Candied Buddha's hand citron

The Lunar New Year in Taiwan was when candied kumquats showed up in every single marketplace. 

My favorite candy shops were on Dihua Street, an older shopping area that was nothing but Japanese-era brick buildings and baskets filled to the brim with dried and preserved ingredients. It was, in short, heaven.

I’ve never been able to resist fresh kumquat candy, but the stuff on these shores often are leftovers from the Jurassic period, which is why I created this recipe years ago to satisfy my craving.

Candied tentacles

We’ve had a Buddha’s hand citron in our yard for years, and this winter it finally decided to give us a bumper crop. 

So, of course, I made Buddhacello (vodka + sugar + chopped up citron), as that is always at the top of my list whenever I’ve received bounty from my friends. 

But this year, I decided to make candied Buddha’s hand citron because a) both citron and kumquats are of the same family and b) I didn’t have any kumquats sitting around and c) these citron are so aromatic that I could smell them all the way up on the second floor.

These surpassed my expectations. The coating is slightly crunchy against the perfectly jelled centers. They fill your sinuses with the most exotic of perfumes. They’re easy. Plus, you end up with a syrup that tastes like a cross between butterscotch and lemons.

Bubblebath

Get yourself some Buddha’s hand citron and see what I mean.

Candied Buddha’s hand citron chez Huang

Huángjiā Fóshŏu táng  黃家佛手糖

Chaozhou or Anhui or Fuzhou cuisine, maybe

Makes around 12 ounces | 350 grams, plus about 12 ounces | 350 ml syrup

The fruit:

Something around 1 pound | 500 g Buddha’s hand citron

Water, as needed

Slice between the fingers

The candy:

2 cups | 500 ml water

21 ounces | 600 g yellow rock sugar, or 3 cups | 600 g white (caster) sugar

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

½ teaspoon sea salt

½ cup | 100 g sugar, for sanding the candy

1. Place the citron in a bowl of warm, soapy water to soak for a few minutes, and then lightly scrub it with a soft brush. Use a paring knife to remove the stem, and then slice it along the base toward the tentacles, so that you end up with longish strips. Be sure and wash out any grime hidden in the folds. Rinse the citron and pat dry. Don’t worry if you have lots of pith, as this candies up beautifully. Cut the strips into 1-inch | 2 cm batons that are more or less the same thickness, about ½ inch | 1 cm.

Prepped & ready

2. Place the citron in a 2-quart | 2-liter saucepan and cover with water by a couple of inches or centimeters. Bring the pan to a boil and then lower the heat to maintain a steady simmer. Cook the citron for about 45 minutes, topping the pan off with more boiling water as necessary, until the citron is translucent. Drain the citron.

2. In the same pan, bring the 2 cups | 500 ml water, rock or white sugar, corn syrup, and salt to a boil, cover, and then simmer over low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Add the citron to this syrup and bring the pan again to a steady simmer. Cook the citron for about 25 to 30 minutes, until the syrup reaches around 230ºF | 110 ºC on a candy thermometer. (Be sure and use this larger pan, as the syrup will froth up about halfway through the cooking time, and you don’t want this to boil over.) The citron will look like lustrous amber at this point. Let it soak in the syrup until this comes to room temperature.

Pure amber deliciousness

3. Strain out the citron and let it continue to drain, but reserve and refrigerate all of the syrup for something else. It is incredibly delicious, so don’t waste a drop. When the citron is dry, toss it in the ½ cup | 100 g sanding sugar, and then set the citron on a cake rack over a pan to dry overnight. Layer the candied citron with the leftover sanding sugar in an airtight container. You can use this like any other citron, or serve it as a New Year candy with hot tea.

Tip

The syrup will most likely crystallize as it cools, so just heat it up before you use it.

Interview on The Beijinger + some more good publishing news

Lots of great things have been happening with All Under Heaven and the Dim Sum Field Guide these past couple of weeks, so I thought I’d do something slightly different this week and give the usual highlights, as well as the start of a fun conversation I recently did with the online Chinese magazine, The Beijinger. Robynn Tindall asked some wonderful questions, which I’m delighted to share with you below.

First, though, a recap!

All Under Heaven was again featured in the New York Times as one of Fall 2016's best cookbooks, and this time the shout out came from Sam Sifton, so that is totally amazing. 

Diana Zheng is writing about the brilliant cuisines of northeastern Guangdong, where the port cities of Teochew (Chaozhou) and Swatow (Shantou) hold sway. She was kind enough to ask my opinion on things, and you can find them here inside of her find article, "Tracing the Teoswa," in The Cleaver Quarterly. 

