Soup Bun Bo Hue, Tuong Ot Toi Viet-Nam, Bun man Soup Seasoning, Cuttlefish Balls, White Fungus, Gia Vi Nau Pho, and Vegetable Chicken Bao are some of the items I brought home from the Hong Kong Market just around the corner from Vien Dong, our favorite Vietnamese restaurant.For the last 20 years we've gone to Vien Dong for all our family celebrations. It is a restaurant that consistently offers exceptional Vietnamese food at a very reasonable price. It is always packed with people, lively and cheerful, and the same family - about 3 or 4 generations - prepare the food, cook it, and serve it.
Lately however, I seem to be more sensitive to the monosodium glutamate, the MSG, that is used to enhance the flavors of Vietnamese cooking. It just seemed too salty, and the aftertaste lingered long after the meal. Yet, I wanted the wonderful soup with the bean sprouts, fresh mint and basil, the dash of hot red pepper and fresh lime juice. It is especially good for colds and flu.
So, I visited the market, determined to find the ingredients so I could prepare my own broth.
I purchased a big soup bone with plenty of marrow, simmered it for three hours, then strained all the broth into my kettle. I added two of the Bun Man bullion cubes (which do have some MSG in them) to add flavor to the broth, then I added scallions, onions, celery and a big thin-sliced turnip. Then I added thin-sliced stir-fried beef and Asian zuchinni.When I served the soup, I let George and Rahmat add their own noodles, cilantro, basil, hot sauce and lime as these are optional. The broth was the most important to me - flavorful, but not salty.
It turned out perfect, fragrant, fresh, a simple easy preparation.When we'd have a meal at Vien Dong all of us would get spring rolls and dip them into the most wonderful peanut sauce. I bought some of the spring roll wrappers, but they were the wrong kind, a wheat wrap rather than rice.
So, I had to fry them and serve them with a sweet-sour sauce. Next time, I'll take my reading glasses to read the fine print as it is the transparent rice wraps that we especially enjoy. They don't require frying. I still have to perfect my 'packaging', as these wraps are not real tight. I had some additional beef stock left over, so I made some east-Indian curry that I placed around rice tadig, an experiment that I took to a potluck Saturday night.
There isn't a name for this dish but it was sure fun to prepare.The curried meat sauce and vegetables also went good over these thin noodles, as left-overs. I cannot recall all the spices that went into the sauce, but anise, tarragon, cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, fresh basil and hot red peppers provided the flavors.
I've gotten so accustomed to making my own blends that most meals are now experiments, none of which are like anything I've cooked before.I also purchased a slightly sweet Japanese sweet-bread, similar to pound cake, and put a tumble of strawberries over it for shortcake. I keep Greek-style vanilla yogurt on hand just to add a little cream to berries.
One small scoop is all it takes to make this shortcake simply divine.I'm headed over to my garden plot now, to transplant some of my dahlias, plant some seeds:carrots, cilantro, leeks, beets, lettuce, oriental peas, basil and 'rapini zamboni a flowering broccoli that is really good in stir-fry.
When I worked in the garden yesterday, a friend Steve dropped by, and gave me some of last years coriander seeds he'd saved from last summer - about 9 cups of seeds. I'll plant a row, but have ground all the rest and put them in a big pickle jar. I'll make coriander bread today during my coffee break!
