A Vietnamese hankering

My sister lives in LA and works in Chino and used to stop by to visit in Westminster after work twice a week. But with her pregnancy and other personal family matters, hadn't been by in awhile, but decided that she should. Maybe she was just craving some good Vietnamese food and some Yogurt Passion, her favorite frozen yogurt place (sorry I won't be linking when I'm blogging via cell phone - too many steps on one little screen). And it wasn't just Vietnamese food in general, it was Cha Ca (basically cat fish in a type of curry that gets grilled up with dill and you eat with vermicelli noodles and veggies) and specifically, Cha Ca from Song Long, a small French/Vietnamese restaurant tucked into a narrow lot plaza off of Bolsa between Brookhurst and Magnolia.

My sister, my hubster and I met up after work there one night (obviously awhile ago as I was still eating meat and my sister was still pregnant at that time), and she promptly ordered a plate of egg rolls for appetizer. We like these egg rolls because instead of the regular egg roll wrappers (is thin, flakey and crispy), they use rice paper (for spring rolls, which make it crispy and chewy). Of course, an array of veggies to wrap the egg roll pieces in, and fish sauce to dip -yum!






I decided to go with the beef stew with bread rolls. It's very hearty and meaty, and slightly tangy (due to the tomatoes), and that's exactly what I'm looking for sometimes. Toss in some of our favorite Song Long rolls (seriously, I always thought a roll was a roll, until these... Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and the smell and taste of "home made" all around) to dip and you've got one happy camper!






Kyle went classic with the Com Tam Bi Cha Ga Roti... translation: Broken rice (yes, this is different from regular steamed Jasmine rice) with shredded pork and skin, a pork and egg meatloaf cake, and a piece of rotisserie chicken. With fresh and pickled veggies, and fish sauce to drizzle naturally.






And then my sister, who was craving the Cha Ca all week, opted not too. One order would have been way too much for her. So she went with one of their specialties, Bun Cha (typically I add the word "Ha Noi" after that, but not sure if it is meant for specifically Ha Noi Restaurant). I also like this dish. They bring out a platter with the veggies, some vermicelli noodles and a bowl of grilled pork meat (and two pork meat patties) that is in a sweet fish sauce with some picked carrots and daikon. You get a separate bowl to combine the foods as you like.






All in all, yummy meal. I don't know how long I've been going here for (gotta be at least 10-15 years) but I know if I find out one day that they are no longer there, I will be sad.

* forgot to add that all dishes ran around $5-10

- Posted mobile-y

Super Bowl... and platters.

Congratulations Saints and Nawlins! ...although Peyton, we're still cool, right? Awesome. ^_^

In lieu of the "traditional" Super Bowl/Tailgating foods of meats on the grill, the hubster wanted, when translated from Vietnamese, a meal that means basically, "beer food". In an Asian way. I would have been happy with bacon and guacamole. And something potato-y. But anyway.

Since I procrastinated all morning and noon, there wasn't much time left to put the foods together, so the photos will be only of the end product. Let's begin!

1. Okay, gotta have the chips and dips (thanks to PB & Thai)... and get it spruced up a little.

 

The ball sails through the air... and the kick is GOOD!

2. And for the meats, we've got... veal... and intestines... YUM (*gag*). These two we bought - I am not going to try to stuff intestines. The meat in the red is the veal (or as I've always called it, baby cow meat, which to me, sounds a bit more appealing). I don't know what they do to it... slice it real thin and then mix it with sesame seeds and other powders? I'm not even sure if it's cooked (in the "with heat" sense).  And the gray stuff? Yeah. Intestines. And then tons of veggies. I will actually eat the baby cow meat... but will not touch the intestines. Nope. I smelled it the moment it walked into the house. Yes, it walked into the house.

 

3. Balut, yet another thing I will not eat. I like eggs enough, as seen in the image on the left. It looks harmless, just sitting there after having been in boiling water for sometime. A nice hard boiled egg with some herbs? Think again. Crack open the top and there you have it. Exactly the reason I will not eat it. Because it is exactly what it looks like. And I have enough stomach issues to begin with. Thank goodness these were the small chicken balut and not the larger duck ones :p

 

4. Now to the normal stuff. Deep fried quail. These are little guys, about 4"-5" bodies. Okay, so maybe quail isn't exactly "normal" but really, after intestines and balut, I would have to say it is. It's like a little chicken. Well, littler. A tiny cornish hen, perhaps. Just less meat, more crisp :) The hubster marinated these overnight in his "special blend". Maybe it was just a salt and pepper rub.