If you haven't heard much about that region's foods, much less reveled in their deeply savory flavors and punchy seasonings, you are definitely missing out. A bunch of Chaozhou recipes can be found in All Under Heaven, but I can't wait for Diana's book Jia! (or, Eat!) sees the light of day. 

The "Breakfast Show" on KCRW's Good Food podcast is continuing to receive considerable attention, even though I am in there talking about dim sum. Thanks again to Evan Kleinman for being such a great interviewer!

And now, on to that review...

*  *  *

I have been following food writer, scholar, and illustrator Carolyn Phillips' excellent blog "Madame Huang's Kitchen" for years so it was with much excitement that I learnt that she was publishing a book, All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China (McSweeney’s + Ten Speed Press, August 2016). A comprehensive look at China's many fascinating regional cuisines, All Under Heaven is as much a personal memoir and academic work as it is a cookbook – those looking for step-by-step recipes and plenty of pictures to flick through may want to look elsewhere (the book is instead illustrated with Phillips' own drawings). However, for a compulsive collector and reader of cookbooks, this is the perfect in-depth work. 

 

Below, Phillips tells us about her culinary journey of discovery and offers some advice for budding food bloggers looking to make the leap from screen to page.  

For those of us reading in Beijing, All Under Heaven is available for purchase as a Kindle book from Amazon.com or to order from The Bookworm.

What first brought you to Taiwan/China?

What I told my mom was that I wanted to learn Mandarin, but I think I just wanted to eat and eat. I had learned Mandarin and Japanese in college, and of course was therefore virtually unintelligible in either language. I applied to both Taipei and Tokyo for language classes, found a last minute opening in Taipei, and the rest is history.

How did you become so interested in Chinese cuisine?

My first two years in Taiwan in the late 70s had me dining on all sorts of street foods from every part of China, as well as great home-cooked meals with my host family and lots of friends. My new Chinese husband then introduced me to an even broader variety of great cooking, and then when I worked as the main interpreter at the National History Museum and National Central Library for five years, this meant dining out many times a week at Taipei’s greatest restaurants. I really was in an amazing place at an amazing time, for many of China’s most renowned chefs had moved to Taiwan after 1949, and money started to flow into the island with the tech revolution, and so fabulous dining palaces were springing up all over with outstanding cooks at the helm.

As I ate my way across Taipei, I started to notice the differences between the many cuisines, and as I tried to get a handle on them, I started to read lots of books and even cook some of the foods I had eaten the previous week in an attempt to figure them out. I had always been told that there were eight great cuisines (Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, and Sichuan), but the more I ate, the more confused I became, because this seemed to be such a limited view of what China had to offer.

When we returned to the States, I continued to try to parse my way through these food traditions, and although I worked as a Mandarin court interpreter during the day, in the evenings I spent more and more time working on this puzzle. I finally quit my day job to focus my attention on the cuisines of China and become serious about writing a cookbook. I started with my blog, and this gradually morphed into All Under Heaven.

(Read more here on The Beijinger.)

Good for what ails you: sesame oil chicken soup

China’s cuisines are unlike just about anyplace else’s for many reasons, but chief among them is the idea that every ingredient is also medicine. 

This concept was memorialized around two millennia ago in the Shennong bencao jing, which could be translated as The God of Agriculture’s Materia Medica. One of the basic principles of Chinese medicine is that there are polar opposites in just about everything – what we now refer to by the appropriately Chinese names of yin and yang – and much of our health stems from achieving good balance between the two. 

When it comes to our bodies, the polar opposites include the ideas that we are all composed to varying degrees of different proportions of male/female, hot/cold, wet/dry, and so forth. When these balances get out of whack, we get ill. A lot of this is simple good sense. For example, when we have a cold, we feel chills that blankets cannot warm. It takes a bowl of hot chicken soup to return those faint feelings of well-being to our bodies. As with the rest of the world, chicken soup in China is mom’s penicillin. 

Pure sesame oil

But the Chinese take it a few steps further. In addition to the health-giving properties of chicken soup – for the chicken itself is very nutritious and even the fat has been shown to make us healthier – various herbs and seasonings are tossed in the pot to enhance these warming properties. 

This soup, whose smell reminds me of Taipei, is often given to nursing mothers as a part of her confinement referred to in Chinese as a “month of sitting,” or zuò yuèzi 坐月子. During this period, the new mom gets to relax and take care of herself and her new baby. She also gets to eat lots of nourishing foods courtesy of her own mother, mother-in-law, and various aunties. 

