Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad

 

The wonders of fish sauce . . . wisk a little fish sauce, rice vinegar and sugar and you cannot go wrong. I love vietnamese food and have been enjoying learning how to make it at home since vietnamese restaurants are few and far between in brooklyn (although Nicky's on Atlantic makes a fantastic vietnamese sandwich).

Here is the recipe-i can't wait to eat the leftovers for lunch.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vietnamese-Rice-Noodle-Salad-232173

The noodles seem to pair well with anything and could easily be made with tofu if you wanted to keep it vegetarian.  Gourmet pairs it with carmelized grilled pork- Steven doesn't eat pork so the first time we made this we substituted chicken- pretty good but i found the carmelizing to be a bit of a pain.  We then had it with grilled skirt steak and that was fabulous. (we made a quick marinade for the steak using soy sauce, rice vinegar, a little sugar, garlic, salt, pepper and chopped green onions)

Here is the carmelized pork recipe that Gourmet had posted with the noodles:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vietnamese-Caramelized-Grilled-Pork-232160

Last night I made monkfish for Steven to have with the noodles using this recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver. . .

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fish-recipes/grilled-or-roasted-monkfish

(although i took the easy way out instead of grinding the salt with lemon peel, i just salted the fish- i then just drizzled some lemon juice while sauteeing.)

And now if I can only get up the courage to try my hand at pad thai. . .

Comments

ordinary person

[Aileen]

I tried this recipe tonight with the carmelized pork and it was delicious. I added a cup of matchstick cucumber slices and instead of peanuts I added 1/2 cup of peanut butter which Mike whisked into the vinegar mix. I highly recommend the peanut butter. The carmelized pork was just okay, I kind of overcooked the sauce but it was still fine.

[Aileen]

These recipes are making me too hungry, I'll have to check back after lunch!

[Dave]

Wendy: Welcome to blogging! I hope that you have fun with it! Please post pictures of Steve pouring fish sauce.