Nuoc Cham aka AP Fish Sauce...

I shared this recipe on my guest post over at Opera Girl Cooks, but enough people have asked me how to make this stuff that I thought I should share it here, too.
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If you've ever had cha gio (jchah ZUH) (deep fried spring rolls) at a Vietnamese restaurant, you've likely gotten a bowl of nuoc cham (noohk JCHAHM) to go with it. Nuoc cham is that sweet and salty fish sauce based dipping sauce that seems too watery to be considered a sauce in the context of most other cuisines but somehow works beautifully with the crunch of the roll, the savory of the filling, and the crisp of the lettuce and herbs you're supposed to wrap around the roll (which I notice a lot of people don't - I think they're missing out).

BBQ pork bun, dressed with nuoc cham

It's also the dressing you get when you order a bowl of bun (boohn), whether it be topped with aforementioned cha gio, grilled pork, shrimp, or any combination of the three.

a salad of red lettuce, Persian cukes, red onion, and fresh
mint and cilantro, dressed with a
nuoc cham based dressing

And in my kitchen, it is a mother sauce of sorts. I most often use it to dress bun, but I also modify it to make regular salad dressing or to make a lighter dipping sauce for goi cuon (the fresh summer rolls), and most recently, to dress a Thai style slaw to throw on some jumbo hotdogs. With an extra squeeze of citrus and a splash of oil, it makes a great quick marinade for fish.

our Labor Day dinner of Thai slawdog, the slaw
also dressed with some leftover nuoc cham

And the best thing is it keeps indefinitely in the fridge. You could make some today for your noodle salad, and whatever's left over will taste just as good with the spring rolls you decide to make a month from today.

BASIC NUOC CHAM
Makes about 3/4 cup sauce

- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons water
- 3 Tablespoons fresh lime or lemon juice
- 1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1 to 2 cloves garlic, crushed

Stir or whisk all ingredients together in a bowl until sugar is completely dissolved.

basic nuoc cham

nuoc cham with minced red onion for an added layer
of savory flavor, sliced fresh serranos for heat,
and a splash of oil for extra body

There are so many ways you can dress up the basic sauce. For dressing, you could add a splash more of an acid element like fresh citrus juice and some oil. You can add fresh mint, basil, or cilantro. A dollop of sriracha or chili garlic paste is also a great addition, as are a few slices of fresh chilies such as jalapeno, serrano, or even habanero.

If you have questions or suggestions on ways to use it, please do comment. :)

Off to wash dishes and select more recipes for the book...

shinae

Bibim Bahp aka Magic Mixed Rice...

We (half) Koreans love to mix crap into our rice.

Brine from kimchi, broth from stew, soy sauce from salted crabs... If it's salty, spicy, pungent, delicious, it goes not only on, under, or with, but literally *into* the rice. We take that wide, flat spoon and mix, fold, and incorporate until every bite, almost down to the grain, is uniformly seasoned. And we love eating our rice this way so much that the concept has given way to its very own title and national dish of sorts:

BIBIM BAHP (BEEbeem BAHP)

aka bibim bap aka bibimbap aka 비빔밥 (that's for the googlebots...)

before mix

Which literally means mixed (bibim) rice (bahp).

after mix

While the general idea of the dish is loosely composed of steamed rice topped with mostly vegetable matter, some meat but not much, and some kind of sauce (jahng), there is a *proper* or *typical* preparation that you'll find at most restaurants that serve it - rice, nahmool bahnchahn made of spinach, soybean sprouts, carrots, maybe even fern bracken (gohsahri), a little bit of boolgogi, fried egg on top, and maht (seasoned) gochoojahng (red chili paste) as a dressing. Sometimes, it comes in an earthenware pot that gets so hot that it browns and crisps the rice on the bottom, and then it's called dohlsoht (earthenware) bibim bahp.

before egg

But here in our little bungalow near the sea, bibim bahp is our go-to meatless meal for those days when we're halfway through that ten pound pork butt from the Meximart and feeling a little pigged out, or there's lots of veg sitting in the fridge and begging to be eaten (nothing like nahmool to make little food out of big veg), or possibly maybe perhaps even when we're purposely being extra healthful with ourselves...

after egg (but before mix!)

Aside from being healthy and tasty, the best thing about this dish is that it's easy and adaptable. You could go to the trouble of making nahmool, or you could make it a raw veg meal (I really like the crunch of finely shredded cabbage, some julienned carrots and cucumber, a little chopped green onion and lettuce for extra roughage), do some combination of the two, maybe add in a little bit of browned ground beef or leftover boolgohgi, do the egg, don't do the egg... The mind boggles with the possibilities.