One of the most classic dishes for the recovering mother is this, for it is believed to encourage blood flow and produce breast milk. Wood ear fungus is then included in this soup to help combat high cholesterol, which many women suffer from after giving birth. 

Dates and wolfberries

Other Chinese ingredients offer various ways to make people feel better, too. Red Chinese dates, for example, are considered “the king of fruits,” as they nurture the blood and heal the stomach. Wolfberries (aka gouqi or goji berries) are a prized general tonic. Also in here is rice wine instead of water, which warms up the body along with a huge pile of fresh ginger. The ginger is first fried in pure sesame oil, which is believed in Chinese medicine to have lots of anti-aging properties. This is, therefore, a wonderful, warming meal that aids in recovery. It also is super easy, fast, and hands-down delicious. This is something that should be served throughout the year, especially when anyone is feeling down or in need of a little extra TLC.

A couple of suggestions for perfection every time: First, fry the ginger until it is golden brown before adding the chicken, as this seasons the oil. It will fry and brown even further as the chicken cooks, which is wonderful, as this turns each slice into a sticky, crispy shard. Be sure to use a metal wok spatula to scrape the bottom of the wok while the chicken fries, as the sugars in the ginger will gradually caramelize on the bottom – these need to be nudged loose now and then so that they don’t burn. Once the ginger has completely dried out in the oil, it will merely float, rather than weld itself to the bottom of the pan.

Golden chicken & ginger

Be sure to fry the chicken to a golden brown, too. This completely changes the texture of the skin, turning it from flabby to tensile and slightly caramelized, which makes it marvelous to nibble on.

The toasted sesame oil is key here, too. Use pure toasted sesame oil with no fillers, like cottonseed or soybean oil. Look at the ingredients carefully before you buy. I always get Japanese brands, which are sold in large tins. Korean markets often have these on sale, and they stay fresh for a couple of months even when they have been opened; just close up the tin carefully and store it away from the heat in a cool pantry. I pour out about a cup or so of the oil into a little bottle that I keep near the stove for finishing many dishes, but for this sesame oil chicken soup and things like homemade sesame paste, these liter-plus sized tins are a lifesaver.

Taiwanese Mijiu is the final key ingredient here. You can find this in bright green glass bottles in most Chinese grocery stores, especially if they cater to a Taiwanese clientele. Get these either in regular wine bottle sizes or as gallon jugs.

The not-so-secret ingredient

Whatever you do, consider offering this as a full meal by serving it over the rice noodles. You can sidle a bit of fresh spinach or other leafy greens into the bowl if you like, but this should be little more than a garnish, as this is the best tasting medicine I know of. 


Sesame oil chicken soup
Máyóu jī tāng  麻油雞湯
South Fujian, Chaozhou, & Taiwan
Makes about 4 quarts soup

1 whole (3 to 4 pounds) free-range organic fryer, or 3 to 4 pounds chicken wings
10 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1½ cups thinly sliced fresh ginger (peeling not necessary)
7 cups mild rice wine (Taiwanese Mijiu recommended)
2 to 3 cups wood ear fungus, fresh or dried and plumped-up, optional
16 or so red dates, optional
¼ cup wolfberries, optional
1 teaspoon regular soy sauce, optional (see Tips)
2 cups boiling water, optional
Dried rice noodles (mifen), optional

1. This soup, like just about any other soup, is many times better the next day, so plan ahead, if you can. Pat the chicken dry, get rid of any extra fat or pinfeathers, and then use a cleaver to cut it into large pieces before whacking it across the bones into inch-wide chunks. If you are using wings instead of a whole bird, simply cut each wing into three pieces along the joints; in this case, toss the wingtips into the pot, too, as they will lend extra flavor and richness to the broth. If you don’t enjoy nibbling on them like I do, then merely fish them out before serving.

A wok full of sesame oil & goodness

2. Place a wok over medium heat. When it is hot, add the oil and then the ginger. Stir the ginger occasionally as it fries so that it turns an even golden brown. As it start to brown a bit darker, scoot it up the sides of the wok out of the oil and add all of the chicken. Turn the heat up a bit and brown the chicken on all sides.

