vietnamese dinner table, you know,
Speaker:There's always at least one tofu dish like the lemongrass, tofu, or, um, tomatoes with tofu, you know, tofu, that's fried tofu.
Speaker:It's deep fried, you know, it's cooked in like loaves of ways, like braising.
Speaker:It's always paired with plenty of vegetables.
Speaker:Although it, it's vegetarian, people don't consider it.
Speaker:Oh, um, you know, this is a vegetarian dish and I'm only gonna make it if someone who is a vegetarian is coming round.
Speaker:Um, it's made, you know, every day.
Speaker:So there's like tofu puffs that you can get and those tofu knots.
Speaker:I said there's also tofu skins, just the regular tofu blocks in different, various forms of, um, texture like silk and soft.
Speaker:Medium.
Speaker:Firm, firm, extra firm.
Speaker:We tend to like the, sort of the medium firm range cuz it's, it's not so chewy and it soaks up all the flavors
Speaker:You just brought up a dish, uh, tofu with tomatoes, so, I wanna talk about that for a second cuz I was surprised
Speaker:And as you mentioned, the tofu with tomatoes and you have spinach and basil that, are these recipes in your book geared to a
Speaker:No, I didn't gear them to the western palate.
Speaker:Tomatoes are, Common and are used every day.
Speaker:But unlike, um, Western recipes, you know, tomato is never blitz.
Speaker:It's never blended, and it's never made into a sauce really.
Speaker:It's always used as a whole vegetable or fruit, like in a soup, for instance.
Speaker:It's cut.
Speaker:Largely so that you can chew it.
Speaker:Vietnamese people, people love texture and chewing things, so they never really like things to be blended down.
Speaker:Um, so in in order recipes, they'll, they'll hugely be whole.
Speaker:So for instance, the tomato and tofu recipe is really traditional.
Speaker:That's, that's had at least twice a week in my family.
Speaker:But things like the stuffed tomatoes, so I've stuffed it with mushrooms and tofu.
Speaker:But traditionally people would stuff it with, um, mints, pork and prawns and mushrooms.
Speaker:So I've just adapted, you know, uh, the very traditional recipes to be vegetarian.
Speaker:How do you cook vegetarian?
Speaker:Vietnamese food without fish sauce.
Speaker:How is that even done?
Speaker:That's a, that was a huge challenge that I bought on myself because I used fish sauce with everything.
Speaker:Um, it's a staple, so it, instead of salt Vietnamese people would use fish sauce.
Speaker:I'm so happy that I, um, wrote this book because I found so many replacements for fish sauce,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So you can buy them in jars and they've been fermented, which is like extra goodness for you.
Speaker:Um, but they taste quite.
Speaker:Puny and, um, fishy.
Speaker:So that's a really good replacement.
Speaker:It's like, has so much umami flavors.
Speaker:And, um, there's a great, I dunno if you have it in the US but we have a, a seasoning called yondu,
Speaker:It's like a soy sauce, but much nicer than a soy sauce.
Speaker:And it, it also has that funk where it's, it's fermented so it tastes.
Speaker:Slightly fishy.
Speaker:And of course you can use soy sauce and there are so many condiments on the market
Speaker:And, and going back to the tomato question, it's so interesting because the Italians, when they were, they fell upon tomatoes.
Speaker:They were really suspicious of it, I think because it's a nightshade, um, and thought that it would poison everybody.
Speaker:And it was the same with the Chinese when it was brought over.
Speaker:And one of the first dishes that tomatoes were used in, interestingly enough, is the scrambled eggs
Speaker:So that must have come, um, down from China to Vietnam.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:And I love that you have a whole chapter.
Speaker:In Vietnamese vegetarian on noodles, you cover everything from chewy and bouncy sweet potato
Speaker:Oh, that sounds so good.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:To crispy noodles with all the broccoli.
Speaker:So I love the idea of noodles fried into a crispy base for all sorts of toppings in this case.
Speaker:All the broccoli.
Speaker:Can you explain that dish to me?
Speaker:So the noodles, they're fresh noodles, which you can buy from the shop.
Speaker:Or if you, you were to make noodles, so if you were to make them, if, if you know about making pasta and
Speaker:So the same goes for me when I buy, um, fresh noodles from the.
Speaker:On the shop, I spread them out onto a tray and I let them have half a day to dry on one side and half a day to dry on the other side.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And at that stage, I can keep them in an airtight box and I can keep them for a couple
Speaker:But in this case where I'm frying deep, frying the noodles after they've been for like a day or.
Speaker:Or half a day or whatever.
Speaker:Then I b blanched them very quickly.
Speaker:Not to cook them, but just to moisten them and then dry them very well, and then throw them in a deep fat fryer.
Speaker:At that stage, I use cooking chopsticks to spread them out, so it's like a nest.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And then you just ship them out after like a minute or two and they, they puff up as well, which adds to the gorgeousness.
