International Noodle Incident - Vietnamese Noodle Salad

I couldn't be more happier for the theme of this International Incident Party to be noodles. I grew up eating many noodles dishes, pancit - which is one of the national dishes of The Philippines, toros teszta - hungarian noodles made with cottage cheese, the very sustainable krumplis teszta - hungarian noodles with potato and of course growing up in Australia - Spaghetti Bolognese ( pasta is noodles after all!). 


Of all the wonderful noodle dishes I love to cook, I chose this one because I feel that it is a dish not from a country that I have any cultural heritage with, but a noodle dish with my own little twist on it. I really love to cook this dish because it really is so incredibly tasty and satisfying.  A big bonus too, insanely healthy and a very sustainable meal to eat due to my modifications (the mungbean noodles are 35 GI in place of rice noodles which are 80+GI! that's ridiculously low!).  And my apologies for making a summer dish in the cringe of winter, but it was my first choice of noodle.


So anyway, my choice of noodles for the theme is: 

Vietnamese Noodle Salad 

Firstly there is my choice of noodles. Many would protest to say that these noodles are only used for cooking stir fried noodles and soup, but I actually prefer the texture of these noodles in place of rice stick vermicelli. It is important to let the noodles sit in the boiling water for 3-4 minutes to make sure they are cooked through enough. After you have drained the noodles, it is also important that you let all the moisture come out of them. This may take around 30 minutes and you will be able to tell because they will seem stuck together. It is important to do this because if you were to put them in strait after draining them, they would be hot and the dressing would just slide off them instead of absorb it. I tend not to rinse the noodles with any water at all because I found that this made them resistant to absorbing the dressing as well. So just let them sit in the strainer until they completely cool down and become stuck together. I find that if they're are prepared properly, they don't go soggy like the rice vermicelli. Of course you can use rice vermicelli if you prefer, but I choose the bean thread. Very healthy too!

As the majority of the ingredients in this dish are uncooked, it is very important that all ingredients are extremely fresh. You really need to be buying the ingredients the day before, if not the same day due to the short life of coriander, mint and bean shoots. Another tool that is very useful here is a julienne grater. I bought mine at an Asian grocer for $8. Before I had this, I julienned the carrot and cucumber by knife (with my bare hands!), quite a tedious task and made the preparation time longer than it should be. Using a julienne grater for this dish  will save a lot of time and strain. After all you still have to cut everything else as well.

For the salad


4 x 50g bean thread vermicelli
2 cucumbers
2 carrots
1 bunch mint
1 bunch coriander
handful of cleaned (tailed) bean shoots
2 spring onions (green part only)


Dressing: Nuoc Cham


1 small garlic clove
2 small red chillies
140ml fish sauce (nuoc man nhi) 
5 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp water
juice of 1 lemon


For garnish 


Chopped roasted peanuts
fried onion
finely sliced red chilli (optional)


Method
1. Place the bean thread in a heat proof bowl and cover noodles with boiling water for 3-4mins. Drain and leave to sit in strainer for 30 mins.
2. Wash all salad ingredients. 
3. Julienne carrot and cucumber. Slice green part of spring onions. Pinch the tails off the bean shoots. Remove mint for the stems and cut the coriander into 2cm pieces.
4. To make the dressing, pound the garlic and chilli in a mortar and pestle. Add all other ingredients and stir to ensure the sugar has dissolved.
5. Place the cooled noodles into a large mixing bowl. Put enough dressing on the noodles to absorb ( 5-6 tbsp ) and mix.
6. Add all other vegetables and add more dressing if needed.
7. Garnish with peanuts, fried onion and sliced chilli (optional!).

I served this salad along side my spring rolls which is whole other story and I won't get into now. You can also eat this salad as a one-bowl meal and cook some sliced beef fillet, quickly seared in a pan with some fish sauce and garlic (bun bo xao - vietnamese noodle salad with beef). Here I have put less noodles than usual because it was served along side the spring rolls. For a one-bowl meal I prefer to put more noodles but really it comes down to how much vegetables or noodles you like. I love my noodles!

