- I believe that Hmong food isn't a type of food
but it's a philosophy of food.
It's a way of thinking about food
the way that we do our food
it tells the story of our people, you know.
So, what we're going to do is we're
going to take our fish here.
We're going to score them.
We just go with snapper
because all it is, is just one bone right down the middle.
And you can just pick the meat right off.
The reason why we score them is when we salt them
open them a little bit, get that salt right in there.
We have lemongrass.
We want to stuff them with some lemongrass.
What you are going to do is,
we're actually going to smack them.
So it releases all the oils.
And then, lemongrass actually smells like Froot Loops.
So, we have some lemongrass, ginger, garlic shallots here.
Just going to stuff it right in the middle.
Open up the mouth, stuff the snapper.
Put the lemongrass in his mouth.
So, we have this and then we'll grab the baskets
and we're going to put them back right into the baskets.
There's this great big trend right now of like, Oh yeah,
well we have, you know, open fire pit cooking,
blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff.
And a lot of restaurants are doing that
and that's great. For me this isn't just a trend.
This is actually a part of who I am.
This is how our people cooked, you know
hundreds of years ago.
How our people still cook today.
If you go into the hills of Laos, into the mountains
of Laos and you meet the Hmong people out there
this is how they still cook.
This is probably one of my favorite ways to cook fish
It is just right on these baskets.
Stuff them and you just cook them right over the fire.
Yeah, There's a couple of ways to know
when the fish is done.
It's actually, you look at the eyes.
See, if the eyes are fully cooked
and like that white part of the eye pops out,
you kind of know that the fish is done.
(upbeat music)
It's like, who needs CrossFit, you know?
When you do this.
We have a wood purveyor who gets us this Minnesota Oak.
I really love the flavor of it, also too
is, like the heat is perfect.
It doesn't burn super hot. It's awesome.
Argh, I feel like Chris Evans now. Argh!
Today, we're going to be making what's called
the Vinai feast.
And so basically, this is just this big feast where
we lay the table out with banana leaves
and then we put all the food, all the grill meats, the rice,
the noodles and the vegetables
and we put all that in the middle.
And then we'll kind of talk about these, just
these different components that we're actually
going to be breaking
down how we're going to be cooking it over wood fire.
We can do the cinder blocks now
and then we can start getting that fire going.
As we thought through this cinder block grill,
one of the things that I thought about was the fact
that we just need something that's mobile and it's big.
It's literally just two racks.
So, the bottom part here literally we'll
stack wood on and we'll just cook
and the wood will fall down.
What I love about this grill is we can take it anywhere.
You can take this grill anywhere.
The thing is you just have to buy cinder blocks
because cinder blocks break real easily.
And then what we're going to do is
we're going to do a little log cabin
and then we'll throw a little bit of charcoal in
and then we'll light the whole thing up.
The way that I learned English,
was watching TV with my grandma.
Grandma had three people that she loved the most.
One, she loved Chuck Norris.
Two, Jean-Claude Van Damme movies and three MacGyver.
And so, my mom would watch my dad like, tinker
with stuff and we'd be like, hey mom, where's dad?
And my mom would be like,
Oh, your dad's outside being MacGyver.
My cousin and I kind of just took that word
and we just said "Hmongyver-ing."
And that's what, like, with this grill, that's kinda like
it's kinda like that.
It's going to be raining today.
We're going to figure it out.
We're going to make it work as the rain comes in.
You're just like, okay, we'll just keep moving
keep changing, keep moving, keep changing.
And you know, that's one of those things where I, like
I tell people I love being Hmong
because our people have never had the most ideal conditions
but I'm not trying to be a martyr.
I'm not trying to be a victim about it
but it's like, okay, like think through it.
What's the next process?
What's the next thing you got to do?
We start with chicken.
We're not spatchcocking them.
We're peeling them out.
I'll show you guys how to do it.
So we got both,
two of our chefs here with us, Chandra and Kenny.
I swear almost forgot your name, dude, Chandra and Kenny.
So basically, what we're doing is we're
de-boning the chicken we're bringing the whole carcass out.
So, you see where the
where the rib meat is here and everything.
I use the back of the knife and then peel it right off that
meat right here.
Around, you do the same thing on this side, okay.
So, when I was a kid growing up, this was my job.
My dad didn't believe in signing
us up for like baseball or basketball camp.
We'd just do this kind of stuff.
Once you get to this part
you literally can just grab this and pull it.
And then this whole bottom
this whole carcass will go to stock.
This dry rub we're going to do has coriander
cumin, peppercorns, garlic, in here.
And oh, and then we have Korean chili flakes and salt.
And what we'll do is we'll put it in one of the cages
and we'll just throw it right over the fire.
(upbeat music)
So, we just kind of put it on here, let it sit.
And then we'll adjust what we need to adjust.
The most important thing when it comes to cooking
with fire is a lot of people they're afraid of fire.
Cause they're afraid like,
"Oh my gosh, it's too, you know, it's too crazy.
I don't know what to do" The thing that I love about cooking
with fire is it's kind of like the facts of life.
You don't let the fire control you.
You control the fire.