Speaker:And in the meantime, uh, I love broccoli, so I love using the broccoli leaves, tender stem, broccoli, or just regular.
Speaker:Broccoli.
Speaker:Yeah, so this is, um, traditionally had with loads of vegetables, stir fried with beef, but here we are just using like broccoli
Speaker:So you have some bits that are really crispy and crunchy and some bits that are getting soft, and you sort of
Speaker:I want to ask you about making rice noodles at home.
Speaker:You have a delicious looking recipe called asparagus.
Speaker:Rice noodle rolls with mushrooms and pumpkin, and I've always seen rice noodle rolls steamed, but you offer
Speaker:Yes, that's because, um, they're called mango in Vietnamese, by the way.
Speaker:I went to Vietnam a few years ago and um, my aunt makes them for breakfast, so she sells them on the
Speaker:But the thing is her husband built the drum, which is like a canvas over like a steaming pot, and then there's
Speaker:And then coming back to uk, I couldn't, I mean, I found a, You know, the maker, but the, the canvas was just
Speaker:So I just made a batter.
Speaker:And I just thought, I'm just gonna fry it and see what happens.
Speaker:And it really, really works well, you know, if, if you are in fear of noodles and these rolls look really
Speaker:Well, doing it in a skillet sounds super easy and I think it's hard enough for people to wrap their head around working with
Speaker:So, Putting it into a skillet makes it so much easier.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I, I have to talk about soup because you can't discuss Vietnamese food without talking about fu.
Speaker:So what's the difference between FU and regular noodle soup?
Speaker:So it's kind of like, what's the difference between marinara sauce and carbonara sauce?
Speaker:It's like that.
Speaker:It's same but different.
Speaker:So fur is a, a unique recipe where it uses ese and cinnamon, um, coriander seeds and um, maybe fennel seeds and black cardin and
Speaker:You can either do a vegetarian one, a chicken one or a beef one, and a main ingredient as well that goes in every single.
Speaker:One of those, um, is a burnt or charred onion and chard ginger.
Speaker:So this is what makes fur and it's also consumed with flat rice noodles.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Whereas if we look at the mushroom, um, soup or um, a soup with vermicelli noodles, they're just like
Speaker:So that's the difference.
Speaker:Well, let's talk about that mushroom noodle soup, because the photo of that is so, Gorgeous and
Speaker:You use dried mushrooms, you use dried ramen noodles.
Speaker:But are there any tips for buying dried mushrooms?
Speaker:Like what should we look for and what should we avoid?
Speaker:It depends on how rich you like.
Speaker:Your mushroom soup to taste.
Speaker:If you buy like dried wild mushrooms, they tend to be, um, slightly, the flavor is milder and if you get shiitake mushrooms,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I also noticed that the tiny little shi mushrooms taste stronger than the bigger shi mushrooms.
Speaker:So, If you really love your mushrooms, you can get to know them.
Speaker:But then, you know, I wouldn't use pacini, um, mushrooms as much in this suit, but if I, I had it hanging
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's, it's just gonna be too rich.
Speaker:And, um, and also the secret is to use some of that delicious, um, mushroom juice that you get from rehydrating them,
Speaker:Uyen Luu.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Your book Vietnamese Vegetarian is full of amazingly gorgeous and delicious recipes.
Speaker:Most of them don't look terribly hard.
Speaker:Thank you for your book, Vietnamese Vegetarian and for spending some time talking about your cooking with us today.
Speaker:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker:I wish that we didn't live so rurally.
Speaker:I wish that I could get vegetarian Vietnamese.
Speaker:I guess you have to make it for me.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:But to be honest, even where we live, it's very difficult to find ingredients because the thing about Vietnam,
Speaker:Herbs and greens and grassy things and leafy things and all these very ubiquitous stuff when you live in Vietnam.
Speaker:But even if you're in a big city, you could find them where we live, I can't find certain things.
Speaker:There's a, there's a failed mill town just about 15 minutes from our house, and it, you know, used to hit big New England
Speaker:Uh, and a Vietnamese family has come in and they bought the.
Speaker:Bowling Elliots.
Speaker:They did what kind of bowling alleys?
Speaker:Duck pin bowling, duck pin, I don't even know what that is.
Speaker:Duck pin bowling alley.
Speaker:This is how rural we are.
Speaker:Duck pin balling.
Speaker:I didn't, what the heck.
Speaker:So they bought the bowling alley and they've opened a bubble tea shop and they've tried to open a FU restaurant.
Speaker:They did the fu
Speaker:and I believe they also have a nail salon.
Speaker:Oh gosh.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:So, but you know, they've tried this and I always wonder, how in the world do they think in this very depressed
Speaker:But again, they keep expanding.
Speaker:The Bubble Tea Place just opened a few, few weeks ago.
Speaker:People like bubble tea, I guess they go across the street, they see the line across the street, a
Speaker:That must be, I mean, listen, this is a town that is so depressed that even Wendy's closed.
