Vietnamese Coconut Tartlets

When I flick through my Vietnamese cookbooks, the dessert section will contain dishes like crème caramels, flans, custards and tarts. These dishes are associated with the French and were brought over to Vietnam during the French colonization (1874-1954). They are commonly eaten by the Vietnamese, so much so that they have made it their own with a Vietnamese twist using ingredients like coconuts, Vietnamese coffee, condensed milk and pastry often contains shortening rather than butter.  

When I was traveling around Vietnam last year, I found many bakeries selling French desserts and the range and quality available was amazing. It was always such a treat to get a box of sweets for just a few Australian dollars. My friends and I would often wonder down to the local bakery after dinner to get dessert and bring it back to our hostel and unwind from the day’s travel by watching whatever was on MTV (Gaga, Katy Perry on repeat) or the movie channel (I think I saw the same Jennifer Lopez movie three times, the one where she gets pregnant). I generally don’t watch much TV but my consumption of junk TV seems to skyrocket when I’m on holiday, but it’s more background noise as my friends and I plan the travel adventures for the next day and we bond over taking the piss out of how unrealistic everything that we watch on TV is.

(photo that I took of a Bakery in Hanoi, Vietnam last year)

(photo that I took of a Bakery in Hoi An, Vietnam last year)

This month’s Sweet Adventures Blog Hop is hosted by fellow Perth food blogger, The Kitchen Crusader and the theme is “Sweet as Pie” which can be basically anything with a pastry base such as a pie, tart or galette. I decided to bake a French influenced Vietnamese dessert - Vietnamese coconut tartlets for this blog hop.

You’ll find coconut used in a lot of Vietnamese dishes, especially in desserts. Coconut enriches and provides sweetness to desserts so you don’t need to add much sugar. Vietnam is one of the top ten coconut producers in the world as Southern Vietnam enjoys a tropical climate all year round which is ideal for growing coconuts. The Ben Tre Province located in the Mekong Delta has been nicknamed by the “Land of Coconuts” as it’s the biggest province cultivating coconuts in Vietnam and contributes to half of the country’s coconut yield. 

To make the Vietnamese coconut tarts I adapted a recipe from The Foods of Vietnam by Nicole Routhier. The recipe states that it yields six 3-inch tartlets. I doubled the quantity of ingredients for the pastry dough and ended up with 8 tartlets, maybe I used too much dough to line each tartlet but I was happy with the thickness of the resulting tartlet cases. I found that only one quantity of the coconut mixture which I added a bit more double cream into was needed to fill all 8 tartlets. I used a mix of shortening and butter in the pastry, and also added in a bit of milk powder. I have a big tin a of milk powder at home which I first bought to make Momofuku’s crack pie and I am slowly using it up by putting a tablespoon here and there in all my baked goods for a bit of a flavour boost. Christina Tosi, the mastermind behind all the Momofuku Milk Bar Store treats uses a lot of milk powder in her baked goods to give them an interesting depth of flavour and refers to milk powder as the MSG for baked goods. I also blind baked the pastry shells before filling them with the coconut mixture. Routhier’s recipe does not require the pastry to be blind baked.

The pastry of the Vietnamese coconut tartlet is crumbly while the coconut filling is soft and flaky.

Vietnamese Coconut Tartlets

(adapted from The Foods of Vietnam by Nicole Routhier)

makes 8 tartlets (~4cm tart pans)

Ingredients

Pastry Dough

• 55g vegetable shortening

• 55g butter, softened and cut into pieces

• 4 tablespoons caster sugar

• 2 egg yolks

• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 1 ½ cups plain flour

• ½ teaspoon baking powder

• 1 tablespoon milk powder 

Coconut Mixture Filling

• 2 cups desiccated coconut

• 4 tablespoons caster sugar

• 55g butter, softened and cut into pieces

• 1 egg yolk

• 4 tablespoons double cream

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Glaze

• 1 egg yolk

• 1 tablespoon butter, melted and cooled

Method

To make the pastry In a bowl, beat the shortening, butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the egg yolks and vanilla, mix to combine. Add flour, baking powder and milk powder, and mix well. Turn the pastry out onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead until it comes together into a dough and is smooth.

Press the dough into tartlet pans, prick the bases and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

To make the filling In a bowl, combine the coconut, sugar and butter together. Add egg yolk, double cream and vanilla. Blend well with hands to form a soft paste.

Preheat oven to 180C. Take the tartlets out of the refrigerator and blind bake them. Line the tarts with baking paper and fill with baking weights. Place the tartlets on a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes. 

Take the tartlets out of the oven and fill them with the coconut mixture, smooth the top. 

Bake the tartlets for 10 minutes. While the tartlets are baking, make the glaze – in a small bowl beat the egg yolk slightly and stir in the melted butter.

After 10 minutes, take the tartlets out of the oven and brush the surface and the crust edges of the tartlets with the glaze. Return to the oven and bake for another 5 minutes.

