I have a new recipe review for 2025 made just for Lunar New Year (Tet)! This is from a Vietnamese cookbook I bought years ago (written in English so I have no excuse for messing up). I’ve used this recipe book several times and I think many recipes are authentic to my Viet-American background but some recipes I have never seen nor heard of before and I assume they must be from North Vietnam (my mom is South Vietnamese, my dad is North Vietnamese born but lived in South Vietnam, perhaps a slight majority of Vietnamese people in Texas are from South Vietnam? Don’t quote me on that.) For those people not familiar with Vietnamese cuisine, it is South Asian with tropical flavors, significant Chinese influence especially in the north part that borders China, and was a former colony of France, so also a lot of French influence between the 1800s and 1900s especially in the south. Though that combination sounds delicious, like the rest of SE Asia, Vietnamese cuisine has a lot of smelly ingredients like durian and fermented fish sauce. I don’t like durian but other ingredients that smell foul I do love and can’t get enough of lol. Anyway this baked cinnamon meat loaf is bizarre but doesn’t have weird ingredients so I made it for new years along with jasmine rice, pickled vegetables, marinated cucumbers, fresh nuoc cham dipping sauce, roasted vegetables and some salmon potage from Daiso, and of course traditional fruits and flowers and jasmine green tea.
[photo of lunar new year dinner spread with fruits and flowers]
Ingredients Summary – easy to find at an Asian grocery store or well-stocked specialty grocery store
- ground pork (I didn’t use pork fat because the pork was already fatty but maybe I should have?
- spices: cinnamon, sugar, black pepper, shallots (I used yellow onion and a bit of fresh garlic)
- oil, potato starch
- green onions, nuoc cham or spicy dipping sauce for serving, red chili strips but I didn’t bother
Steps Summary – fairly easy, it’s a meat loaf
Mix spices and potato starch. Then add pork, pork fat and shallots, mix and refrigerate for a few hours. Press meat into a oiled baking pan and cover with foil, bake for 40 minutes, can uncover for the last 10 minutes to brown it up. Slice and serve with sauce and garnishes.
Taste Summary – tastes like pork and onions with a dash of cinnamon
- Taste – uhh… it tasted exactly like the ingredients I put into it. I felt it was a touch bland but I drizzled dipping sauce over it, so it was pleasantly savory with a touch of sweet spicy heat. I didn’t eat it with baguette bread, just with white rice, but it could be good with noodles, and of course recommended with pickled veggies or salad.
- Texture – with the starch, the texture is supposed to be springier than a true American meatloaf made with breadcrumbs. When I took the loaf out of the oven, it was moist with lots of water/fat, and not crusty or browned at all. It was basically a loaf-shaped meatball. I prefer a dry American meatloaf, but my final product looks like a slightly wetter version than the book photo, so I guess it was accurate?
Convenience Summary
Very easy and convenient, the only unusual ingredient might be potato starch, which I found at Daiso, but I’m sure corn starch is a good substitute.
Would I make this again? I don’t know, maybe, if I don’t have bread crumbs and ground beef but want something convenient for weeknight dinners. I like the smell of cinnamon but it’s not what I gravitate to usually, like I don’t care for cinnamon rolls. However, I’m glad I made this recipe because I was curious about it lol. Onto the next cookbook!