Vietnamese Mussels with Crispy Pork Belly

How about this for a twist on a surf and turf!

Canterbury used to have an amazing little Vietnamese restaurant that sadly closed a few years ago. I loved the food there, and recently picked up a Vietnamese cooking book by Charles Phan to try and recreate some of those dishes at home. They are light, healthy and big on flavour!

Like Burmese food, Vietnamese is heavy on the shallots, shrimp paste, fish sauce and soy and also has a strong reliance on herbs.  This dish is no exception.  The original recipe calls for the pork to be cooked in a cast iron pan that has been placed directly on charcoal coals.  I live in a townhouse and don't have much call for a charcoal grill, but a regular gas or electric hob will do the job!  Add a couple of drops of liquid smoke to the stock if you really want the smoke flavours in the pork.

You can substitute the chile paste for the stuff you can buy in a supermarket if you wish, but it is just as easy to make your own and will make a huge difference to your finished dish.  See below for the recipe for the paste.

250ml chicken stock
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
500g skin off belly pork, sliced 1/4 inch thick
60g thinly sliced shallots
2 red chillies, stemmed and minced
2 jalapeno chillies, stemmed, seeded and julienned
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons roasted chile paste (see below)
1 kg cleaned and de-bearded mussels (discard any that don't close when you tap them)
60ml rice wine
60g fresh Thai basil leaves

In a measuring cup or small bowl, stir together the stock, fish sauce and sugar until the sugar has dissolved.  Set aside

Heat a griddle pan until very hot.  Add the pork belly slices in a single layer to the hot pan and cook, turning occassionally for about 8 minutes until some of the fat has rendered and the meat is golden brown. 

Pour off all but about 3 tablespoons of the accumulted fat from the pan (keeping the pork in the pan) and return to the heat. 

Add the shallots, chillies and ginger to the pan and cook, stirring occassionally for one minute.  Add the garlic and chile paste and cook for 30 seconds more.  Transfer to a large pan.

Add the mussels and rice wine, pour in the stock mixture and add the Thai basil.  Cover the pan with a metal bowl or wok lid and cook, uncovering and stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes until all the mussels have opened.

Pour the mussels, pork belly and juices into large bowls (pasta bowls are good), discarding any mussels that have failed to open.

Serve immediately with crusty fresh bread to mop up all those wonderful juices swimming at the bottom of your bowl.

Vietnamese Chile Paste

You could use shop bought chile paste, but nothing beats a homemade version.  The punch and depth of flavour it adds to the dish cannot be replicated, and any extra can be frozen and used in curries, soups and stews to add an extra dimension!  It's also great with nacho's or prawns as a dipping sauce - basically just play with it, you will be amazed at how versatile it can be!

1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon annatto seeds
60g finely chopped shallots
120ml canola oil
8 crushed garlic cloves
30g chilli flakes
40g ground bean paste
2 tablespoons rice wine
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons light soy sauce

Bash the peppercorns and annatto seeds in a pestle and mortar until they are coarse

In a small saucepan, combine the shallots and oil over a medium heat and cook, stirring frequently for about 6 minutes until the shallots are light gold

Add the garlic and cook, stirring frequently for about 4 minutes until the garlic and shallots are lightly browned

Stir in the chilli flakes and the peppercorn-annatto seed mixture and mix well.  Add the bean paste, wine, sugar and soy sauce and continue cooking, stirring for 1 minute longer. 

Remove from the heat and let cool completely.  It will store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 months, or 6 months in the freezer. 

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La Trappiste

It's been a week since I'd seen Ellie and Claire.  A week.  Now that may not sound like much to you but when you are used to seeing each other at least 3 times a week this feels like an absolute age.  I'm not being melodramatic when I say that a few more hours would have resulted in palpitations and profuse sweating.  This was a friendship medical emergency and we needed to get lunch together stat.

We organised the date, I promised to do a bit of online research into where we should go (too many choices), utterly failed to make good on that promise (too much to do at work) and in the end Ellie made the decision for us.

Photo courtesy of imagekind.com

Photo courtesy of www.geograph.org.uk

La Trappiste.  Or, in, Ellie's words, the Belgian place that does nice chips.  It's an olive green cafe shaped like an scalene triangle that is sandwiched right between Chambers and The Chocolate Cafe.

La Trappiste shouldn't really work.  It's a bar, restaurant, coffee house, bakery (including bespoke celebration cakes), patisserie, breakfast joint and baking school all under one roof.  By anyone's measure that's a lot going on, and yet, somehow, it all fits.  By their own admission they are 'not just a resturant' and I get the feeling that they might be a bit insulted if you were to describe them as such!

