Vietnamese Fried Rice – Com Chien
One afternoon at our first Skooliepalooza, while I was slinging samples and selling cookbooks, I heard a woman exclaim as she flipped through my book. She told me excitedly that she was Vietnamese, and she was very happy to see the chapter on Vietnamese recipes. I smiled and expressed to her my love for the cuisine, with its freshness and clean flavors, but inside I felt myself tense up a bit.
Now, I think that my Vietnamese recipes are pretty dang good. I have a great deal of respect for the cuisine, having eaten and cooked many dishes. I’ve even traveled to Vietnam and sampled the food in situ, so I think that my recipes are pretty accurate and pretty delicious. But that doesn’t mean they stand up to grandma’s cooking. Few recipes can claim that honor. As the woman flipped through the section and scanned the recipes I braced myself for some sort of rebuke. In the end, all she had to say was this: “You really need a fried rice recipe.” So, this recipe is for her.
If you’ve never tried it, Com Chien, or Vietnamese Fried Rice is just wonderful. It is, of course, similar to the Chinese-style fried rice you are surely familiar with, but with more typical Vietnamese ingredients. For example, we use fish sauce in place of soy sauce, and scallions, green beans, and a handful of cilantro add a bit of freshness. It’s a simple preparation, but absolutely bursting with flavor.
A few notes: In this recipe I chose to use spam for the pork, because of its availability. It would be more traditional to use sweet and salty Chinese sausages, but that would almost certainly require a trip to an Asian grocery, and the rest of the ingredients are pretty basic. Also, while fried rice is a great way to use up leftover rice, it is also fine to cook rice specifically to then fry it. If you go down that path, 1 ½ cups uncooked rice will make you roughly the 4 ½ cups cooked rice the recipe calls for.
Com Chien - Vietnamese Fried Rice
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp neutral oil divided
- ½ lb. medium shrimp peeled
- ½ (12-oz.) can spam diced large
- 1 ½ cups green beans chopped small
- 1 tbsp minced garlic
- 4 scallions thinly sliced
- 4 ½ cups cooked rice
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp sugar
- ½ tsp white pepper
- 2 eggs
- fish sauce to taste
Instructions
- Bring a wok or large skillet to high heat and add 1 tbsp oil. Add the shrimp and cook for around 3 minutes, until pink and just done. Remove to a bowl for now.
- Add the diced spam and cook, tossing occasionally, until crisp, about 5 minutes.
- Next add the green beans to the pan and cook for 3 minutes, tossing occasionally.
- Then add the garlic and scallions and cook for another 2 minutes.
- Pour in the remaining 1 tbsp oil followed by the rice. Cook this, tossing occasionally for 5 minutes.
- Return the shrimp to the pan and add the cilantro. Sprinkle over the salt, white pepper, and sugar.
- Clear a space in the center of the pan and scramble the eggs.
- Finally, mix it all together and add fish sauce to taste.
While there is no dedicated Thai or Vietnamese section in the cookbook this time around, I have instead put in a section with Southeast Asian and Southeast Asian Fusion recipes, to cover all of my bases. Here’s what you’ll find in that section of the cookbook:
Bun Cha
Coconut Fish with Mango Chili Butter
Curry alla Vodka
Egg Coffee
Green Bean Stir Fry
Green Curry Wonton Soup
Green Peppercorn Shrimp
Pad Kra Pao
Do Chua (Pickled Carrot & Daikon)
Red Curry Loco Moco
VN Pork Burger
We’re into the final hours of the Kickstarter campaign now. We have less than 48 hours left now to reach our funding goal and get this cookbook made. If you haven’t yet, this is the perfect time to head to the Kickstarter page and pre-order yourself a book. We’re sooooo close to meeting our funding goal, all we need is a little push!