...Take Me Away

I've never had much of the traveling itch.  I rarely feel the need to get away, somewhere far away, and  discover something new.  Experience life differently.  In the past I've been quite content with mini domestic explorations and weekend road trips.  I felt grounded and rooted and wholly connected to my time and place.  But then something changed.  Maybe it's all the fog and cool summer days or the realization that after a year of living in this city, it'll never be my city.  Maybe my jam packed busy schedule for the upcoming fall semester is factoring in too.  Either way, a little late to the game, I'm ready to pack a bag or two and fly off to far away lands.

But summer comes to a close in 2 weeks and my student loans for the year have yet to come through so here in the city I'll remain, traveling by way of cooking and daydreaming; planning for a next big adventure.  And all that is okay really, because that just means something exciting will be waiting just over the horizon.

There are bowls like this Vietnamese rice noodle and stir fried beef salad to transport me and tide me over.  A salad so perfectly summer, so perfectly balanced that I can hardly find fault with it.  A tangled   base of translucent noodles mounded so high with tender beef and colorful crisp vegetables that I didn't leave us enough room to mix in the nuoc cham dressing.  Bowls filled all the way to the tippy top with eyes much larger than our stomachs.

I love all the elements and flavors that Vietnamese cuisine is based on.  Fresh vegetables garnishing so many dishes, a medley of herbs that not only work in taste but make for wonderful aromatics as well.  Salty fish sauce and acidic lime juice, balanced with a little raw sugar and a spicy heat, perfection.  A little marinated and (in this case) tender beef boost the savory quotient and I'm one happy eater.

And someday, instead of just eating, I'll be the one sitting on the beaches of Southeast Asia, satisfying that itch.

Bun Bo Xao

adapted from Use Real Butter

This recipe is mostly prep work, but once that's all done, the actual noodle salads are a cinch to assemble.  Just pile the ingredients on top of the noodles, splash a little of the nuoc cham dressing and give it all a good toss.  Every ingredient plays a key roll in the overall flavor, so really, the prep work all becomes worth it.  You'll totally understand once you take your first bite.

4-6 servings

1 stem lemongrass (the tender white part), minced
1 lb. steak (I used ribeye), sliced thin against the grain and at an angle
2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon fish sauce

1 small white onion, sliced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 package vermicelli noodles/rice sticks, cooked
2 cups bean sprouts
2 Persian cucumbers, halved and sliced
a handful of mint leaves

a handful of cilantro leaves
pickled daikon and carrots
chopped salted & roasted peanuts

nuoc cham (dressing):
juice from 2 limes
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce

1/4 cup water
4 cloves garlic, minced
sambal olek paste to taste

Whisk together all the nuoc cham ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Set aside.

Follow the instructions on the rice noodle package. If there aren’t any, place the noodles in a large pot of boiling water and let boil for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and cover the pot for 3 minutes. Drain the noodles and rinse in cold water.

To make the bun bo xao: Mix 2 teaspoons of the lemongrass (reserve the rest for later) with the beef, the garlic, and 2 tablespoons of fish sauce. Set it aside and let it marinade for 20 minutes. 

Gather your serving bowls and place a large handful of rice noodles in each bowl. Sprinkle a handful of bean sprouts and some cucumber slices over the noodles. Roll the herbs together and give them a good chopping. Sprinkle some over each bowl. Set aside. 

Heat a wok or frying pan on your highest heat setting. Add the vegetable oil, the rest of the lemongrass and the sliced onion. Stir the contents around the pan and toss the beef in, from here it should only take 2 or 3 minutes for the meat to cook through.  Add the remaining teaspoon of fish sauce and give everything in the pan a good stir. Place a scoop of the beef on each noodle salad. Dress with more herbs, Vietnamese pickled carrots and daikon, chopped peanuts and nuoc cham.

Leftovers

Sometimes I forget that I took pictures of food.  Sometimes I leave pictures crowding up space on my camera's memory card.  Sometimes I don't transfer them onto my computer for 3 months.  Bad food blogger.

Clearly I enjoyed tomatoes this summer.  Actually, that shouldn't even be past tense, I am STILL enjoying tomatoes into fall.  Thank goodness for living in California and thank goodness for San Francisco's Indian summers.  So if you're lucky enough to still catch the season's last trickle of tomatoes -  hopefully before it's too late and you have to hang on to these until another 9 months from now - you might consider making one of these for dinner. 

 

Grilled Steak with Bloody Mary Tomato Salad

A deconstructed cocktail alongside some grass fed beef?  Don't mind if I do!

 Haricots Verts a la Dijonnaise

 

Sopes with Refried Beans, Tomatillo and Avocado Salsa, Feta Cheese and a sort of Pico de Gallo

 

A Simple Tomato Panzanella

(I added a Persian cucumber, because why not?)

Hello? 1950's Calling.

 

They're called porcupine balls.  Little meatballs studded with rice and simmered in a bright tomato sauce; I dare you not to like them.  They're so 1950's chic.  They're so cute and small and prickly when the rice puffs up during cooking and pokes out (get it?!).  I think I'd love them even if I didn't grow up eating them, for the name alone.

I wish I had a picture of the cookbook that this recipe came from to show you.  The cover has all these Charley Harper inspired illustrations of meals and each section of the cookbook is broken down by meat or vegetable type.  The beef section has illustrations of happy cows and beef cuts all over the pages and everything is color coordinated to boot.  Of course, since it's put out by the cutlery company Cutco, there's little illustrations of knives too.  It's got a lot of kitsch and retro charm.

I really embraced the 1950's housewife feel having set a plate of these on the table not 5 minutes after D walked in the door from work, complete with a baked potato and steamed broccoli.  Just your regular June Cleaver over here.  There's nothing gourmet about this skillet of tomato covered meatballs, it's all about being economical.  Stretching that affordable ground beef with some rice and minimal seasonings, a couple of cans of tomato sauce (or soup depending on your recipe) and feeding your nuclear family unit with your 2.3 children.  And there's nothing wrong with that.



Porcupine Balls
Adapted from the Cutco Cookbook

I think the original recipe has you cook the porcupine balls in canned tomato soup diluted with water, but since I have misplaced the recipe and was making this from memory I couldn't say for certain.  Personally I chose to use a few cans of tomato sauce in hopes of avoiding the sodium bomb that comes along with canned condensed soups and I think I'll keep that change in the future.  I kept the seasoning pretty minimal in the meatballs as I was envisioning something simple and comforting and not veering into a specific flavor profile, but feel free to experiment and tweak with any seasonings you see fit. 

Makes about 20 meatballs

1 pound ground beef
2 tablespoons grated raw onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup uncooked white rice
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
16 oz tomato sauce
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon sugar

In a bowl, combine the ground beef, uncooked rice, onion, garlic and season with salt and pepper.  Using your hands mix everything together until it looks like the rice is evenly distributed throughout.  Form into about 20 golf ball sized meatballs, by pressing and rolling small pieces of the mixture in between the palms of your hands.  Set aside on a plate or cookie sheet.

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium high heat in a large skillet and add the meatballs, leaving some space around each one browning one side, then another for no more than 5 minutes total.  Add in the 2 cans of tomato sauce, water, Worcestershire sauce and sugar and gently stir to get everything incorporated.  Bring to a simmer, cover and cook on low heat for 35-40 minutes.  Most likely the sauce will not completely cover the meatballs, so give them a stir once or twice during cooking so they at least maintain a coating of sauce.  Serve, spooning the sauce over the porcupine balls.