Vietnamese Vermicelli with Chicken and Green Papaya Salad

It's hot. It's been about 40ºC with the humidex for over a week and not surprisingly, a heavy, hearty meal isn't what I'm looking for nowadays. I still love love love noodles, though, so here is a recipe for something I get pretty often in Vietnamese restaurants.

Vietnamese Chicken and Vermicelli

• 2 Chicken thighs
• 1/2 tsp five spice powder
• 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 servings vermicelli (I buy the kind that comes knotted in single servings. Easier that way)
• 1 large lemon
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1/2 tbsp honey
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• fresh chilis
• bit of water
• Optional: shredded lettuce, cucumber, or other raw veggies

Let's Do It!

1. For the chicken, simply marinate in the five spice powder and soy sauce for a little while. Then fry it on the stove (or grill it on the bbq) until it's done. Maybe 4 minutes a side. I'm not the best at cooking things to completion and have on more than a few occasions eaten raw chicken. But my stomach can take it. Don't risk salmonella. If you're not sure if a chicken is cooked, pierce it with a knife and see if the juices run clear. If they do, you're good.
2. Let the chicken cool then rip the meat off with your hands. Save the bones in the freezer for soup. This makes it easier to eat at work.
3. For the nước chấm (sauce), juice and seed 1 whole lemon and mix with the fish sauce, honey, garlic, chopped chilis (as much or as little as you want) and a bit of water. I didn't really measure it anything, but rather added stuff and tasted often until I got the flavour balance as I like it (just a little sweet, very sour, a little salty, very spicy).
4. Cook the vermicelli according to the package directions, making sure to rinse well in cold water and strain after.
5. Whenever I go to the restaurants, they also serve the dish with shredded veggies to mix with the noodles. I made a salad instead.

Lunch it up!
I had the fish sauce in a little screw top jar, the chicken in its own container and the vermicelli in its own container. To eat, heat the chicken up (if you want), swish the vermicelli in some boiling water and drain well. Put the noodles and chicken together and pour the sauce over it all.

Green Papaya Salad

My friend Keith once said "lettuce isn't a vegetable. It's a carrier for salad dressing." That's how I feel about this salad. I love fish sauce and limes. I could drink nước chấm instead of water. The first time I had this was in Thailand, and it was the spiciest thing I had ever had. You.. you don't need to do that.

• 1 green papaya
• fish sauce
• limes
• 1 clove garlic, finely minced
• fresh chilis

Let's do it!

1. Cut the papaya in half and scoop out the seeds and soft pith with a spoon. Careful, the little white seeds will get EVERYWHERE. Maybe do it in a bag or something.
2. Peel the papaya.
3. If you have a food processor with a grater, use it. If not... happy grating.
4. At this point, I squeezed the grated papaya with my hands just to soften it a bit. Don't know if that helps.
5. Add fish sauce and the juice of a lime (or two) to your taste preference. Mix in the garlic.
6. Add fresh chilis to your taste.

Just realized that although I couldn't find any recipes for this online yesterday, I'm seeing a bunch now and they call for all sorts of fun stuff like sugar and cilantro. You could put those in, I guess. 

Sick at Home Edition: Lazy pho

Okay, it's actually Saturday, but I've been feeling like crap all week and I've decided that the only thing that could fight off this flu/cold is bowls and bowls of hot, spicy pho (rhymes with "whuh?".

Traditional pho takes almost 20 hours and a whole bunch of ingredients that I can't deal with right now, like beef thigh bones, carrots and other stuff to make the broth. Being of compromised health, I decided to cut out the whole broth thing (sacrilege, I know) and just buy it.

This recipe makes a lot of broth. Cook the noodles and beef as you need to throughout the day.

Ingredients
1 carton/900mL beef broth (I used President's Choice organics brand)
1 sirloin steak
1 serving vermicelli (you can buy packs that have them portioned into servings. It's pretty great)
1 small onion
1 hot pepper (or more, or less)
2 star anise
1" piece of ginger, peeled
5 cloves
3" stick of cinnamon
5 black peppercorns
a few splashes of fish sauce
1 lime
Fresh basil (or mint, if you don't have basil)

Note: I was really arbitrary about the spices. Don't worry about being too exact.


Let's do it!
First, bring the broth to a boil and add the star anise, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns and fish sauce. Lower to a simmer and cook, covered,  for at least 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, soak the vermicelli as per package directions.

After 20 minutes of simmering, taste and adjust flavour. If this is purchased beef broth, it's probably going to be pretty salty already, so lay off the salt. Add the onions and hot pepper a this point if you prefer your onions soft and your broth spicy.

Slice the beef thinly. I only used half the steak for my lunch and am saving the rest for dinner.

 

Turn the heat up to a low boil and add the vermicelli. Stir until cooked, a few minutes. Scoop the noodles into a bowl, and add the beef. Boil until cooked to your liking (I like mine rare). Place that into the bowl and top with broth, basil/mint and a squeeze of lime. Enjoy!

Note: I have omitted the raw bean sprouts that usually come with pho because I just don't like them.

Fish Tacos

If you were able to read that title without giggling, then you are a better person than I am.

This is one of my favourite recipes ever because it's easy, it's tasty and I just plain love Mexican food. This recipe is based on this recipe on Epicurious. It's totally worth it to the full Epicurious recipe, but this one has less steps and less going on.

Working time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes


Ingredients:
2 white fish filets. (I used frozen basa from the Asian grocery store because it was $2.99 for two large filets! Enough for three meals!!)
1 cup roughly chopped cilantro
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red onion, diced
1/2 green pepper, diced
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp chili powder
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped (omit if you're not a spicy food fan, though jalapeno is really not that spicy. Maybe this is a good place to start?)
salt
tortillas

Note: Make sure you wash your hands thoroughly with soap after handling the jalapeno. I have a friend who didn't do this after making stuffed peppers and had to endure burning hands for hours. Luckily he didn't touch any other parts of his body.

Let's do it!
Mix the cilantro, two tbsp of oil and garlic in a large bowl. Place the fish in this mixture and let marinate for about 20 minutes. After 10 minutes, stir it around so it's evenly marinating.

Heat up a pan with some olive oil on medium/high. Stir in red onion, green pepper and jalapeno for about 10 minutes, until everything is soft and browned. Put this mixture aside.

Fry each filet in this pan for about 3 minutes each side. The fish is cooked when it flakes easily. When both the filets are cooked through, toss everything back in the pan, including the marinade and break up the fish with the spatula. Mix and sautee for another two minutes. Taste and season with salt if needed. That's it!

A delicious topping (found on the original recipe) is finely sliced red onion with diced jalapenos in red wine vinegar. Super delicious. I have it on mine above there. In my opinion, it totally makes the dish, but it's up to you if you want it.

Pack it up
Obviously, pack the fish separately from your tortillas. You can also chop up some lettuce and tomatoes if you're into that. I like to have some fresh lime to squeeze over this. Also, be prepared to eat this cold if your workplace is dead set against microwaving fish.