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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 shrimp salad

Oh hai! Yours truly popped up on the Scientific American blog last week in a little interview. Thank you, Claire Cusick, for the interview. It was great fun!

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m utterly disgusted with Spring. It’s bad enough that we suffered the driest March on record (i.e. no awesome spring snowstorm tracks), but that April thinks it’s May, short-changing us another month of proper spring storms. Much in the way undergraduates are far too eager to bare all at the slightest sign of Spring, so too the flower blossoms down in Boulder.

lilacs

magnolia

crab apple (?) blossoms

We were supposed to get a big dump this weekend – an upslope event dropping up to a couple of feet on my head. I could hardly contain my excitement. Then Friday, the meteorologists were all “ix nay on the snowfall totals”. We went from expecting 2 feet to maybe getting 3 inches, if we were lucky. I guess we were lucky, because Saturday night the snow really started to come down, right around dinner time.

jeremy grillin’ and chillin’

But it wasn’t meant to be. We planned on a ski tour and wound up hiking instead. Familiar patches of dirt, mud, and forest understory looked like gaping holes in a ratty blanket of snow. I guess this is it. And even though I truly love all of the seasons, I’m a tad miffed at Summer for being such a pushy stupidhead. There, I said it.

snowing on us, but barely any snow underfoot

I can deal with summer, I just don’t want to deal with summer for half of the year. If that were the case, I’d still be living in Southern California with its seasons: hot and hotter. Before this itty bitty storm, we had a string of warm, sunny days. I know most people outside of Colorado think “snow” when they think of Colorado, but that’s only half of the awesome. Colorado gets 300 days of sunshine a year. That’s a lot. That’s why Colorado kicks your state in the ‘nads. Ha ha ha! I’m kidding! Okay, not really. But warm weather makes me crave fruit, slushies, sandwiches, sushi, and salads.

salad: shrimp, red onion, shallots, mint, cilantro, sprouts, lettuce, lemon grass, cucumber, carrots

dressing: lime, garlic, ginger, thai bird chiles, sugar, fish sauce

We recently revamped my office with some new IKEA furniture. [Hellooooo hip organization with cute Swedish names!] During my reorganization, I found an old recipe notebook and began flipping through the pages. Most of the recipes are archived here on use real butter, but this Thai shrimp salad never made it. I had to fix that…

pouring lime juice into the saucepan to make the dressing

chop the vegetables and herbs

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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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