The Moms' moms (my maternal grandmother, duhhh ;)) has been a devout Buddhist and vegetarian probably for 50+ yrs--but she still cooks savory/meat-filled meals for the fam. She never tastes it given her practices, and yet it's always jussst perfect.
Whenever there's a congregation of the Le progeny* in Washington, DC where my grandmother usually is, she cooks up giant beasts of a feast--which she's inclined to make all the time anyway, but we get the hometown favs when it's the big extended crew. Since the
extended fam is in DC, and the my
nuclear family is in CA and not hear in NYC, I've spent many a holiday noshin' on some majorly finger lickin' shizz.
A few wks ago my mom and aunt flew over for the couz's graduation and she made us bún riêu. What *is* this
bún riêu you ask? Pshhh...you just know, homeskillet--You DON'T EVEN KNOW.
teehee! See Noodlepie.com for more pics of bun rieu as vendor food in Viet Nam.
bún riêu as vendor food and more pics.
Bún riêu is a noodle soup (in the same vein as pho and other things) with a pork based broth, vermicelli (the thin white noodles), sometimes congealed pork blood, processed crab and shrimp meat (kinda lumpy scrambled-egg-like consistency but a little more liquidy/viscous), lime, fermented
shrimp paste(^_^)
Seriously, it's a little interemeresting smelling but don't be knocking it!!--douchebaggery neither desired nor required. Eat or go home. Don't talk ish on mah people's
shrimp paste .
Usually purplish-grey, salty but not in the fish sauce or sea salty way--pungent, maybe give u a little "agita" but OH SO FRIGGIN" good and utterly unfathomably completes the bun rieu.
It's a pretty tedious process making all of this. Mostly tedious to me, because it gets very time consuming for me and consuming mentally to go out and select all the ingredients (all the diff veggies etc) b/c I get really carried away touching/smelling/burping produce. (joke). It's not that I'm picky--I just really like to learn/experience everything tactilely and visually and...every other thing I can imagine it's just really enthralling.
For my little bowlsie, I nixed the pig blood and beignet equivalent (mostly used to sop things and add another texture). I forgot about the other shredded-stuffs. OH WELL. Almost forgot--there's also the SHREDDED BANANA FLOWER!! Courtesy of
Bhakshanam.wordpress.com (great entry on making banana flower salad).
The banana flower stuff--it's so pervasive I forget sometimes! and so counterintuitively what it is! It's got a crunchy/hardness/thread-iness like celery crossed with jicama (maybe even green papaya?)--I forget which place/city/state I had it as a salad (maybe with roasted mussels) and it's friggin' awesome. It's a giant bulb--the one at the end of those giant bunches of tiers of bananas from tree--giant and purple.
Oh and we also had tomatoes and "do" which is pronounced like "yaw"--the "d" without that top part crossed like a "t" has a "y" as in "yellow" pronunciation where as the "d" crossed like a "t" is the natural "d" as in "dork" sound. I totally dig me some tomahters do any day of the week.
I also didn't inherit the caffeine addict gene or the super spicy
Huế gene. But I like watching them make it from those french presses. I hear it's the shizzzzz. *le sigh*.
Last pic of bun rieu with the beignet-like things and congealed blood so ya know. So NOW YOU KNOW :) Pic courtesy of
gastronomyblog.com
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