Mashed Cassava with Coconut (Khoai Mì Chà Bông)

Cassava is a very popular dish in the Vietnamese cuisine. Cassava is cooked with sticky rice, cooked with other root vegetables, to make sweet soup, or to make a cake, which is the Vietnamese favorite dish. The time after 1975 was a dark time for the South Vietnamese people when the communists took over the South and my family had to go to "the new economic zone”, which actually was the unclaimed wilderness. Our family was unfamiliar with farming, so life was very difficult at that time. Cassava or yucca was our family's daily food because there was not enough rice to make a good pot of rice and cassava was mixed into rice to make a larger amount of rice to feed the whole family. My mother sometimes made Khoai mì chà bông for us if we agreed to eat less rice because this dish is quite expensive due to the sugar and fresh coconut meat mixed with sesame seeds and peanuts that increased the sweet taste of this dish. It was more of a snack. On the Vietnamese streets, this dish was very popular and was usually presented on banana leaves and came with a spoon made from a dried coconut stem. This is a very Vietnamese traditional dish but is full of memories for me of those times. Each time I rested, my heart was solemnly restored, and I never forget to thank God for my family and the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese people who left their homeland to resettle all over the free and peaceful world. Today, I will introduce this dish to all my friends who frequently visit my blog. This dish is very easy to make and is almost like making mashed potatoes in the West; therefore, I temporarily translated this dish as "Sweet mashed cassava with coconut".  However, for me it is a sweet memory of a horrible time that my family had to in "the new economic zone".

Ingredients:

1 large yucca or about 1 to 1 ½ lbs.

1 cup coconut milk

2 tbs Sugar

1 tbs Salt

Accompany with: 2 cups shredded sweet coconut flakes

Peanut-sesame mixture (muối mè)*

Equipment:

Potato masher

Pressure cooker

Directions:

Peel off the yucca skin. Wash and cut into big chunks. 

Place all yucca chunks in salted water and soak them for a few hours or overnight (my mom said this will remove all the toxins in the yucca). Drain.

Place yucca in a pressure cooker. Add coconut milk and salt (about 1/2 tsp). Close the lid and cook for 10 minutes (the cooking time varies depending upon each pressure cooker).

Let cool off a little. Place all cooked yucca in a mixing bowl.

Remove the core of the cooked yucca and use the masher to mash the cooked yucca into fine but still holding its shape (do not overmash as if making Western mashed potatoes).

Mix the shredded coconut and some sugar depending on each cook’s taste.

Sprinkle with peanut-sesame on top and serve.

*Peanut-sesame mixture is a combination of roasted peanuts and roasted sesame seeds, sugar, and salt. Every vegan Vietnamese kitchen always has this condiment. The ratio is 2 to 1 (2 tbs sugar and 1 tbs salt).