Scrabble, tea and a trip to the outdoor fruit/veggie/food
market down the street filled my morning.
The afternoon’s ingredients included a few hours of lesson planning at
home with Patrick to escape the heat and making a delicious lunch of baguette
sandwiches with egg, olives, sausage, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, cilantro,
cucumber and other fixings. Later we
played Monopoly, trying not to move too much, yet still sweating profusely! I
also caught up with my How I Met Your
Mother (I can’t believe it’s almost over! *tear*) and cooked up some
chicken, soy bean and veggie stew/soup to have for the weekend.
I tried out a new place for dinner in my area after Patrick
left for work - a little street vendor set up with 3 of the classic silver
tables and red and blue plastic chairs.
These 3 ladies (and a cute little girl, one of their daughters) were
serving bún riêu cua, a type of
Vietnamese noodle soup that comes from the Mekong Delta Province:
Bún means rice
vermicelli noodles. Cua refers to the place it comes from. And riêu
refers to the crab mixture. The broth of
the dish is tomato and crab-based (and reddened with annatto seeds) and is
topped with some shrimp or crab paste. Inside the bowl, there are also
delicious pieces of fried tofu, tomato, vegetarian sausage or a processed
sausage, huyết (congealed pig's blood) and scallions.
It was served with lime, bean sprouts, split water spinach
stems and shredded banana flower (which look like stringy green herbs) to put
inside. Of course I always like to add a
touch of red chili! This hearty meal was only 20,000VND, $1. Makes me wonder why I’m bothering to cook as
much as I do haha. Guess I can’t quite reconcile giving it up :p
Here’s a YouTube link showing how to cook this delicious soup
up!
 |
| Bún riêu cua |
There’s also a type of soup called canh bún that is easy to
mistake for bún riêu cua. This blog talks about the differences and
has a recipe! :
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