3. When the chicken is nicely browned, add the rice wine, raise the heat to high, and bring the wine to a boil. Add the optional wood ears (trimmed and torn into pieces), dates, and/or wolfberries at this point. Then, lower it to just a gentle simmer and cook the chicken until it is just tender, about 30 minutes. Taste the soup and add the soy sauce only if it is necessary. (Be careful not to add too much — this dish is might already be very savory because rice wines like Taiwanese Mijiu contain salt.) You might find it too salty for your taste; in that case, add about 2 cups boiling water to the pan. (The soup can be cooled down and refrigerated at this point when you are making it ahead of time.) If you wish to serve this over rice noodles, cook the noodles until barely tender and place them in the bottom of the soup bowls before ladling in the soup and chicken. Noodles or not, serve this very hot.

Tip

Taiwan-style rice wine (Mijiu, or as the label spells it, Michiu) is what gives this dish its distinctive flavor. Do note that this is type of cooking wine already has salt in it. The brand I use comes in a green glass bottle, has 1.5% salt, and says, in English, “Cooking michiu distilled spirit of rice, not for sale or use as a beverage.”

Illustration copyright (c) 2015 by Carolyn Phillips; from the forthcoming All Under Heaven (McSweeney's + Ten Speed Press, August 2016)

The satay sauce of Chaozhou

Chaozhou is considered by most Chinese culinary experts to be one of Guangdong's three main cuisines, in addition to the dishes of the Hakka and, of course, the foods that are more typically Cantonese. But other than the fact that Chaozhou is located in the upper section of Guangdong province, that's pretty much where the similarities end, for just like Hakka cooking, this is more a case of geographic proximity than stylistic resemblances.

As Chinese food writer Tang Zhenchang wrote in his Yongsun ji (Breakfast and supper journal), "Chaozhou cooking is not one of the Eight Great Cuisines, probably because it was assumed that Chaozhou cooking could be categorized with Guangdong cuisine. This also is not correct; generally speaking Cantonese cuisine cannot encompass the special characteristics of Chaozhou cuisine, something that that all diners know."

L to R: Veggie, original, & numbing-spicy

One of the main things that sets Chaozhou cuisine apart from the rest of Guangdong's cooking its marvelous shachajiang, or satay sauce. And although it bears the same name as the famous Indonesian sauce, Chaozhou's satay is completely different. Here it is a pungent and thoroughly addictive combination of dried shrimp, garlic, shallots, chilies, and dried fish. (Vegetarians can also enjoy this sauce, for meatless versions are available; these will usually have a Buddhist swastika on them.)

This satay is often used, as here, with another sauce that shows evidence of Southeast Asian influences: fish sauce, which for some reason is often referred to as "shrimp oil" (xiayou) in Chinese. These two come together to offer a delicious funkiness to the dishes of Chaozhou, but it remains a subtle undercurrent that beguiles the tongue and amplifies the freshness of the other ingredients. 

Satay sauce can also be used as a base for some delicious soups, as part of complex dipping sauces for meats and vegetables, and as a component in grilling sauces, but it is almost always first fried to release its fragrance and shrug off any canned aromas. In fact, it's this preliminary frying that gives depth and soul to satay dishes, elevating them into something pretty much approaching the sublime.

Torn oyster mushrooms

A couple notes about the vegetables here. First, I've added oyster mushrooms to the mix since I like the juiciness and extra layer of flavor they provide. So, if you're a vegetarian, you can use all mushrooms here instead of the beef. Do note the way that the mushrooms are prepped: they are torn down the length into long strips, rather than sliced, which gives them more of a "meaty" texture and helps keep them from falling apart.

Celery provides a really delicious herbal note here, as well as a nice crunch. You'll see that I've recommended a deep green celery because that's the kind that has all of the flavor; pale celery is rather bland. And if you can find it, Chinese celery is terrific here since it has an even more pronounced flavor than the Western kind. Finally, mung (green bean) sprouts lighten up the dish so that it doesn't become too intense from all of the sauce's strong flavors. 

Bean sprouts can be a bit of a pain because they seem to self-destruct within minutes of getting them home. The secret to keeping your sprouts happy is to submerge them in cool water and store them in the fridge as soon as you can. Change the water every day and use them as soon as humanly possible. They won't last forever, but this does eke a couple of more moments out of their limited lifespan.

Coat the beef

You'll notice that I have you cook the beef, vegetables, and sauce separately. Feel free to just scoot the beef and vegetables up the side of the wok if you feel confident enough, and that is what I've done in the picture below. The main thing you want to be sure of is that nothing gets overcooked. Freshness is the hallmark of Chaozhou cooking, so keep the meat tender and the vegetables crisp, and then bind them together at the last second with this savory sauce.

