Poultry

The barbecue sauce in this recipe is so easy and quick to put together, you may never rely on store-bought sauce again. And what’s more, you probably already have all of the necessary ingredients in your kitchen.

This recipe is based on a Mexican dish created to use up leftovers. For an authentic touch, use fresh Mexican cheese (queso fresco) or aged (queso añejo) in place of feta. Look for both in specialty food stores and Mexican markets.

Look for hoisin sauce and rice vinegar in the Asian foods section of your supermarket. Although ingredients vary, hoisin is generally made with soybeans, chiles, and spices. It’s used as a seasoning at the table and in cooking.

A crisp salad dressed with oil, vinegar, and herbs is a light alternative to a side of pasta. The chicken makes wonderful leftovers. Reheat it for 10 minutes, and try it in a sandwich with a little extra sauce on the side.

You can mix and match the listed ingredients to create your own version of this main-course salad. We used store-bought roasted turkey, but chicken also works well.

Served with Carrot-Cumin Slaw (recipe below) or potato salad, this chicken dinner is perfect picnic fare. Leftover chicken makes a great lunch the next day.

This classic French sauce also makes an excellent topping for fish, such as seared salmon or trout. For four servings, steam 1 1/2 pounds trimmed asparagus until crisp-tender, toss with butter, and season with salt and pepper, as desired.

To serve this Mexican mainstay, ladle the hot soup into bowls, and then let everyone pick and choose from among the suggested garnishes.

In my mom’s saigon kitchen, the food processor, a modern luxury appliance, was reserved for making giò, while the old-fashioned hand-crank meat grinder was used for delicious liver pâtés like this one. We regularly enjoyed it, tucked into bánh mì or simply smeared on a baguette slice. In the traditional Viet interpretation of French paté, pork or beef liver, pork meat, and fatback are seasoned with lots of garlic and sometimes Cognac and Chinese five-spice powder (a substitute for French quatre épices). Some cooks add tapioca starch or flour as a binder, and, when available, they line the mold with caul fat for encasing the meat mixture. The paté is then steamed, steamed and baked, or baked in a water bath, the method usually depending on whether or not the cook has an oven. When my mother came to the States and switched from pork to chicken for making giò, she began saving the left over livers for this light, elegant pâté. She also started making the pâté in a food processor. If you want a more intense liver flavor, use half pork and half chicken liver, or make an all-pork version, cutting the liver into 1-inch cubes before processing. Don’t skimp on fat, or the results will be dry and tough. Meat today tends to be lean, and this recipe needs the fat to achieve the right taste and texture. You will end up with a large pâté—the better to impress others with your efforts.

A cornerstone of Vietnamese cooking, this smooth meat paste is the most important recipe in the charcuterie repertoire and forms the base of three sausages in this chapter. It is also used to make meatballs (page 86), acts as the binder for Stuffed Snails Steamed with Lemongrass (page 42), and may be shaped into dumplings similar to French quenelles and poached in a quick canh-style soup (page 61). This recipe, which calls for chicken rather than the traditional pork, is my mother’s modern American approach to gio. Chicken, a luxury meat in Vietnam that is affordable here, is easier to work with and yields a particularly delicately flavored and textured paste. Additionally, chicken breasts and thighs are readily available at supermarkets, while pork leg, the cut typically used, isn’t. A recipe for the pork paste appears in the Note that follows.

Raised by resourceful and persnickety parents, I always cut and bone my own chickens because I know I will get the pieces the way I want them. Left over bones and scraps are frozen in plastic bags for future stock-making sessions. When the bags are full, it is time to make stock. If you don’t maintain a supply of bones in the freezer, you can buy necks, backs, and wings at the meat counter of the supermarket or at the butcher shop. Many Asian cooks don’t salt their stock, assuming that salt will be added later. I prefer to salt my stock lightly, which allows me to gauge its overall flavor better. If time is tight, make the quick version included in the Note that follows.

In the Viet kitchen, tuong refers to various heady sauces made from fermented beans. It might be thin like soy sauce, which some folks call nuoc tuong (tuong water), or thick like this sauce, which accompanies Southern Salad Rolls (page 32), Beef and Jicama Hand Rolls (page 30), chicken meatballs (page 86), and Delightful Crepes (page 277). There are several ways to prepare this sauce, and my family’s version is based on nuoc leo, a sweet and earthy sauce from central Vietnam made with pork liver. We substitute lighter-tasting chicken livers, which are saved from whole chickens used for other dishes. Sweet hoisin sauce tempers the chile and garlic, while tomato paste brightens the sauce, which otherwise would be dull brown. At Vietnamese restaurants, this sauce is often called peanut sauce and made with peanut butter, a nontraditional ingredient. It is convenient and tasty, but not as complex and deeply flavored as this liver version. If you do not like liver or are a vegetarian, make the version in the Note that follows.

