Vietnamese finger food

From the delicious pages of Meera Freeman and Le Van Nhan's The Flavours of Vietnam comes our meal tonight. Love this book, so many authentic flavours, and many a dish I have never experienced. It's been so long since The Lovely Man and I have dined out, and when we did, I think we tended to stick with what we knew. Having said that, the idea of this dish IS something we've enjoyed before. I must admit though, I had never seen the Banh Hoi - Rice-Noodle Cakes in this form. I was keen to try this recipe out. I had chosen to make Banh Hoi Thjt Nuong - Grilled Pork On Rice Vermicelli, but we've only ever seen this with loose rice noodles, never with the noodles made into cakes.

The idea of this dish is that a salad platter is set in the middle of the table, and one takes a piece of iceberg lettuce and fills it with meat and salad ingredients. This is rolled, dipped in a nuoc mam which can be various, but all delicious combination of sauce ingredients, mild and sweeter for the children than the adults in this house. The salad ingredients are a personal preference, I went with bean shoots, parilla, coriander leaves, grated carrot, cucumber, spring onion and, as instructed in the recipe, some fried peanuts for extra crunch.

Best made the day before, I only picked up my piece of pork today, so had to settle with a quicker marination. The other 'best' is that it should be grilled over coals. Sadly, I don't have coals, even our barbie is electric. I decided to forgo the threading of the meat on a stick - a fiddly thing anyway, and a time waster under the circumstances. I stir fried the meat. I have a reasonable wok burner, though I still did the meat in four batches, and left it sit for a moment to scorch before tossing. It's not going to be as genuinely smokey as a hot coal cooker, but it smokes enough to echo the idea.

A few stages, so here we go. I suspect a food processor wouldn't be a bad idea, but I did go with a mortar and pestle. Next time though, I would start with the peppercorns, which when tossed in at the same time as some other ingredients resisted breaking.

Grilled Pork on Rice Vermicelli

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 purple shallots, finely chopped
2 stalks of lemongrass, finely chopped
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp fish sauce
600g lean pork (shoulder was called for, I used leg)
2 tbsp peanut or lightly flavoured oil (optional)

Make the marinade by firstly smashing the peppercorns, before adding the garlic, shallots and lemongrass. Then stir in the sugar and fish sauce. Alternatively, grind the pepper into a food processor, whizz the dry ingredients about before adding the fish sauce.

Cut the pork as thinly as you can across the grain, and smoosh it together with the marinade. Refrigerate overnight or at least 3 hours.

Just before cooking, if you want to go the trad way, thread the pork onto (previously soaked wooden) skewers. Grill on both sides until just cooked through. OR, as I did, use some of the optional oil to stir fry the pork in batches, ensuring you have your wok or pan super hot, so as to ensure a bit of smokey flavour.

The pork and marinade meet. You'll see the end results 'later in the show'!

Meanwhile.....Check out these 'rice noodles' - there's no rice in them. DOH. In a bit of a hurry and picked up what I thought were rice noodles, but, it can be hard to find English on these products, so it was me in a rush that brought home these noodles that say they are from rice in English, but the ingredients list has corn starch and water. Oh well, work with what you've got.