Vietnamese Peanut Hoisin Dipping Sauce Recipe (Tuong Goi Cuon)

We brought summer rolls this weekend for a barbecue potluck. Traditionally, the rolls are served with a sauce made from liver but as a child, I always had an aversion to it. So I made tương gỏi cuốn (which literally translates to "sauce for salad rolls" in Vietnamese) with ingredients that would be appealing to a Western palate.

The condiment is a blend of peanut butter, hoisin sauce, ginger garlic paste, đậu (lentils), coconut water and a few ingredients that balance the sweet and sour taste. For more crunch, the summer rolls are first dipped in chopped peanuts.

Whether you serve this sauce with summer shrimp rolls or veggie spring rolls, it will knock your socks off!

Loquat Apricot Chutney Recipe

Loquat and apricot may not make the most traditional chutney, but it is delicious. I’ve wanted to use the fresh loquats I got from my aunt to make a dish that really highlights the ingredient, and fruit chutney seemed like an obvious choice.

Since I made so much, I canned the chutney and stored it for future use. I let it rest for a week and opened our first jar today. The flavor was amazing. There were still some chunks of loquats in it, and the hint of spices from the red chili powder and mustard provided a mild, lingering heat that follows closely behind the sweetness of the fruit.

There are many ways to use the chutney, but I opted to pair it with roasted chicken breast wrapped in smoked turkey slices. A-ma-zing!

Coffee Cardamom Creme Anglaise Recipe

As a child, I remember being so crazy about crème anglaise that I would lick the plate clean whenever I drizzled the sauce over a quatre-quart ("pound cake" in French). When I first met my husband Lulu, I knew from the very beginning that he had a sweet tooth but I was shocked when he told me he found crème anglaise to be too eggy to his taste. I was determined to prove him wrong. To do this, I dressed it up with strong flavors; I made Vietnamese-style coffee using condensed milk and cardamom-flavored cream. I poured the sauce over salted caramel swirl ice cream.

Lulu loved it, unsurprisingly. Seriously, who can resist anything with half and half and condensed milk in it?

Indian Peanut Chutney Recipe

I served khichdi (Indian masoor dal rice) this evening for dinner. Instead of using the usual Indian yogurt sauce called raita, I made peanut sesame chutney, called "til chutney" in Urdu. It's a little time consuming but it pairs perfectly with the coral-colored lentils and rice. To make the sauce, peanuts and sesame seeds are ground into a fine powder. They provide richness to the sauce that is complemented by the sweet-acid flavor of tamarind and the kick of raw onions. Baghar is the finishing touch in this dish, as it is in a lot of Indian dishes.

This dish was passed down to me from my husband Lulu’s late grandmother. Everyone referred to her as Baji. She taught me several Indian recipes from the region of Hyderabad, and I have an entire notebook of her recipes that I have to get translated. I’ll post them here as I try them out, so stay tuned!

Thousand Island Salad Dressing

For quite some time I’ve been wanting to make an egg-free version of thousand island dressing for my sister-in-law who is allergic to eggs. The dressing is usually a blend of mayonnaise, ketchup and relish, so the challenge was to find a suitable replacement for the eggs in the mayonnaise. I’ve accomplished this task in the past when making cheesecake or ranch dressing by using a combination of lecithin and xanthan gum. Lecithin is the same emulsifier that's found in eggs. I used a liquid, soy-based lecithin because it incorporates into the mixture quite easily. Xanthan gum is a great stabilizer; just mix in a little oil and you can thicken just about any dish.

So there you have it: a flavorful, egg-free, thousand island dressing. If you have anyone with egg allergies in your home, give it a try. They’ll thank you!