vietnamese

Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad Bowls with Berries

This Vietnamese rice noodle salad is a vegetarian-forward version of the traditional bún salads drizzled with nuoc cham—the popular Vietnamese dressing and dipping sauce—with spring lettuces, crunchy fresh vegetables and sweetened with the season’s best fresh berries.

Yes, this noodle salad does taste as good as it looks. And it’s just the beginning of my job to convince you to try this baby soon.

I’ve been a fan of fresh and crunchy Vietnamese vermicelli noodle salad bowls (bún) since my college days way back when, and ever since visiting Vietnam last Christmas, lighter, healthier, simpler recipes with a flare of these worldly-inspired Asian flavors have been at the top of my must-have cravings.

Today I’m sharing this recipe for vermicelli noodle salad to be served as a main meal noodle bowls for four. Or, the salad can be served in smaller portions as a side dish to this lighter chicken satay, tossing it all together in one big bowl the same as I do in my basic, fresh and easy Vietnamese noodle salad for serving to a party or salad recipe for a potluck or bbq.

There’s no cooking involved with this salad, just some peeling and chopping, so let’s get on to getting our salad cravings cured.continue to the recipe… about Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad Bowls with Berries

Vietnamese Dressing and Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Mam Cham)

Nuoc mam cham is a simple Vietnamese dipping sauce made with rice vinegar, fish sauce, and sweetened with sugar that does double duty as a tasty salad dressing.

Just as Italy is known for it’s olive oil with balsamic vinegar, and Greece for it’s tzatziki, every culture has a dipping sauce that makes it’s signature mark. Vietnam is no exception.

This easy recipe for nuoc cham Vietnamese dressing and dipping sauce turns a bowl of rice noodles with raw veggies into a spectacularly slurpable flavor bomb and it’s the last touch of zest when Vietnamese spring rolls pass your lips.

It may take a minute to figure out nuoc cham’s pronunciation when ordering at a restaurant, but once you make it at home, you’ll see this sauce is easy to master.continue to the recipe… about Vietnamese Dressing and Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Mam Cham)

Chicken Satay with Lighter Almond Dipping Sauce

These flavorful skewers of thinly sliced marinated chicken need just a few minutes on the grill to absorb that wonderful smoky, charcoaled flavor, and are ready for dipping in this lightened-up, spicy coconut almond milk with almond butter dipping sauce for a true taste of Asian flavors.

This post is brought to you by Almond Breeze

One of the sights that struck me most while traveling through the streets of Bangkok and throughout Thailand was the abundance of street food and the fact that it was being cooked, right there, on the sidewalks. Men and women crouched down at makeshift grills made of bricks and grill grates, encouraging their charcoal flames and flipping skewers of meat, or chopping fresh veggies for stir fries and dishing out noodles and soups to customers who moments before were simply passing by.

But even more, it was the smells (oh the smells!) of food cooking, and bubbling, and sizzling, around each and every corner, serving snacks (and entire meals) to every walk of life, no matter how rich, or how poor. Southeast Asia isn’t necessarily unique in that respect. It seems that street food in every culture serves our most humble cravings. It just seems far more common there.

Naturally, the food memory of one of my favorite snacks during my two visits to Thailand came home with me. Chicken Satay, or Chicken Saté, because depending on the region depends on your spelling of the snack. Either way, this favorite appetizer on a stick is all good. And in this recipe, it’s also lightened up with a bit of an almond-y twist. continue to the recipe… about Chicken Satay with Lighter Almond Dipping Sauce

Fresh and Easy Vietnamese Noodle Salad

This light and refreshing vermicelli noodle salad gets its inspiration from one of my favorite dishes of all time, Vietnamese bun salads, with fresh slivered veggies in a tangy Vietnamese rice vinegar dressing, making it a simple side dish to serve with grilled meats and chicken.

The first time I made a version of this salad was when my husband and I were newlyweds. One of our wedding gifts was a version of this countertop roaster/griller contraption. The first dish we made with the roaster was from the recipe book that came along with it, a version of Asian roasted chicken in a peanut sauce that was served with a simple vermicelli noodle salad very similar to this one I’m sharing today. Or at least that’s what I remember.

