Steam

Satay is an Indonesian dish where, typically, foods are skewered and then grilled or broiled. But to me satay is all about the peanut sauce that’s served alongside the skewers. I love peanut sauce! I made a stovetop version with just broccoli and cauliflower accompanied with that amazing peanut dipping sauce, so it would be a really easy meal for one. The sauce would also be great with some baked tofu.

This is a great dish for a hot summer day when you need something light. The fresh green beans and grape tomatoes make for a delicious salad that’s nice for picnics, or to take along on a day when you don’t have time to stop at home for lunch.

Giò lua is the most widely eaten of all the Vietnamese charcuterie. A kind of Vietnamese mortadella, the smooth, light-colored sausage is sliced and tucked into baguette sandwiches (page 34), eaten with regular or sticky rice, or presented as part of a charcuterie assortment with pickled vegetables. Cut into matchsticks, it is used as a garnish for bún thang, a popular Hanoi noodle soup (page 217). Although giò lua is stocked in the refrigerated food aisle of nearly every Vietnamese deli and market, I make mine at home. It’s easy. All you need is some meat paste, which may be freshly made or thawed, a piece of banana leaf, and some foil. You shape the paste into a log, wrap it in the foil and then in the leaf, and then boil it. The finished sausage will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator, but it is at its best soon after cooking, when the flavor of the banana leaf still lingers on the meat.

Smooth, well-seasoned meat and seafood pastes have many uses in the Vietnamese kitchen. Here, a pinkish orange salmon paste is shaped into small cakes before undergoing a two-step cooking process: an initial steaming to cook the cakes, followed by broiling, grilling, or frying to crisp the outside. The cakes are sliced and served as an appetizer or dunked into Simple Dipping Sauce (page 309) and eaten with rice for dinner. If you have enjoyed Thai fried fish cakes (tod mun), these will remind you of them. When my mother came to the States, she substituted salmon for the rich-tasting tuna she had used in Vietnam. I have since prepared the cakes with the ahi tuna available here, but the results were too firm and dry. The fattier salmon is superior. If you can’t find skinless salmon fillet, buy 2 1/3 pounds of skin-on fillet and remove the skin before you cut the fish into chunks. The cakes can be frozen after they are steamed and then thawed and crisped for a good last-minute meal or snack. The recipe is also easily halved, but I advise you to make the whole batch and tuck away the extras for when you need a quick dish.

This steamed fish recipe, given to our family by our Chinese Vietnamese friend Uncle Su, is special. During cooking, the bold seasonings mix with the sweet fish juices to create a wonderful sauce for flavoring the flesh and a bowl of hot rice. Fresh salmon steaks or fillets are a fine substitute for the heads, which my parents prefer. You can also try the sauce atop other moderately flavored fish that have some richness to their flesh, such as sablefish. Avoid lean, dense fish, such as halibut or swordfish, which dry out and toughen when steamed.

Presented on a platter just moments out of the steamer, a whole steamed fish reflects the cook’s care and attention to obtaining the freshest ingredients possible. Ideally, the fish was plucked live from a tank at the market. Barring that, it met its end shortly before the cook selected it from a bed of ice. This recipe, with its mixture of pork, ginger, onion, mushrooms, and cellophane noodles, is one of the classic Viet ways to steam fish, with the various flavors and textures melding beautifully during cooking. The flavorings are light, so select a mild-tasting white-fleshed fish to complement them. I like striped bass, which is readily available and has delicate flesh, as well as bones that aren’t troublesome; a whole trout weighing about 1 1/2 pounds is another good option. The dish is perfect for entertaining because most of the work may be done hours in advance. Add White Tree Fungus in Clear Broth (page 76), a simply seasoned stir-fried vegetable, and rice for an elegant meal.