I've heard mixed things about La Trappiste.  Some reviews have absolutely raved about it; others have described the food as mediocre and the service as less than stellar.   I've never been before so it was with a fair amount of trepidation that I made my way up the soggy highstreet one Sunday afternoon, trying to keep my umbrella the right way round (umbrella's and Canterbury don't mix.  We always tell the students not to bother and just bring a hooded coat - I don't know why I don't listen to our own words of wisdom) and wondering where on earth everybody was.  It was the last weekend in January and the city appeared deserted.  This could have been the torrential rain or the fact that most people were waiting to be paid, but it was a little eerie how quiet everywhere was.

I got a text just as I was running up the highstreet to say that the girls were upstairs in the gallery.  This space is huge, with a glass floor that you can look through to see people below in the bar (don't stand on it wearing a skirt), a huge glass ceiling that just pours light in and a terrace that acts as a suntrap in the summertime overlooking the bustling highstreet.

Decor wise.  It's...eclectic.  The life size sculpture of Botticelli's Birth of Venus hanging on the wall complete with painted toe ring, with her modesty covered by what looks like a cheap nightie bought in a charity shop and painted, was just weird.  I'm not an artist but this was just baffling.

 

The rest of the decor was along similar lines and just made me a bit puzzled.  The murals crossed greco-roman mythology and attitudes with early Christian monastic engravings, all in a tribute to beer. Downstairs felt more in keeping with the continental feel of the restaurant, with mismatched booths padded in green leather and wood fixtures.  The decor does makes you smile which I like.  The longer I sat upstairs the more I loved it.  It's nice to see somewhere where there is a ton of personality and clearly a huge amount of effort has gone into hand painting the walls.

In the toilets (what is it about Canterbury's restaurant toilets that always have the interesting features?) there are stone carved murals which have the appearance of having been uncovered and preserved.  It would have been nice to have had a bit of background information to these but alas, I could find none.  As a side note in the toilets they also have a big bag of useful things for parents with babies when they need to change them, like wet wipes and spare nappies.  It's a really thoughtful little touch - I'm not sure if they have them in the men's as well, but I would hope so (is it obvious that I work in an equality field?).  In case you were wondering, I don't normally take my camera to the toilet.  I just came out to get it when I saw the wall murals.

So anyway, enough of what the place looked like, onto the food!  First up, the drinks menu, which also gave a little bit of background to La Trappiste.  I love the fact that you can get traditional drinks like dandelion and burdock or sarsaparilla here.  It makes it feel a bit more olde worlde. 

The menu is enormous, with oysters and pigeon breast to burgers and Belgian beef stew, fish and chips, steak frites, risotto, tarts and of course mussel pots in a variety of flavour options.  Claire went for the traditional moules frites with garlic, white wine and cream.

I went for the BBQ pulled pork and cheese roll with chips and jalapeno's.

While Ellie went for a burger in a foccacio bun.  All the meals were simple, straightforward and filling with good flavours.   My pork could have done with a little more heat and the jalapeno's a little more vinegar to cut through the sweetness of the BBQ pork but it was still tasty.  Claire's mussels were fresh, plump and tasted of the sea and Ellie's burger was cooked perfectly and clearly freshly made. 

After having our scraped clean plates cleared away we then moved onto dessert from the patisserie counter.  I can't exactly remember what Ellie had but there was chocolate and raspberry mousse involved.  It was nice but again I could have done with more fruit kick and a bit more bitterness in the chocolate (I pinched a couple of forkfuls off her). I'm a bit hard to please with regards to patisserie as, to be honest, I'm not that big a fan of it (I would much rather have a hot chocolate fudge brownie or a slice of lemon tart, hence the reason I didn't order dessert and just pinched a taste of the others to try it) so I'm probably being unfair here! Claire had Coffee Choux which, I must admit was divine, and just look at that delicate piping work.  Again I only had a taste as I don't normally like cream cakes but this was lovely.

We stayed and chatted all afternoon as the rain pounded down outside until the light started to fade slightly and we realised with shock we had been sat there for coming up to three hours.  All credit to the staff, they were attentive and ensured we weren't left waiting for service without crowding us or making us feel like we had to leave.  To be honest, there was barely anyone else there so I would have been irritated if we had been forced out!  It may be different when there is greater pressure on tables.

Overall, it's not the best lunch I have ever had in Canterbury but it was also certainly not the worst by a long stretch and it was reasonably priced.   I feel a bit of a soft spot for La Trappiste.  It is quirky and has character and I like that about it.  Would I come back again?  Absolutely - I want to road test the steak and that huge beer and ale selection I spied behind the bar as we left...