That chicken dish was pretty much the only thing we ever made in the roaster. It became yet another gadget to add to our assortment of kitchen appliances that begs one to question, “But do I really need it?” We admitted it just didn’t justify the room it took up in our cramped kitchen so we eventually parted ways.

But this noodle salad…it’s here to stay.continue to the recipe… about Fresh and Easy Vietnamese Noodle Salad

Cheesy Shrimp and Grits Banh Mi in a Waffle Cone

Presented by Spike TV’s Frankenfood. Premiers Sunday, June 22 at 10/9c.

Do you guys watch cooking shows? Oh man, I am such a fan. And I have been for years. And because of it, I often catch myself bringing the cooking show slang into my own cooking world vocabulary.

“BAM!”, “E.V.O.O.” and “How easy is that?,” have all eeked their way into my vernacular. But when I catch myself saying, “That’s money!” I have to physically take a step back, remove the sunglasses hanging off the back of my head, re-think my bleached blonde ends and check myself at the kitchen door.

But there’s a few cooking show phrases I find myself adopting more often than not. Like when Ina says, “Let’s turn up the volume,” and Emeril exclaims, “It’s time to kick it up a notch.”

Roger Wilco, foodie fans, I’ll be doing exactly that thanks to the new cooking show, Frankenfood.

continue to the recipe… about Cheesy Shrimp and Grits Banh Mi in a Waffle Cone

Grilled Shrimp Vietnamese Spring Rolls

One of the things I’ve read in self-help business books, absorbed from my favorite podcasts and basically just learned along the way of life is that the most successful people are the ones who delegate.

Delegation = Getting Shit Done.

Once upon a time I fancied myself a great delegator. I could look at a situation, see the vision of what needed to get done, figure out the most efficient path to achieve it and direct the peeps in my camp to go forth and prosper.

But lately, I feel like I’ve lost my knack in finding the track. And it’s left me feeling a little defeated and floundering like a fish out of water.

That said, my husband will still say I’m bossy. I prefer to call it delegating to others by educating them in my view of efficiencies. Okay, I admit it, I’m a nag.

So why is it so hard to let others help? To not just do it all yourself? To share those details you’ve learned in the school of hard knocks? Hey, it’s okay to stop being the martyr!

One of the best and worst parts of working as a solopreneur behind the curtain of a 27-inch HD computer screen is exactly that: you work by yourself. You do the drudge work, you own the good with the bad.

But you can also find yourself reverting to that 6-year-old who has to learn how to share—all over again.

Because when you share, good things happen.

continue to the recipe… about Grilled Shrimp Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Pho Ga Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

While the rest of the U.S. is checking out cherry blossoms or putting their spring seedlings in the ground, in my neck of the woods the groundhog lost his GPS and failed to alert the weatherman that spring is supposed to be sprung.

Hello 8 inches of snow.

And so back to cocooning I go, and that to me means one thing. Chicken soup. And to my husband that means another thing. Spicy chicken soup, or more specifically, Pho Ga.

We’ve both been a fan of Pho for a long time, since haunting spots in L.A. with names like Pho 69 or Pho 87 (so what’s with the numbers anyway?) But when we moved away it took a while to discover a new fav Pho spot.

In the interim, G tried his hand at mastering Beef Pho or Bo Pho, a complicated broth that’s all about patience as you roast bones and veggies and then put the broth to simmer for hours upon end while practicing infinite restraint from tasting the piping hot broth. The broth that one evening nearly set our house on fire. But that’s a story for another day.

photo > Steamy Kitchen

But since moving from an area where ethnic foodie obsessions are easily remedied, we often rely on Jaden‘s recipes at Steamy Kitchen and are big fans of her Pho Ga or Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup, especially whenever we get the hankering for a simple but totally tasty broth that has just the right balance of chicken and spice thanks to the coriander, clove and star anise combo.

Get the Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup recipe here.

A big plus for Pho Ga versus Pho Bo is that the hours-long simmering process is shortened and now we get to slurp our soup in under 2 hours.