Com tam suon bi cha recipe

From The Ravenous Couple

De nuoi. Literally means “easy to nurture/grow” in Vietnamese. Before the inevitable departure she always asks me what I like to eat….for the rest of the week.

Com Tam Suon Bi Cha. Photo from The Ravenous Couple

Yes, I’m very de nuoi. This weekend we came up with Com Tam Suon Bi Cha. Truly a celebration of pork in the midst of the swine flu epidemic.

This is a very traditional and special Vietnamese dish that my mom would make growing up in Michigan. It is composed of broken rice (com tam), suon (grilled pork chop), bi (pork skin), cha trung hap (steamed pork-egg custard) topped by scallion oil and dressed with nuoc nam. So we bought all the ingredients and made a call home to my mom back in Michigan to get finer details of this class Vietnamese recipe.

My mom never writes down recipes and memorizes things by heart. A bit of this and a bit of that…never any exact amount. I was forever frustrated by this, but over time I grew to cook in the same way—that is, more intuitively with out exact measurements. This dish is composed of several different parts.

The bi and cha trung hap can be made in advanced and lasts for days in the fridge. I strayed away from mom’s pork chop recipe by brining my chops in a coriander/Sichuan peppercorn brine. Recipe Approximately serves 6-7.

CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE!!!!!