Several years ago, my mom told me about one of the most memorable foods of her childhood: deep-fried birds the size of sparrows. They were prepared by itinerant Chinese cooks who would stop by her parents’ home and offer various specialties, the best of which was this crunchy delicacy, eaten bones and all. The cooks never revealed their trade secrets, but several times Mom spied them dunking the birds in boiling water before frying them. The recipe sounded so simple and delicious that I decided to try to re-create the dish using quail. This recipe is the result of my experiments. Rather than boiling the birds, I steam them, which better preserves the flavors of the marinade while gently cooking the meat. Then I coat the quail with seasonings that help to color and crisp their skin. After the coating dries, I quickly deep-fry them. The moment you bite into one of these freshly fried birds, the tangled aromas of rice wine and ginger come wafting out. Look for quail at Asian and Mexican markets, where they are often sold frozen in six-pack trays. Check carefully before you buy, avoiding packages with freezer burn.

Few dishes can be at the magnificence of a whole roast duck, a treat that most Vietnamese purchase at Chinese barbecue shops. For an easier at-home version that is just as rich and succulent, I use whole duck legs (thigh and drumstick). They are relatively inexpensive at Asian markets, and they freeze well, which means you can stock up for when you don’t have time to shop. The legs are steamed first, during which most of the fat melts away, and then they are roasted to crisp the skin. Finally, the honey glaze is applied, which puts a lacquer like finish on the skin while the meat stays moist. A simple hoisin dipping sauce adds a little extra sweetness to each bite. Present the duck with Everyday Daikon and Carrot Pickle (page 192) or Tangy Mixed Vegetable Pickle (pages 194) and accompany with a green vegetable stir-fried with just salt and a touch of sesame oil, a light soup such as Creamy Corn and Shiitake Mushroom Soup (page 74), and rice.

This is my riff on the classic Vietnamese pairing of chicken and fresh straw mushrooms. Because only canned straw mushrooms are available here, I have used fresh oyster mushrooms, a good stand-in with a subtlety that complements the snow peas. If oyster mushrooms aren’t available, use fresh shiitakes, removing their stems and slicing the caps into 1/4-inch-thick pieces. For a light meal, serve this quick stir-fry with Napa Cabbage and Shrimp Soup (page 58), a simple stir-fried vegetable like thinly sliced summer squash, and, of course, rice.

The ingredients of this intensely flavored chicken dish resemble those of a curry, but here they are stir-fried, rather than simmered together in a sauce, to retain their individuality. You’ll taste the sweetness of coconut milk and shallots, the heat of chiles (fresh and dried in the curry powder), and the citrus of lemongrass, plus the bell pepper adds color and softness. My mom makes a similar dish using whole skinless drumsticks. She cooks them first on the stove top with very little water so the meat absorbs all the flavors. Then she finishes the drumsticks in the oven, so the outside is dry while the inside stays moist. Her dish, which she regularly prepared for our family when I was growing up, inspired this quicker approach.

In this dish from my youth, the chicken is marinated and poached before it is battered and fried until crunchy. Poaching the chicken first enables you to deep-fry in less time, yields more tender meat, and mellows the pungency of the garlic. Small pieces of bone-in chicken are traditionally used, but I prefer to fry boneless, skinless thighs for convenience. Rolling the chicken in panko (Japanese bread crumbs) yields a crispy shell that keeps for hours.

Fragrant and delectable, these meatballs are made from a fine chicken paste seasoned with toasted ground rice and enriched by tiny bits of pork fat. Although they are traditionally grilled, I cook them in the oven, where they are less likely to overbrown or even burn. They are served with rice paper, lettuce, fresh herbs, and a sweet-and-spicy sauce, and diners assemble their own hand rolls. You will need to soak 16 to 18 (8- or 10-inch) bamboo skewers in water for at least 45 minutes before you thread the meatballs onto them. At the table, set out kitchen scissors or knives for diners to cut their meatballs in half before wrapping them. (Like cherry tomatoes, these meatballs are hard to eat if left whole.) This is a hands-on dish that requires only a dinner plate at each place setting.

From French Poule au pot to Chinese Hainan chicken to this classic Vietnamese preparation, poached chicken offers clear, pure flavors. In my family, we enjoy the hot poaching broth as the soup course (canh) and slice up the cool chicken for the main dish. The chicken is strewn with fine strips of fresh, tender young lime or lemon leaves, to provide an unusual bright, citrusy contrast. Thai lime leaves, known also as makrut or kaffir leaves, are particularly wonderful if you can find them. At the table, we ladle the broth into our bowls and add a squirt of lime juice and a spoonful of rice. In between eating bowls of broth, we eat the chicken and citrus leaves with more rice, dunking them first in a sauce of lime juice, salt, and pepper. Add a simple stir-fried vegetable and you have a satisfying meal. Purchase the best-quality chicken available for this recipe. Immersing it in an ice bath once it is cooked produces tight skin that Asian diners appreciate: a bit chewy and somewhat crunchy but not greasy. Also, as the chicken cools, a delicious layer of gelatinous juices forms between the skin and meat. Since cooling takes a while, you need to poach the chicken about four hours in advance of serving, or even the day before. Traditionally, the chicken is cut through the bone into small pieces for serving, but I prefer to slice the meat, except for the wings, off the bone.