This past week was the second in my 12 Weeks of New, in which I will try something new each week, from now till the end of the year. Instead of living in Rutsville, I will have learned or experienced something new each week. Week #1 saw me running in new places every day. That was fun and beneficial to the task at hand.
Week #2: Vietnamese Cuisine. This summer on my San Diego jaunt, I sampled Vietnamese food for the first time. I liked it! This week, I bought a Vietnamese cookbook and studied it. On Monday, Grad Student Gillian took me to one of her favorite haunts in Kansas City, an Asian grocery store in the depths of downtown. Now, I have shopped in Asian/International/Ethnic grocery stores since my days long ago in Egypt, and by my standards, this grocery was extensive. We spent a lot of time in there, perusing aisle-after-aisle of interesting foods and very interesting fresh produce. After I returned home to rural Kansas, I began practicing the Vietnamese cuisine in earnest. Some of the dishes I knocked out this week:
Pho Bo (probably the most common and popular soup: noodle soup with beef)
Hu tieu do bien (Rice noodle soup w/ shrimp & cuttlefish. This was a hit.)
Cha ca (Rice noodles w/ fish, peanuts & herbs)
Choa ga (Spicy chicken & rice porridge w/ lemongrass. Also good!)
Goim cai (Sweet & sour cabbage)
Goi du du (Green papaya salad) I wasn't taken by this, but others were. The fun thing is that I saved the papaya seeds. Maybe I will grow papayas in my grotto alongside the banana trees.
Tonight we are having more Hu tieu do bien, without the cuttlefish, but with little pork dumplings.
And so Vietnamese Cuisine has capped my Week #2 of 12 Weeks of New.
Stay tuned...
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