This is kind of like, the Rolls Royce
of grills it's a brand called Grill Works.
So, one of the great things
about this grill is it has these grates where
you can just go up and down with the wheel.
So, you can really control that temperature.
And what is my favorite thing
about this is where I get a little geeky is
watching that fat render.
The little joys of life.
That flame is going to hit this chicken skin
and that fat's going to render and drips
down and it hits the embers and the smoke then comes up.
You get that smoky, again,
that little smoky flavor to it too.
I think for me, like this is, like, my happy place.
To be surrounded by fire or grilling and cooking for friends
and people you love like this is, this is my happy place.
This is where I truly just enjoy being at.
I just feel like,
this is where things make sense too, you know.
Pork is very important to the Hmong people.
I mean, that is like, if you think about like a food pyramid
for the Hmong people, like the pork is
like that whole bottom third growing up, it was always pork
everything, like the bones were used,
the innards, some of my favorite dishes were
like the offal from the, from pork, like the heart,
liver, the lungs those are some of my favorite dishes.
I love it.
This is the marinade we're making for the pork.
Chandra's doing this up.
It's kind of like, I just call it our Hmong sofrito.
Lemongrass, ginger, garlic, shallots, Thai chilies
and then we got a little chili oil in here.
We have tamarind, fish sauce, oyster sauce, a little bit
of Korean chili flakes over there.
And then, so we want this to have that, just that really
good balance of sweet sour, salty, spicy.
Good? You can't do the head side. Be like, "Mmm!"
- Yeah, nice!
- We'll just salt it a little bit.
And then, when you grill this, what's really important when
you're grilling this pork is you actually want it to be
up away from the fire a little bit
because of all the sugars in the sauce.
Cause, if you keep it close to fire it's going to burn.
So, you want that caramelization to happen
but you also want, it's kind of a low and slow kind
of roasting grill.
So, basically just grill this guy.
We'll just slowly turn it.
You know, it's getting a little dark here.
So I know that right here, this spot is a really
hot spot. So I want to move this guy.
So, we have these beef ribs.
What we do is I try to cut them right down the middle.
So then it's even between every bone.
And what I really like is I really like having
that little bit of that fat cap on top.
The beef rib is one of my favorite, if not my favorite dish.
And I think that what complements the beef rib really
well is the Szechuan peppercorn coffee crust that we put on.
And then the Szechuan peppercorn,
you get that numbing sensation, which is super delicious.
Oh, what's going to happen when we put this
on the grill is again
that fat's going to render down slowly.
And as that fat renders down
it is just flavored by this coffee rub. These long ribs
they're usually low and slow.
So, you're going to take your time on these.
So, you want to get really give it a good amount
of time here.
And then with the pork, the pork is almost done.
So, we just kind of push it to the side and then
we just let that residual heat, just heat up the pork.
The Hmong people never had a written language.
Everything that we had about our people is oral.
For a group of people that don't have a land
of their own, a country of their own, a flag of their own,
what gets passed down historically
about them is it's in their food.
Our cultural DNA is intricately woven
into the foods that we eat.
And when you dine with us, you're not just eating a meal
or you're not just eating a dish.
You're actually partaking in our history.
So we had these head-on shrimp,
we get them from one of our vendors here
called Fortune.
We're just going to throw a little salt in there.
You just want to cover everything in salt,
Throw little fish sauce in there.
Throw a little bit of chili oil in there.
So, we'll just toss it up.
The Hmong people really love seafood.
It's kind of like a specialty treat for all of us
especially like head on full,
you peel, you work for the meat.
So, that's why we really love putting shrimp on here.
This grilled shrimp.
We got this fire going.
Move it up a little bit here.
And then just let the fire do the work.
And what I really like about using shrimp that's whole,
with the shell and head on and everything is
that you don't have to worry about really overcooking it.
It actually really protects the inside,
keeps everything moist.
So, we're going to lay this table out with banana leaves.
I always tell people that banana leaves are
like nature's tinfoil.
Yeah, so we lay the table out and then we just start
filling it up with all the food.
What the Vinai feast really represents
is that bountifulness.
You know, dad told me that in the refugee camp,
every morning, when you wake up, you had
to send somebody to go stand in line
at the ration line and they will stand there, stand there,
and then whatever ration they get, you bring it back,
and everybody kind of just gathered everything
that they had together.
And that's what they would eat.
And regardless of what it was, for them, it was this feast.
It was this big meal that they had.
One of the things I learned, my father taught me;
and especially when we were little kids
and we would fight over little things.
I mean, dad always said to us
when you say this is mine, you have less.
But when you say this is ours, you have more.
And one of the great things out of this last year
that I've really learned is that there's this fear
of we're going to have less.
We're going to have less.
So everyone's grabbing, they have their own, everything
in the last year
and everything that's happened, if we change our mentality,
and we think that this is ours,
we actually have more.
And with this Vinai feast
it's like we sit down together.
We eat together.
And what we're saying here is "This is ours."
It doesn't matter how many pieces of chicken there are.
It doesn't matter how many fish there are.
It's all ours. In that kind of mentality,
you have more together.
(upbeat music)