If you want, serve this by itself over rice or in stir-fried fresh rice noodles (hefen) for a simple and delicious meal that will satisfy just about every sense you possess.

Satay steak and bean sprouts 

Yínyá shāchá níuròu 銀芽沙茶牛肉  

Chaozhou

Serves 6 to 8 as part of a multicourse meal, or 2 to 3 as a main course

Steak:

1 pound skirt steak

2 teaspoons cornstarch

4 teaspoons light soy sauce

Sauce:

¼ cup Chinese satay sauce (shachajiang), preferably the Niutou (Ox Head) brand from Taiwan

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon fish sauce

¼ cup lightly salted stock

4 teaspoons dark soy sauce

Everything else:

1 inch fresh ginger, peeled

2 or 3 deep green celery stalks (Chinese celery preferred)

1 pound very fresh mung bean sprouts

4 green onions, trimmed

6 ounces oyster mushrooms, optional

10 tablespoons (or so) peanut or vegetable oil, divided

1. Rinse the meat and pat dry with a paper towel. Cut the meat against the grain into ½-inch strips. Place them in a work bowl and toss with the light soy sauce and cornstarch. Allow the meat to marinade while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Mix the sauce ingredients together in a small work bowl.  Taste the sauce and add more sugar, satay sauce, fish sauce, or soy sauce as desired, since there's a wide variety of differences among the various satay and fish sauces. You can also adjust the seasoning at the end.

3. Slice the ginger against the grain into very thin pieces, and then cut these up into thin strips. Wash the celery stalks carefully and trim off both ends; if the strings are tough, then remove them too. Slice the celery crosswise into 2- or 3-inch pieces, and then slice them lengthwise into thin julienne. Rinse the beansprouts and drain thoroughly. Cut the green onions in half lengthwise and then into pieces that are the same length as the cut celery. Clean the mushrooms, if you are using them, and tear them into shreds, starting at the caps and pulling them gently down their stems until they are about the same size as the steak strips.

Scoot up the veggies & boil down the sauce

4. Heat 6 tablespoons of the oil in a wok until the oil smokes, add the ginger, and stir-fry it for a few seconds to release its flavor. Toss in the beef and any of its juices, and stir-fry the beef until most of the pink is gone. Remove the beef to a clean plate or work bowl.

5. Heat the rest of the oil over high heat and add the mushrooms. Stir-fry them until they are lightly browned all over, and then toss in the celery for a few seconds to take off the raw edge. Add the bean sprouts and just barely cooked - you do not want to have them anything other than crisp, so be careful. Remove the vegetables and add them to the beef.

6. Get the wok hot again and pour in the sauce. Reduce it very quickly until it is syrupy, and then add all of the vegetables and beef to the wok. Quickly toss them all together over high heat to combine, and then serve immediately.

A delicious postcard from Chaozhou

Chaozhou is rarely considered one of the great cuisines of China, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why. It's also relatively unknown, which I find even more insane, considering how this is probably the home of some of the best seafood in the world. 

It is so good that even though Hong Kong's cuisine is nothing short of spectacular, back when I was still a student and would head for Hong Kong for my vacations, I would always hunt out their best Chaozhou restaurants in order to devour some of the most perfectly fried oysters and steamed fish that have ever left a chef's kitchen.

Angled silk gourds

Chaozhou (aka Teochew or Chiuchow) is located in the northeastern reaches of Guangdong province, just a stone or two's throw from Fujian, and bordering the areas where the Hakka people call home. One bite of this food and you'll taste all of these influences... or it could be that you are tasting Chaozhou's remarkable flavors in the dishes of its neighbors. I could easily wax ecstatic for hours over the food of this area that is so dominated by the sea that its Chinese name means "land of the tides," or 潮州. 

It is understandable, then, that most Chinese folks think of seafood when Chaozhou is mentioned, and we certainly will continue to stroll through some of their more delicious fish and crustacean dishes in this blog, but today I wanted to introduce a vegetable that seems to have received more serious attention in Chaozhou than anyplace else: silk gourds.

One variety of the silk gourds is most commonly known in the West in its dried form, where only the fibrous interior remains: loofah (or luffa) sponges.  But when these squashes are still tender, they are absolutely delicious and are wonderful simply stir-fried with little more than a bit of garlic, salt, and rice wine to bring out their natural sweetness. 

