Will the Real Lemongrass Please Stand Up?

+ Lemongrass growing tips + Viet broken rice restaurant in San Jose + decent Chinese Food in Santa Cruz

In response to last Sunday’s lemongrass pork recipe, Emily mentioned that her lemongrass in Southern California was spindly. Jan also reported unjoyful lemongrass cultivation in Europe. I suspected that they may have not been growing the kind of lemongrass that’s typically eaten.

I didn’t know how to get a hold of a specimen to share with you all. I’d only seen the skinny lemongrass in ornamental gardens.

Fate intervened yesterday when I played hooky and went to a favorite nursery. In the herb section were these plants:

They are labeled “lemon grass” and the plant description says it is botanically Cymbopogon citratus. The labels also said the plant was edible.

I tore off a piece of the leaf and tasted it. The flavor was mild and somewhat dull compared to the bright citrusy lemongrass that’s sold at markets and what I grow.

Was it true lemongrass? Look at those reddish, spindly stalks! It looked like a decorative grass rather than the chubby bulbous stalks sold at the market.

Turns out there are many kinds of lemongrass (Cymbopogon X.) but only two (2!) of them are what is typically used for cooking.

There are two of the 55 species in the genus Cymbopogon that are used almost interchangeably as lemongrass. The so-called East-Indian lemongrass (C. flexuosus) (also known as cochin or Malabar grass) is native to India, Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, while West-Indian lemongrass (C. citratus), is of a Malaysian origin and is more typically used for cooking. When crushed, the fragrance resembles the scent of lemon. Extensive breeding programs have developed many varieties of lemongrass but few are available in North America. The related citronella grass (C. nardus) is the source of commercial citronella oil, which is used in soaps, as a mosquito repellent in insect sprays and candles and in aromatherapy. (Source: U of Wisconsin Horticulture)

So, West Indian lemongrass is what we’re mostly eating.

What does citronella look like? C. nardus has skinny reddish stalks and according the Singaporean national parks, looks just like what’s being sold at my nursery.

Since I chewed on a piece of C. nardus — bug repellent, I got worrying. Is it edible? No, according to a 2012 article from the India Times and this 2022 information page on C. nardus.

The grass I spotted at the nursery is beautiful but alas, not edible! Note that there’s a citronella-scented geranium, too.

I hope that the confusion between lemongrass and citronella is not widespread. Southeast Asian cooking is gaining popularity and fresh lemongrass can be hard to find. It is pretty easy to grow!

How to grow lemongrass to eat

The easiest method is to propagate lemongrass yourself. Buy 3 to 5 firm, fresh looking stalks at a supermarket, farmer's market, or Asian market. What I have in my garden started from trimmed stalks that I bought.

Wherever you shop, choose stalks with the tapered root end intact, not cut off with concentric circles showing. Below is a comparison from my garden (yes to rooting the one on the right). Yes, there are reddish marks on my homegrown lemongrass, but they are not as plentiful as the ones for C. nardus.

If the root end isn’t fresh and clean, cut off a bit of it, stick the stalk in jar filled with about 3 inches of water and keep the jar near a sunny window or even outside. Change the water once a week. After a while, the stalk(s) will sprout roots. At that point, plant it deep enough (about 2 inches should be covered) so the stalk stands. Water like you would any other vegetable and it will grow and spread. Be patient.

I grow lemongrass in a raised bed because our voracious gophers love lemongrass. If you live where there are snowy winters, put your lemongrass in a pot and bring it inside as the temperatures drop.

Thin out the lemongrass when it gets too bushy and gift rooted stalks to others to spread the wealth.

Coconut Coir

While we’re on the topic of gardening, might I suggest trying coconut coir? It’s a fabulous growing medium and retains moisture and nutrients like a champ. I buy a big block, soak some, and cut it off to use as needed. One 9-pound block makes about 2.5 cubic feet of soil. For less mess but at a higher price, buy coconut noir in small blocks. I like to use coir for tropical edibles and houseplants. My nursery carries Grow!T but Coco Bliss and Mother Earth look good too.

What’s your favorite potting soil? Or, have you used coconut coir?

Viet Broken Rice Restaurants in San Jose

I don’t eat out much but last Friday, we ate out twice! The first was lunch with the the Pham family which owns Red Boat Fish Sauce. It had been years since we caught up so we lingered for hours at Com Tam Thien Huong at the Vietnam Town mall in San Jose.

There are a few Com Tam Thien Huong locations in the Bay Area (they are on Yelp but there’s no website). Cuong, RB’s founder, selected the Vietnam Town location on Story Road because it’s roomy, swankish, and tastiest. We sat outside surrounded by tropical plantings and it indeed felt like Vietnam.

What is cơm tấm? Why is it a special Viet thing?

🍽️ Cơm tấm means broken rice, couscous like grains of rice that happen to break during the milling process. Broken rice is a byproduct of rice production and people developed dishes around using it up. (In the American South, especially the rice growing regions in Georgia and South Carolina, broken rice is referred to as rice middlins.)

