The Hunt for Chinese Sausage

Unfortunately, this post doesn't have any pictures, but this little adventure was one of the more entertaining ones that we've had since moving to Abu Dhabi.

Back home in the US, my mother made me a dish that was great for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and that I consider one of my Vietnamese comfort foods.  She called it "cơm nếp" which technically just translates to sweet rice or glutinous rice and is broad class of Vietnamese dishes both savory and sweet made from the deliciously sticky rice.  I've later learned my comfort dish is actually called "xôi mặn lạp xưởng" (pronounced soy mang lap soung) which translates to salty sticky rice with Chinese Sausage.  I still call it cơm nếp because old habits die hard.

On a chance encounter at a Houston Costco the afternoon of the great Tax Day Flood of 2016 we happened to find triple-packs of my beloved lạp xưởng - the same brand that I buy from 99 Ranch Market.  Imagine my excitement - triple pack, for $9.99 when I've been paying $4.99 for singles!  Side note - if you ever watch "Fresh off the Boat", you would understand how opportunistically Asian going to Costco after a flood is.  And sure enough, that day Costco was mostly empty save for a bunch of Asian people and not enough cashiers to handle checkout. Anyway, G had no idea why I was so excited for this weird looking sausage that wasn't even stored in the refrigerator but he went along and we bought a triple pack.

So I get home and made my childhood dish. The dish is simple - sweet rice cooked in chicken broth or chicken stock.  Green onions sauteed in sesame oil.  Chinese sausage sliced thin and cooked until most of the fat is rendered off.  Mix.  Eat.

G took a bite, and he looked at me incredulously with eyes that said "woman, why have you not made this for me sooner???".  I think what actually came out of his mouth between bites was "mmm, Babe, this is yummy!"  And then he proceeded to consume larger portions more frequently than I could keep up with.  Our rice cooker capacity is only 3 cups, so I'd make a rice cooker full of it maybe once or twice a week - which in a month or two was more than I'd made it in an entire year!  Finally G could tell I was getting tired of making and eating it and told me to teach him to make it.  Problem solved.  You could almost always find at least one small tupperware (usually a large tupperware) of cơm nếp in the fridge.

And then we moved to the Middle East.

To understand why this is a problem, I must first describe Chinese Sausage.  I have no idea what is in it, other than pork and fat.  Lots of fat.  When I cook lạp xưởng in a pan, more fat renders out than even bacon.  It is not a healthy meat source (but boy is it delicious).  Sometimes you can find the "healthier" version that is half chicken and slightly less greasy, but it is also slightly less delicious.

Back to moving to Abu Dhabi.  Shopping for pork here is hard.  Apparently, not as hard as it is in Indonesia, but it's not easy.  You have to go to a special room in the grocery store which has big letters saying "NON-MUSLIMS".  And that is IF your grocery store has a "pork room".  The pork room is filled with Western delicacies that are non-Halal like pork rinds, pop tarts, and jiffy corn bread along with more typical porky fare like bacon, baby back ribs, pepperoni, and other sausages.  But for sure, none of the commercially run grocery stores carried lạp xưởng.

What is an expat to do?  Turn to other expats.

G posted on the Abu Dhabi Q&A forum, and we got a surprisingly small number of suggestions.  Usually posts on Q&A result in dozens of replies, but we just had a few and all pointed to Chinese-run "Baqalas" - Baqalas in Abu Dhabi are basically government-branded mini-marts. No one could give us an exact location, but most were like "well, it's near this restaurant kind of near such and such road" or "on the same block as this tailor in this neighbor hood" or "ask a Chinese person to bring some in for you".  The last suggestion was not so helpful, and the earlier suggestions sound so sketchy!  But G really wanted some cơm nếp, so we decided to try to find one of these shops.

We drove as close to the first suggestion one as we could get, parked, and then just started walking around.  It was 9am on a Saturday, and the city was just waking up.  Unlike the majorly tourist part of Abu Dhabi, a lot of working class people frequented this area, and our nostrils were assaulted by smells of rotting fruit, roasting meats, and garbage...pretty typical for a Chinatown or little India anywhere in the world.  We wandered around and finally found a green and black baqala awning that had a red Chinese lantern hanging from it.  Hooray!  We must have found it!  So we rushed over, and saw on the sign, opening hours at 10am.  Disappointed, we waited and waited, got some coffee and waited, and it never opened.  It looked promising from the outside, but if it wasn't physically open, there was no way to find out.

With our hopes dashed, we dejectedly tried to find the second location suggested to us.  After getting a little lost, I managed to spot a dangling red lantern while we were driving around.   And the front door was open!  We walk in, and I immediately start hunting through the store for meats.  G takes a different approach and just asks the cashier at the front of the store.  What happens next is a second hand retelling because I wasn't actually there to witness it.

G:  Do you have lạp xưởng?

Cashier: -looks at G blankly-

G: You know, Chinese Sausage?

Cashier: -squints his eyes and looks G up and down more suspiciously this time-

G: Pork Chinese Sausage?

Cashier: -looks around the store, reaches under the counter, pulls out two packages- 30 dirham each.

30 dh is about $8 USD, and the packages were about 2/3 of the size of one of the Costco packets, so quite a bit more expensive than home.  Still, G was elated to have had a successful mission that we immediately went to another grocery store to procure all the rest of the ingredients....which, had we stopped to think about it, we could have purchased at the baqala, but we were so excited we paid in cash and hurried out of the store. G's only lament was that we didn't pick up 3 or 4 packages instead while we were there!

Just like any comfort food around the world, there's a million recipes for this, but here is the one that I grew up with.  I think once upon a time, Mom also added chicken, but she stopped adding it when caught me picking out the chicken and only eating the sausage.

Recipe for Xôi Mặn Lạp Xưởng

3 cups of glutinous rice (we prefer Cal Rose, but other brands will work)
3-4 cups of chicken broth or chicken stock
5-6 stalks of green onion, sliced thin - I like to keep the white part, G doesn't.  It's up to your preference.
4-5 links of Lạp Xưởng aka Chinese Sausage
Sesame oil

Cook the rice according to package instructions, substituting chicken broth or stock for water.

Saute the onions in sesame oil until the edges start to blacken.  Be careful not to burn them all the way through.

Cook the sausage - you can do this in one of two ways.

Option 1.  Thinly slice the sausage links and saute in a medium frying pan until the edges start the brown.  Drain the fat, saute a little longer until they reach desired done-ness.

Option 2.  Poke holes in the sausage with a fork to allow steam to escape, wrap it in a ton of paper towel (like 4-5 sheets) and cook in the microwave, about 30 seconds per link. After done cooking, thinly slice the sausage. This method is a little riskier because of variability with microwaves and the cooked sausage is harder to cut, but I do this when I'm too lazy to pull out a second frying pan.

When the rice is finished, mix everything together and enjoy!  Makes 5-6 servings.

Optional toppings:
Dried shredded pork (thit cha bong)
Asian fried onions (smaller and crunchier than the American "French's" version)
Dried shrimp (which I think are gross, but are traditionally served in parts of Vietnam)
Soy Sauce (G's favorite)