Cool the tartlets before unmolding

Vietnamese braised pork belly and hard boiled eggs in coconut juice (Thit Heo Kho Trung). Momofuku inspired steamed pork buns

Thit Heo Kho Trung is one of my favourite home cooked dishes. What makes a dish a home cooked dish? When I eat out at Vietnamese restaurants with my parents, I would note that a lot of the dishes I love to eat and I always have at home are not on the menu. I ask my mum why [insert name of dish here] was not on the menu and she would tell me that everyone knows how to cook that dish at home, so it’s not something that people would order when they eat out. So this is how I define a home cooked dish – a dish that people often cook at home so you won’t find it in restaurants, otherwise restaurants would be competing with every mum’s recipe and you know who would win out of that right? 

Thit Heo Kho Trung is one of those home cooked dishes that you will rarely find on restaurant menus but every Vietnamese family cooks it and would have their own recipe for it. I can see why Thit Heo Kho Trung would be a popular home cooked dish. My mum comes from a family of nine children and this would be a perfect one pot meat for such a big family – a large amount of pork and eggs are simmered in coconut juice, soy sauce and fish sauce, and served with bowls of rice.  A really simple dish to cook that produces a delicious result with sweetness coming from the coconut juice, saltiness from the soy sauce and savouriness from the fish sauce. 

When I cook a dish I am always intrigued by how other people cook it, and I will scan cookbooks and the internet for recipes to see how the way my mum cooks it compares with others. I’ve seen other ingredients added to this dish such as shallots and garlic, and other spices such as star anise or five spice. Some recipes do not use any soy sauce and only use fish sauce. Some recipes prepare a caramelized sauce made up of water and sugar first to cook the pork and eggs in. My mum’s recipe is relatively simple and uses few ingredients.

When I came across the Ravenous Couples recipe for Thi Heo Kho Trung, I saw that they had turned Thi Heo Kho Trung into a David Chang/Momofuku inspired steamed pork bun dish. It was one of those ‘damn, I wish I’d thought of that first’ moments. Encapsulating the pork inside steamed buns is a perfect way of eating this dish as the sweetness of the steamed buns complements the coconut enriched pork which has been cooked until it’s melt in your mouth tender, plus you have a tasty sticky sweet savoury sauce to go over the top of the pork, and you can add a slice of egg if desired. I haven’t eaten ‘the’ Momofuku steamed pork buns before which contains brined and roasted pork belly but I think that this could possible be better?!

Here’s my mum’s Vietnamese braised pork and eggs (Thit Heo Kho Trung) that I have turned into my own take on Momofuku inspired steamed pork buns.

I used a pressure cooker to cook the pork and included the process for cooking with a pressure cooker and a pot over the stove.

Ingredients

•    1 kg pork belly, chopped into 2-3cm cubes
•    ~ 3 cups of coconut juice (from 2 young coconuts)
•    5 small red chillies, deseeded
•    6 whole hard boiled eggs, shelled
•    fish sauce (2 ½ tablespoons)
•    light soy sauce (1 ½ tablespoons)
•    dark soy sauce (2 tablespoons)
•    salt to taste

To make Momofuku style buns – buy steamed buns from Asian supermarket, cucumber and coriander.

 Young coconut

I do not shy away from the layers of fat in pork belly, fat is what makes food taste good!

Method

Par-boil the pork – put the pork pieces into a pot of boiling water and simmer for 1-2 minutes until partially cooked. Rinse pork under cold running water and drain well.

Add the coconut juice, chillies and 1 ½ tablespoon of fish sauce into a pot/pressure cooker and bring to a simmer. Then add in the pieces of pork. 

(1) Bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat for around an hour, stirring occassionally or pressure cook for 10 minutes.

(2) Then add in 1 ½ tablespoons of light soy sauce, 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce and 1 tablespoon fish sauce. Simmer on low heat for another hour, stirring occassionally or pressure cook for 10 minutes.

(3) Test the flavour and adjust with fish sauce or sugar if required and add in a pinch of salt to balance. Add in the hard boiled eggs and simmer for another 30-45 minutes to flavour the eggs and for the sauce to reduce. 

Note: I pressure cooked this dish for a total of 20 minutes, divided into two 10 minute periods. The last step of cooking does not require pressure cooking.

I bought premade steam buns from Emma’s Seafood Asian grocery on the corner of Newcastle and William street in Northbridge. You can make them from scratch using this recipe.

To make Momofuku inspired buns – Steam buns according to packet instructions. Add in pieces of pork (slice the pork in half if too thick), a slice of egg, spoon over the egg and pork some sauce and then top with thin julienned pieces of cucumber and coriander.

You can also just eat the pork and egg with steamed rice.

 Slices of pork belly in bun

 Add a slice of egg on top

Add the braising sauce over the top

 Top with cucumber and coriander

 

Here are some of my other pork belly recipes:

• Braised pork spare ribs with pumpkin
• Twice cooked pork (Sichuan style)
• Roasted pork belly - sui yuk
• Kakuni (Japanese Braised Pork)
• Braised pork belly with daikon
• Chinese BBQ Pork 
• Communist Pork (Red Cooked Pork)
• Baki Kecap (Indonesian braised pork in sweet soy sauce)