Here's the list of everyone else's contribution! 

• Penny – Jeroxie (Addictive & Consuming) – Homemade ban mian with minced pork and mushrooms
• Christine – Christine’s Recipes – Spicy Pork Mince and Noodles in Crisp Lettuce Cups
• Mardi – Eat, Live, Travel, Write – Ginger scallion & Butter noodles
• Trix – Tasty Trix – Summer ‘Noodles’ with yellow and green zuchinni with cool basil oil tomato sauce
• Shirley – Enriching your kid – Vermicilli Biryani with Tahini
• Natasha – 5 Star Foodie – Homemade Soba Noodles
• Anges – Off the spork – Handpulled noodles at home
• Joanne – Second Helping
• Cherry – Sweet Cherry Pie – Coconut noodles with honey glazed pork belly
• Tracey - Tangled Noodle – Fork in the Road: North Platte Noodles
• Evelyne - Cheap Ethnic Eatz – Incidental Noodles
• Ms Baklover - Footscray Food Blog – Zha Jiang Mian
• Casey – Eating, Gardening & Living in Bulgari
• Tamar – Koreanfornian Cooking – Tteokbokki
• Billy – Half-Eaten – Pumpkin Miso Noodles in Shitake Dashi Broth
• Suresh – 3 hungry tummies – Twice cooked pork with rice noodles
• Anh – A food Lover’s Journey – Taco Soba Noodle
• Lori – Wannabe Gourmand – Nonya Curry Laksa
• Malou – Skip to Malou – Fried Noodle Dish

Coda

It was a few weeks back now that Doben and I finally payed a visit to Coda to celebrate his birthday. Like always, a first visit to a new place is a mix of excitement and fear.. 

First we had a salmon gravlax with baby vegetables and goats cheese was our absolute favourite dish of the entire meal. The salmon was perfect, vegetables, cheese, the whole thing just worked so incredibly well. I would go back just to eat this but unfortunately it only comes as a starter size. I was so overwhelmed eating this I would go back to eat this but I might have to order 3 serves!

After my amazing salmon salad were crispy rice paper rolls with a very tasty mix of pork and black fungus. I have to say, I have eaten these in Tien An in Footsgray and the skin was very crunchy. Unfortunately these had a chewy texture, which was a bit disappointing when I was anticipating the same crunch we found in Footscray. It was a shame because my Doben and I absolutely adore Vietnamese hot mint with spring rolls. I have tried to make these fried rice paper rolls at home but I couldn't distinguish between the rice paper for the fresh rolls and the fried ones. Mine were most definitely the wrong rice paper and had very similar texture to these. 

Next were spanner crab betel "beetle" leaves. They were fresh and delicate. The flavours of the pomelo, lime and galangal all worked together with the crab very nicely. 

Quail lettuce delight - I loved the sauce used here and the combination of the shitake mushrooms, water chestnuts, lup cheong and quail was literally mouth-watering at each bite. 

Bone marrow spring rolls. Intense.

Lastly was our roasted yellow duck curry with taro chips. We were expecting to get a Thai or Malay inspired curry, but this curry was definitely Indian inspired. The spices were quite strong which I suppose suited the strong flavour of the duck. Maybe a personal preference of curry style, but we found the spices a bit too strong and it overwhelmed our palates a bit more than we wanted. We were quite full and still in 'bone marrow shock' so this may have influenced our palates at this stage.

And so we fled, quite ironically to Longrain for dessert and a drink.

Our flavour packed pork and prawn betel leaves alongside some very strong drinks to end of the night with a bit of kick..

Finally our dessert of taro and coconut pudding with roasted coconut ice cream which was amazing!

Longrain's desserts are insanely good. Really, they have dessert like no where else in Melbourne that I've tried. I have eaten a similar taro pudding to the one served in the Philippines, but in combination with the roasted coconut ice cream and the palm sugar syrup, it becomes something else. Last time we ate a custard apple and coconut trifle with coconut ice cream which just the same left us speechless. Can't wait to go back for more.