Asian improvisations on the grill: “Vietnamese” chops, sesame zucchini

A marinade seasoned with turmeric, ginger, garlic, Chinese five-spice powder and other spices gives Turmeric/Ginger Grilled Pork Chops big flavor with very little heat; Grilled Sesame Zucchini is delicious, smoky and impressive—and it’s easy to make. Recipes below.

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At times like this, I wish Blue Kitchen had a scratch and sniff mode. When I’d whisked together the ingredients for the marinade for the chops, it was so wonderfully aromatic that I wanted Marion to get a whiff of it before I added the meat and popped it in the fridge. I carried it to the study at the opposite end of the apartment where Marion was. She told me the big fragrance had preceded me.

The marinade is actually based on one used for a five-spice chicken dish in Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. Pham is chef/owner of Lemon Grass Restaurant in Sacramento, California. Here’s how she describes the dish’s olfactory pleasures: “The best five-spice chicken I have had in mai-pham-vietnamese-table-smVietnam was made by a street food vendor in the port town of Hoi An in the central region. The vendor used a spice mix of freshly toasted star anise and turmeric. When she grilled the chicken, the whole neighborhood was perfumed with the most enticing fragrance.” Other seasonings adding their big personalities to the marinade include fresh ginger and garlic—plenty of each—and Chinese five-spice powder.

You may have noticed the quotes around Vietnamese in the headline. It’s not that Pham’s marinade isn’t authentically Vietnamese; she was born in Vietnam and left there just days before the fall of Saigon in 1975. And the recipes in the book come from a trip she made home 20 years later to connect with her roots. It’s more the way certain ingredients freely cross borders, especially in Asia. Continue reading “Asian improvisations on the grill: “Vietnamese” chops, sesame zucchini”