(By the way, they’re not really gourds, but the Chinese character gua got translated into “melon,” “squash,” or “gourd” pretty much on some translator’s whim many, many years ago, so don’t take any of these three translations too seriously. And someone else got into the act and started calling silk gourds "Chinese okra," which just makes a confusing situation even more of a mess.)

Fried 'til crispy

These squashes come in two forms: smooth and ridged. The smooth ones, or loofah, seem to have a shorter growing period around here and are most usually found in summer. The ridged ones, sometimes called shenggua 勝瓜 in Chinese and "angled gourds" in English, are often displayed in Chinese groceries pretty much year around. 

These two varieties taste identical as far as I’m concerned, and they receive the same treatment: just before cooking them, they are peeled, the ends are cut off, and the meat is cut into whatever shape required. However, the squash does turn dark very quickly in the same way that eggplant does, so prepare them only a few minutes before they’re to be thrown into the pan, or else steam or microwave or parboil them in order to keep them white. 

In Chaozhou, silk gourds are given a special treatment that I haven’t seen anywhere else, which is that they are fried into crêpes with a handful of tasty condiments that play havoc with your taste buds.  Fried peanuts and dried salted radish bits are tossed with thin slices of the squash and then mixed into a simple crepe batter that is then fried until golden.  This is terrific as is, but if you don’t have access to silk gourds, peeled zucchini or other summer squash will yield almost as good a dish as the original.

The frying of the sliced squash is rather tedious since there is so much of it that you need to do it in many batches, so use the largest frying pan that you have (or two, if you can juggle it), and work on prepping the rest of your ingredients while the squash is frying away.  Then, use a smaller pan - about 7 inches in diameter - to fry the crepes.

Crispy silk gourd crêpes 

Cuìzhá sīguā jiān  脆炸絲瓜煎 

Chaozhou

Serves 6 to 8 as part of a multi-course meal

The ingredients

4 small or 2 large silk gourds (between 2½ and 3 pounds total), or about 20 ounces summer squash

Peanut or vegetable oil for frying

¼ cup salted, dried radish (caipu 菜脯), preferably already chopped (see Tip)

½ cup fried peanuts

½ cup sweet potato flour (best), or cornstarch if you absolutely can't find sweet potato flour

2 large eggs

½ cup cool water, or as needed

6 Chinese chives or 2 green onions, sliced thinly

2 teaspoons fish sauce (or light soy sauce if you want this to be vegetarian)

4 teaspoons sugar

4 teaspoons roasted sesame oil

Freshly ground pepper

A small sprinkle of salt

Small amount of cilantro, chopped, for garnish

1. Peel the silk gourd and remove the seeds if they are at all tough, as well as the stem and flower ends. Pour about 3 tablespoons of the oil in the largest flat frying pan you have and heat it over medium-high heat. Slice the squash thinly, and place one layer of the slices into the hot oil. Fry both sides of the squash until golden (adding more oil as needed) and remove to a small work bowl; repeat with the rest of the squash until all of it has been fried. You should end up with about 2 cups cooked squash.

2. Rinse the salted radish in a sieve and shake it dry. Chop the peanuts until they are in small pieces (less than ¼ inch across), which should be about the same size as the chopped salted radish. Mix the sweet potato flour with the egg and the water to form a batter with the consistency of heavy cream. Add the peanuts, radish, and fried squash to the batter, as well as the green onion, fish sauce, sugar, roasted sesame oil, and pepper. 

3. Heat about 3 tablespoons of the oil in a 7-inch flat frying pan over medium-high heat until a couple drops of the batter immediately sizzle and start to brown. Ladle a quarter of the batter into the pan so that it completely covers the bottom. Shake the pan after about 20 seconds to loosen the crêpe, and then turn it over when the underside is a golden brown; if you are a bit nervous about flipping the crêpe, slide it onto a plate with the raw side up and then flip the plate over onto the frying pan.  

Perfection

4. Brown the other side and remove the cooked crêpe to a clean cutting board. (If you are like me and prefer the crêpe to have more crisp exterior, feel free to fry both sides until they are a dark brown; the texture will be most noticeable once the crêpes cool off a bit.) Repeat this with the rest of the batter until all of it has been fried. (The crêpes can be made ahead of time up to this point and reheated in a 325 degree F oven until crispy right before serving.)

5. Slice the crêpes into 4 to 6 wedges each and serve garnished with the cilantro. 

Tip

Salted radish is often translated as "salted turnip" on the package.

Get the Vietnamese fish sauce with the pink label and three blue crabs on it. I've used that for decades, and it's always good.