Speaker:So it's not, we're not talking though.
Speaker:We do have two Dunking Donuts, but Wendy's closed, so it's not a big thing and yet, Again.
Speaker:Bubble tea.
Speaker:Bubble tea.
Speaker:They're making it.
Speaker:Before we get to our last segment of the podcast, let me see, it would be great if you could rate this podcast.
Speaker:If you could drop down on an Apple or Google menu or any platform you're on, you'll find a way to give it stars five.
Speaker:Five would be great.
Speaker:And if you could, six is even better.
Speaker:They don't.
Speaker:Really offer six.
Speaker:And if you could write a review, that would be fabulous because again, that is the only way that this podcast can
Speaker:Um, up next, our typical last segment, what's making us happy in food this week?
Speaker:The tapioca dumplings from Uyen's book, vegetarian Vietnamese, and Bruce has made these several times now.
Speaker:Oh, so I've made a lot of hark in my life.
Speaker:You know the clear wrappers filled with shrimp, but these are different.
Speaker:These Vietnamese tapioca skins are made with just two ingredients, tapioca starch, and boiling water.
Speaker:And you have to need it from the boiling water.
Speaker:So it's really hard in the hand.
Speaker:So I put gloves on, I put surgical gloves on, helps take away some of that heat and you need it, and you fill it with an herb and nut.
Speaker:And I used a soy protein, which you don't have to use.
Speaker:You can use just all vegetables and you.
Speaker:Spoil them instead of steaming them and they're chewy and they're clear and they're, they're very chewy.
Speaker:It's imagine they're take those, they're very sticky.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Imagine those bubble teas coming outta the bottom of the thing, being smooshed into a wrapper.
Speaker:Oh my God.
Speaker:I love that story.
Speaker:They're a, a wild thing now.
Speaker:And let me say that this is labor intensive work.
Speaker:So this lazy boy wouldn't ever do such a thing, but Bruce has made, why aren't you lucky?
Speaker:Have a husband who'll make it for you.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:And in fact, I'm lucky that when I just came home from visiting my mom in St.
Speaker:Louis and my brother and being out there and taking mom to a million doctor's appointments, I don't know, shoes, and
Speaker:So we did them.
Speaker:And I came home and I was a bit exhausted, even though my flights were all perfect to get me back home, uh,
Speaker:So I had to drive back home.
Speaker:And when I got home, Bruce had made me something that I asked for.
Speaker:He made me Japanese Catsu Curry.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Which is a.
Speaker:Pork.
Speaker:In this case it was pork Bruce Air fried that pork cutlet and
Speaker:I pounded them down and coated it in Panco?
Speaker:Yeah, usually they're deep fried and, and I'm glad he airf fried cuz it was healthier for me.
Speaker:And he made a couple of vinegar, salad, some cabbage and some dcon, right?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:He surfed it over rice, the cutlet with a fried egg on top.
Speaker:And then you make this curry ca, this curry sauce.
Speaker:And what'd you put in it?
Speaker:Onions.
Speaker:Onions and water chestnuts and water chest, the.
Speaker:Thick, spicy curry that laed over the whole plate.
Speaker:It's, it's kind of prototypical Japanese comfort food.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Prototypical Japanese kid food.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Like after school food kind of thing.
Speaker:Like mac and like, like craft mac and cheese.
Speaker:The nice.
Speaker:Oh, great.
Speaker:You 7,000 calorie after school snack.
Speaker:Yes, exactly.
Speaker:But it was still so.
Speaker:Comforting a big bowl of this in New England.
Speaker:It's just getting into the time where we can open our doors.
Speaker:It's still chilly at night, but we can just now start to open our doors and let the fresh air in.
Speaker:We had the doors open.
Speaker:It was a little cold inside the house, and let me tell you, I stay with my mom in a guest apartment at the retirement
Speaker:It's always five.
Speaker:Thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
Speaker:Which one mile from the sun cuz the old people are always cold.
Speaker:So I stay in a, the guest suite there and I'm burning up the whole time I'm there, but, but, um, it was nice
Speaker:That's our podcast for this week.
Speaker:Thanks for being a part of it.
Speaker:We really appreciate it.
Speaker:There are so many podcasts out there.
Speaker:We really appreciate your spending time with us.
Speaker:Thank you for being on this Food and cooking journey with us.
Speaker:We hope we've given you a good time and given you some tips about food and cooking that you can take away and make for yourself.
Speaker:Make useful for yourself.
Speaker:We hope to see you back next week hand.
Speaker:For more tips, more photos, more food, more conversation.
Speaker:Join our group Cooking with Bruce Mark on Facebook where I will post these podcast episodes.
Speaker:I post videos,
Speaker:and let me say that those videos also go up on TikTok under a channel called Cooking with Bruce and
Speaker:Mark.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:As well as our YouTube channel, cooking with Bruce and Marsy.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:It's all a big thing.
Speaker:You can't forget, and you'll be back again for another episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.