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Recipe: vietnamese bun bo xao

Stormy weather. I love it! I like watching the clouds roil overhead as they blot out the sun. Usually, I’m on the lookout for lightning, because it’s one of those elusive, dangerous, exciting, and beautiful things – both to capture with my camera and to witness with my eyes. However, I’m never one to pass up a good show of mammatus clouds. They’re more common down on the Great Plains (Boulder/Denver and parts east) where atmospheric instability is pretty common in summer. Mammata are common up here in the mountains too, but they don’t get a chance to develop as much nor are they as long-lived as they are down on the flats. But we’ve been getting some stormy days and nice displays.

gone in seconds

dissipating mammata and a nice vertical draft over the continental divide

and right over my hizouse!!

Some of you might be aware that I’ve been doing a lot of sandwich research of late. A LOT of sandwich research. Last week I asked some gal pals if they wanted to grab non-sandwich fare for lunch… I had a hankering for Vietnamese food – particularly the rice noodle salad. And so we did and it was great, but… how hard can it be to make this at home? Not that hard at all, it turns out.

bun (bún): rice noodles

I did a little snooping about on the interwebs and found this lovely video (with Aussie accents – bonus!) on how to make Vietnamese bun bo xao (beef noodle stir-fry). When I went to Asian Seafood Market in Boulder, I asked Maria if the rice vermicelli package was the right one to make bun. She grimaced and said, “That too skinny!” and snatched the package from my hand, disappeared down the aisles, and returned with the right kind – a thicker rice noodle. “Use this for bun!” So don’t get the skinniest vermicelli, but rather the noodles that look about 1/16th of an inch in diameter (reference a ruler if you don’t know what I’m talking about because super skinny noodles will kinda suck).

While I was digging around among the bags of herbs in the back of the store, I happened upon what looked like Vietnamese mint. I didn’t know for sure though, because the video was the first I had ever heard of it. I brought it to Maria and asked if this was Vietnamese mint. She smiled and said yes, she likes to use it in salads and soups. She opened the bag and tore a leaf off for me to smell. “You put this with noodles!”

(left to right) basil, mint, vietnamese mint, thai basil

vietnamese mint up close

I know that Pacific Ocean Market (in Broomfield) and H Mart (in Aurora) carry fresh perilla – which is also called sesame leaves or shiso leaves – but I didn’t have the time to drive out that far. I asked Maria if she had shiso leaves. A sharp “no!” was the response. Then I asked if it was okay for me to substitute basil for shiso in the bun bo xao. She squinted her eyes at me and said yes, use basil – why would you use shiso? Great, I was all set.

sliced beef, bean sprouts, herbs, cucumbers, lemongrass, garlic, onion, rice noodles, fish sauce

minced lemongrass, sliced onion, minced garlic, sprouts, sliced cukes, beef (flank steak)

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Recipe: thai red curry with tofu and basil

The hardest part of any giveaway is wrangling our “random number generator” to actually pick a number rather than stare at us expectantly for a dog treat. The next hardest part is finding ten toys that haven’t been completely ripped to pieces. We received a total of 213 comments (one or two were not “entries”, but that’s a real pain for us to shift things around, so they just don’t win if selected and we draw another number). You all shared so many sweet, touching, and hilarious summer memories – some that really tugged at my heart. Thank you for that.

So how did this work? Good question. We selected ten of Kaweah’s toys and assigned each one a number from 0 to 9. We piled the toys in the middle of the room and then got Kaweah all riled up so she’d run and grab a toy (she does this when she’s excited and there appears to be no rhyme or reason to her selection). This happened 15 times and generated five 3-digit numbers.

the random number generator machine

Each number (811, 977, 980, 766, 076) mod 213 resulted in: 172, 125, 128, 127, 76. Congratulations to: jwen, amanda, laura h, linda, and na! I’ll be sending your emails along to the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek so they can contact you about shipping your s’mores packages and give you details for the (awesomely) discounted rate at the Park Hyatt! Thanks to all of you for participating and many thanks to the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek for sponsoring this super fun Colorado giveaway.

Time to get tropical. The weather dictates much of my culinary mood. Typically I’d be cranking on the soups and stews, but with unseasonably warm weather lasting for more than a month (a week, I can hold out – a month, I cannot) I thought a compromise was in order. Something tropical, yet stewy enough to warm our tummies when we dip below freezing at night.

red curry paste, fried tofu, bamboo shoots, baby corn, straw mushrooms, limes, chiles, thai basil, coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar

slicing the fried tofu chunks in half

Southeast Asian food combines so many contrasting flavors that I find myself craving it often. It’s not just the sweet, sour, salty, herbal, creamy, and spicy, but the abundance of fresh and bright flavors that draw me in. This is a simple and satisfying Thai red curry that I like to throw together. [Edit: I buy the red curry paste at my local Asian grocer - Asian Seafood Market in Boulder.] I typically toss in whatever needs to be cleaned out of the refrigerator, but for guests, I’d prepare it as shown in this post. I buy the tofu already fried. They aren’t tofu puffs, but tofu pieces that have been fried and maintain a firm texture.

oil, red curry paste, coconut milk

add the tofu and vegetables

lots of basil

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Recipe: hunan tofu

At the beginning of the week you’re tip-toeing across frozen goose poop-laden grasses an hour before sunrise and by the end of the week you’re dodging fancy cocktails and flame throwers on a packed second floor of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Oh wait, that’s me. I was shooting the Boulder’s Best Mixologist competition on Sunday. Quite a change of scenery.

one of the sponsors

hapa sushi’s station was hopping

the gals from the kitchen were shaking things up

oak was on fire

No matter if I’m on the road in Middle-of-Nowhere or navigating the great eateries in Boulder, it doesn’t take long before I miss a home-cooked meal. That’s partly because I am a homebody and partly because I know how to cook. I hear of people getting bored with the same five meals each week and wonder to myself when was the last time I repeated a recipe at home? It seems there are always new recipes to discover and try.

ingredients: green onions, tofu, garlic, thai bird chiles, country ham

shaoxing cooking wine, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, black bean sauce, cornstarch, chicken broth

I have been on the lookout for a tofu recipe for several years. My grandma always ordered it when we went to dinner at Chef Chu’s in Palo Alto: tender tofu slices fried then simmered in a sauce with some salty country ham, a little heat, some black beans, garlic, and green onions. They called it Hunan Tofu. I scoured my recipe books, looked online, and chatted with Grandma on more than one occasion about what we thought might be the recipe, but nothing seemed to match.

helps to wear disposable gloves when handling the chiles

sliced and julienned

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