Ground cooked mung beans are used as an ingredient and a garnish in Vietnamese cooking. In both roles, they contribute a buttery richness, a highly desirable characteristic known as bùi. You must steam the yellow hulled and split beans, as they easily turn mushy and lose their nuanced flavor if boiled. A stainless-steel Chinese steamer is ideal because the tray is easy to manage and clean. If the tray holes are larger than 3/16 inch in diameter, line the tray with parchment paper, leaving a few holes uncovered for heat circulation. This is particularly important if you are steaming a small quantity of beans and don’t want to lose too many to the steamer bottom. It is not as crucial with a larger amount because the beans expand and stick together as they cook, forming a barrier of sorts. Dried mung beans expand to about three times their original volume during cooking, so if you need 1 cup cooked, start with 1/3 cup raw dried beans.

Made of a simple rice flour batter, these dainty and rich rice pancakes are akin to blini. Bánh bèo are eaten all over Vietnam and boast a number of regional variations. They come in sweet (ngot) and savory (man) varieties, and in sizes ranging from 1 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter. They may be served directly from the small ceramic dish in which they are steamed or transferred to a serving platter. This recipe for savory bánh bèo features a classic topping of fragrant bits of briny shrimp, rich scallion oil, and mildly sweet chile sauce. I use small, inexpensive dipping sauce dishes for the molds. Look for them at Asian housewares and restaurant-supply stores and at some Asian markets.

Shaped like half-moons, the plain buns are used like rolls: they are split open, a morsel of roast pork, duck, or char siu (barbecued pork) is tucked inside, and if there is a sauce, a little is drizzled over the meat. The resulting tiny sandwich is a great hors d’oeuvre or starter course. Steamed buns made from scratch take time. It is worth the effort to make your own dough for filled buns, but when you want the buns only as a small side dish, a shortcut may be in order.

Rice is king in the Vietnamese kitchen, but wheat also plays a role in foods such as these steamed buns. A classic Viet riff on Chinese bao, the buns encase a hearty vegetable-and-meat mixture, with a creamy wedge of hard-boiled egg in the center. Traditional bao are made from a yeast-leavened dough, but many Vietnamese Americans leaven the dough with baking powder. This New World innovation is faster and the dough is easier to manipulate. The buns are also more stable in the steamer than the yeasted version, which can sometimes deflate during cooking. Viet delis sell soft ball-sized bánh bao, but I prefer more manageable baseball-sized ones. I use bleached all-purpose flour, which yields slightly lighter-colored buns than unbleached flour. Like all bao, these buns are great for breakfast, lunch, or a snack. They will keep in the refrigerator (stored in an airtight container) for a few days and are easily reheated, making them a great homemade fast food. For additional flavor, serve them with a simple dipping sauce of soy sauce and freshly cracked black pepper.

Here , simple dough made of glutinous rice flour, water, and salt is shaped into small, round disks and steamed on banana leaf circles, which impart fragrance and prevent sticking. The result is bánh day, eggshell-white cakes that are eaten in pairs with slices of Viet sausage slipped between them. The cakes are sweet and chewy, while the sausage provides a savory counterpoint. If you don’t have time to make the sausage at home, pick some up at a Viet market or deli.

A harbinger of good fortune, xoi gac is traditionally served at Viet weddings and Tet celebrations, paired with roast pork or sausages. As my mom says, “Red is a lucky color and the sticky rice helps the luck stay with you.” This sticky rice is named after the gac fruit (Momordica cochinchinensis) whose cockscomb red pulp and seed membranes stain the grains with brilliant color and impart a light fruity fragrance and flavor. Rough skinned and cantaloupe sized, the fruit is believed to promote health and energy. (In fact, it is full of antioxidants.) Because this exotic fruit is not yet widely available in the United States, Vietnamese American cooks often substitute food coloring when they make this dish. I prefer a combination of tomato paste and ground annatto seeds, which better mimics the real thing. If you travel to Vietnam, buy some gac powder from one of the spice vendors at Ben Thanh Market in Saigon, and use 2 tablespoons of the powder in place of the tomato paste and annatto.