Nowadays, Vietnamese broken rice is processed to be purposefully broken. It costs more than perfect, whole grains of rice!

When cooked Viet-style, broken rice grains are dryish. Viet people usually eat a rice plate meal of cơm tấm with a variety of proteins and some daikon carrot pickles. Anything goes.

A meal of cơm tấm is special because you don’t have to share your food with others. You call the shots and get to personalize it. As I explain in the Rice chapter introduction of Ever-Green Vietnamese, broken rice is a sumptuous, personal plate of fun.

At cơm tấm restaurants, the rice plate comes with a bowl of light soup, and nước chấm dipping sauce. At home, I often omit the soup. The soup is there because it’s likely the broth leftover from poaching pork that’s used for other foods. You need the dipping sauce to flavor the rice and other items on your plate.

On Friday at Com Tam Thien Huong, I ordered “lite” — #39 cơm tấm (broken rice) with tàu hũ ky (shrimp tofu skin roll) and chạo tôm (shrimp on sugar cane). The nước chấm was overly sweet for me so I added a squeeze of lime. Ask for fresh chile, if you want decent, good heat.

To eat the broken rice: Pour or spoon nước chấm on the rice, then mix it all up. Cut the sides with fork and knife and dunk into nước chấm, if you like too. The Phams recommend the grilled pork and roast chicken.

Among the standard cơm tấm accompaniments is bì, a shredded pork skin mixture flavored with nutty ground rice and chả trứng hấp (steamed egg “meatloaf”). If you want to try the works, scan any cơm tấm restaurant menu for a fully loaded version.

If you want to make broken rice plates, there’s a recipe for vegan bì and flexitarian chả trứng hấp in Ever-Green Vietnamese. I use glass noodles and jicama to fake the pork for the bì and my husband tells me he likes it better than the regular bì! Go figure.

When you’re near a Vietnamese community, look for cơm tấm restaurants and try them out. You don’t need to be in San Jose to try it out. The restaurants are plentiful in Little Saigons all over.

Good Chinese Food in Santa Cruz

🔥 There are few Asian restaurant options in Santa Cruz where I live. However, last Friday, we ended up having a spontaneous and interesting Chinese restaurant dinner with friends, chef David Kinch and winemaker John Locke. We stopped by Birichino to try John’s latest Vermentino (a friendly, refreshing white wine) and lingered until closing when John invited us to join him and David at Special Noodle, a new Chinese restaurant in Santa Cruz. David adores the spot and has strongly lobbied for me to try it. So we went.

Special Noodle (SN) is part of a Chinese woman-owned restaurant group. There are five SN locations in the Bay Area. The ambitious restaurant group has other concepts (dumplings!) and all told, nine (9) restaurants. (Check locations here.) They’re mostly in Asian strongholds like Fremont so having an outpost in Santa Cruz is unusual. We’re a town known for surfing, hippie culture, and an antique wood roller coaster at the beachside boardwalk.

But things are changing. The pandemic brought lots of tech folks and overall greater diversity to the area. UC Santa Cruz attracts people from China. And, tourism brings visitors wanting more than tacos, burritos, and pizzas.

We ordered nine or ten dishes. Standouts included:

• Panfried bao — Despite looking deflated and timid, the Shanghai buns are very juicy and hot so pour out the juices into a spoon to sip.

• Boiling fish — The Sichuan specialty is strangely listed under stir-fried dishes and part of a drop-down menu under “boiling beef”.

• Wontons in chile oil — Were plentiful and not too 🌶️ but with numbing zing from Sichuan peppercorn.

The special noodle dish cooked in a hot stone pot was akin to a layered hot pot made table side on a cart that’s wheeled out. We ordered the clam one and it was fun to eat but not spectacular. There was a lashing of Sichuan peppercorn oil to make things exciting.

Overall, the food looked terribly hot but was mostly ma — tingly numbing with Sichuan peppercorns. The chiles were mild Tianjin pepper.

Special Noodle knows not to burn its customers.

The menu downside is there are not many vegetable dishes. I would have like pickles or simple stir-fried greens to offset the bold flavors elsewhere. The pan-fried chive dumplings were oddly crisp-chewy on the outside and cold inside.

There were customers coming in at 10 p.m — unusual for a town that closes down early. I spotted plenty of Asian customers among the diverse crowd. It didn’t feel like Santa Cruz and honestly, I liked that. The electric signage and brightly lit lanterns outside reminded me of spots I’d been to in China and Vietnam.

I was happy to be able to have an interesting meal so close to home. If you go, peruse the menu beforehand because ordering is quickly done with a QR code or iPad so it’s hard to consider all your options.

Friday night was super busy for the restaurant so there were dishes that seemed rushed. I liked the weekend vibe but next time, I’d rather go on a weekday when the kitchen is more relaxed.

My husband heads back to work soon so I’m going to skip my Sunday dispatch for a little extra fun. More next week.