BIBIM BAHP
Serves 1

So assuming you can

- make rice per package instructions,
- fry an egg sunny side up, over easy, or over medium (whichever way you prefer, but you really should leave a little running yolk),
- make nahmool (recipe here) or just chop up some raw veg, and
- make boolgohgi (marinade recipe here), brown some ground beef or just omit meat altogether,

and put about

- a cup or cup and half of that rice into a large bowl (you'll need the space for all that mixing),
- top it with about a cup of veg in whatever proportions you like,
- top that with about a quarter cup of meat if you choose,
- and finally top all that with a fried egg

the only other useful thing I might be able to share with you here is a recipe for what I think is a tasty maht gochoojahng (which is the seasoned red chili paste that comes with any order of bibim bahp) with which to dress all that mishmashed goodness, about 1 tablespoon and half for one serving of bibim bahp for me, the same, more, or less to taste for you. :)

MAHT GOCHOOJAHNG (aka mat gochujang)

- 1/2 cup gochoojahng (고추장) If you don't have a Korean or general Asian market in your area, you can buy it online from H-Mart or koamart.
- 1+1/2 Tablespoons sugar
- 1+1/2 Tablespoons water
- 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce

before stir...

Stir all ingredients together until all the sugar is dissolved.

af-... Well, you get the picture.

Super simple to put together and really tasty - spicy from the red chili, a little sweet from the sugar, savory from the garlic, an extra punch of umami from the soy sauce, and a lightly nutty finish from the toasted sesame oil. It's great as a raw vegetable dip when you're feeling a little schnacky, as a seasoning for kimchi fried rice, as a base for spicy pork boolgohgi marinade, and as a dip/sauce for sahngchoo ssahm (Korean lettuce wraps). Lots of mileage for little effort.

One deliciously dressed and composed bite of bibim bahp after another with some of your mom's really good kimchi, and there's no questioning the magic in the mix...

shinae

Pico de Gallo You Could Drink Through A Straw... (But I wouldn't advise it.)

Sometimes, one little tweak in technique or process using the same set of ingredients makes a noticeable difference in the result. This is culinary jackpot for someone (not saying who) driven by an almost unnatural, and perhaps even unhealthy, preoccupation with efficiency. 

Juicy, tangy, fresh tomatoes on your salad are one flavor experience quite different from the mellowed, sweet, almost caramelized flavor of the roasted or stewed ones on your pasta. The marinade that's grilled with your steak or pork chop is a totally other, yet complementary, thing to the salad dressing made using it as a base and drizzled atop some fresh spring greens and veg... 

And pico de gallo - with the separate bits of savory onion, hot jalapeno, zesty tomato and fragrant cilantro, all steeped in the refreshing juice of fresh lime - transforms into a luscious, piquant salsa suitable for dressing, dipping or marinating, when blended and emulsified with a little bit of oil.

While this blended version is not necessarily superior to the chunky stuff (it's certainly not as pretty, and there are definitely instances in which the chunky works better for me - atop grilled fish and meats especially), I've found that one advantage to blending/emulsification is that the stuff keeps its flavor and integrity longer than pico de gallo, which sweats a lot of liquid within a few hours of making, throwing off the flavor balance and altering the texture of the individual components in a way I don't enjoy as much. 

It's like a hot and spicy frappucino almost...

This stuff will keep in the fridge, original flavor intact, for a good 4 to 5 days. And since it can be made with canned tomatoes, it's a good perennial recipe to have on hand.

BLENDED PICO DE GALLO
Makes about 1.5 cups

• 1 cup finely chopped tomato seeded, pulp removed OR 1 cup canned, crushed tomatoes
• 15 to 20 whole stems of cilantro, cut or hand-torn into 1 inch segments
• 1 small clove garlic, rough chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano (optional for me - some days I'm feelin' it, others not so much)
• 1/2 cup chopped onions
• 1 jalapeno, rough chopped
• 1 Tablespoon fresh lime juice to start
• 1+1/2 Tablespoons neutral flavored oil
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt + a pinch OR 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar

Lo siento for leaving you out of la foto, Cebolla...

Throw it all in a blender, pulsing a few times at first to pull the ingredients into the blade, then blending for a minute or two until it's nice and smooth, no chunks left. 

You may want to add a little salt at this point if your produce is specially juicy (or if you just like things saltier). Maybe a pinch more sugar if the tomatoes and lime gave it a little too much tang for your liking. Or perhaps another squeeze of lime juice if your tomatoes are a little flat. If you do adjust the seasoning, don't forget to give it another quick (15 to 20 seconds) whirl to ensure all the seasonings are evenly distributed.

Still holding up the next day... I know.
Kinda looks like poo on a spoon.

Obviously great for tortilla chips, tacos, burritos (like we made this weekend). 

We polished off the last of it with some carrot sticks while watching one of those *TRIPPY* Miyazaki flicks with the monsters. (What kind of salsa is that dude smokin'???)

Que te disfrutes,

shinae