Imagine my mom’s delight when she first spotted canned hominy at American markets (and later, hulled mung beans). Gone were the days when she had to soak and treat dried corn kernels with slaked lime before cooking them to prepare this treat. She also had to soak and skin unhulled mung beans before she could steam and grind them. By the time this dish appeared at the table, nearly two days had passed. But it was all worth it: the rice and hominy formed a chewy, soft base for the buttery yellow mung beans, toasted sesame seeds, and fried shallots. Serve this sticky rice dish alone or with slices of Viet sausages or roasted chicken, duck, or pork.

Whenever we have left over garlicky roast chicken, my family prepares this simple sticky rice dish, which we typically eat for breakfast, though it would be fine for lunch, too. If you don’t have time to roast your own chicken, you can use store-bought rotisserie chicken. Try to shred the chicken into bite-sized pieces as thick as a chopstick.

I got the idea for packing pungent combinations of toppings onto fish before it cooks from Nate Appleman’s gorgeous book, A16: Food + Wine. I like to take it a step further and cook the fish over saffron-infused beads of Israeli couscous. This recipe is a great use for my 12-Hour Tomatoes (page 2), but if you don’t already have some in your refrigerator, you can substitute three or four sun-dried tomato halves packed in oil. Eat this fish with sautéed greens or a salad.

When the cooking times match up, it only makes sense to cook a protein and a starch together, as in this combination of fish and rice. It’s almost a one-dish meal, and I say almost because you do need to pull out a little bowl to make the spicy-sweet salsa while the pot simmers on the stovetop. This features my favorite way to make rice, an adaptation of the traditional coconut-milk rice that tastes good but is high in fat. The proliferation of coconut water as a healthful drink found in most supermarkets gave me a lighter—and, frankly, better—way to do it, and I haven’t looked back. Be sure to buy juice labeled 100% coconut water, as some juice-pack brands have other flavorings you wouldn’t want here, and some canned products include sugar and preservatives, defeating the purpose altogether.

Making creamed spinach without the traditional backbone of white sauce produces a quicker, greener, and slightly fresher-tasting result. It makes up in speed and greenness what it loses in nannying quality.

There is a Spanish stall at the market. Each Saturday in midsummer I wait patiently at the counter while the jamon is carved. I am unsure which is more beautiful: the long, elegant leg on its steel stand or the fluid, methodical way in which the carver slices the gossamer-thin morsels of meat from the bone. I never take much, its price is breathtaking, but once home I savor every mouthful, as much out of respect for my wallet as for the pig. If I find young fava beans, or the ones in the garden are ready to pick, I marry the two—a simple plate of densely flavored, fat-besplodged ham the color of dried blood and fresh, bright-green beans. There is usually soup on the table too, watercress or spinach or fresh pea, and some scraps of dry, mild-tasting Manchego.

Any of the brassica family is good to go here. Most successful are gai lan (kai lan) and choy sum.

Easy to prepare, baby artichokes require only half the work needed for the larger globe variety. Because they’re so small, they haven’t formed the fuzzy inner choke that requires so much trimming, and they are fully cooked in 20 minutes or less. The herb chervil is in the same family as fennel and has a mild licorice taste. It is slightly sweet and adds a cooling herbal zing to summer dishes.

Shumai is a Chinese import that’s a popular dish in casual restaurants, and is also a staple of Japanese homes, where it’s enjoyed as a snack or a dinnertime side dish (but never as the main course). Leftovers hold up well and can be polished off the next day, or packed into a lunchbox or picnic basket and eaten at room temperature. You can also freeze uncooked shumai for up to a month. Follow the instructions below to steam frozen shumai—no need to defrost; simply add a couple of minutes to the cooking time.

The secret to this cool, summertime dish? Steaming the chicken. When you steam chicken, it stays moist and juicy even if you serve it cold. And caramelizing the skin beforehand adds lots of wonderful flavor. These are both techniques I borrow from Chinese cuisine. The angel hair pasta in this dish plays the same role as somen noodles: not too chewy or overwhelming when enjoyed cold.