5. Cucumber beef salad. Since I was too lazy to fire up the grill (and the hubster didn't want to either), the beef was pan fried. I'm not sure what cut it was. Rib-eye maybe. I think it was about a pound or two. After it was well and fried, it was set aside for the juices to "collect". At this point, I worked on the salad part. I julienned a bunch of persian cucumbers (these were small, so I guess maybe 10 cucumbers? and I didn't even bother peeling them, just washed real good), chopped up some mints and some ti to mints (maybe about a quarter cup each?), chopped up some fresh lemongrass (I used three small stalks), chopped up about 4 small green chilis, and then mixed these greens all together. Now that the meat was cooled, I sliced it really thin (the meat ended up being kind of rare/medium-rare in the middle) and tossed it all into the bowl of greens. I added some sugar and pepper (I'm not sure why, force of habit I suppose), squeezed into it one big lime (particularly over the meats to "cook" it), and doused the thing with fish sauce. Mix it aaaaaaall together (by hand is the easiest), and give it a taste. Maybe I should have done 2 chilis instead of 4. Oh well. The hubster loves the heat. He'll eat it.

6. Fried rice - why not? We seemed to be lacking in the carbs department anyway. Fried rice is super easy and fast to do, something we start making as a child. And of course, as everything I've ever mentioned, it's completely to taste. So this is what my taste buds like: I start off by making a pot of rice in the rice cooker. Easy. On a normal day, I will make about two bowls of dry uncooked rice, rinse it out three times, and then fill it with a water level of approximately half of the top digit of my index finger above the rice level... it's a total science. Since I like my rice a bit on the dry side, I will measure the water to a little bit below half of the digit on my index finger :) While that's cooking away on the counter (it will take about 10-15 minutes), I sliced up four chinese sausages in half and then chopped them all up and pan fried them at a high heat until cooked (I like the high heat because it gives the sausages a little crispiness).  I remove the sausages into a bowl and then with all the grease leftover, I scrambled up about 4-5 eggs (depending on how much you like eggs), and while they're scrambling, add a bit of salt and black pepper for seasoning. Once done, I remove it into the same bowl as the sausages. Then I sautee up half a chopped onion and a few chopped cloves of garlic (as you may know by now, I will always add garlic and onions to anything I'm frying!) until they're good and ready... then lower the heat, add the sausages and eggs, add some chopped green onions (I like it for color) add the rice (depending on how much rice you want... I ended up using a little less than the whole pot) and then mix it all together on super low heat (or you can even turn off the heat at this point). Add salt and pepper to taste. Most people add the carrots and corn and peas, but I'm not particularly a fan of that. Just basic rice/meat/eggs and I'm happy.

7. Ladyfingers! I don't know if that's the actual name or not, but that's what I call them because that's what my sister calls them because that's what her ex-boyfriend had called them. So - ladyfingers are like a simple version of egg rolls. Or Asian taquitos. Or just some yummy fried goodness. Unlike egg rolls (the Vietnamese kind, anyway - the Chinese ones are usually cabbage-filled) where the filling consists of ground pork, black fungus mushroom things, bean thread, eggs, carrots, jicama, oyster sauce, fish sauce, black pepper and as a lot of people like to add, shrimp, the ladyfingers are simply: ground beef, onions, cilantro, salt and pepper. So just that, I tossed about two pounds of ground beef into a bowl, added half of a diced onion, added some chopped cilantro, seasoned with some salt and pepper, and then mixed it all together (by  hand). I then laid out the little square wonton wrappers, added the meat mixture along one end, rolled the whole thing up (with open ends), and then deep fried the roll. And because it is beef, it cooked way faster. As soon as the wrappers looked crispy and golden, the meat mixture was already cooked and ready to go. 

8. Dessert, of course! Anna was kind enough to bake a batch of yummy chocolately brownies (which unfortunately I didn't take a photo of) for our little gathering and bring along some root beer to wash it all down... 

YUM!

50% off? Yes, please.

The husband and I were driving home the other night after a failed attempt of finding a new pair of shoes (well, my attempt was failed, his wasn't), and decided we were too lazy to cook dinner that night, so swung by a local restaurant in our Little Saigon neighborhood on the corner of Brookhurst and Hazard (to this day, I still don't know why anyone would name a street "Hazard") in the city of Garden Grove... or maybe it's Westminster, who knows.

Hoa Binh Restaurant is a little larger and cleaner than your typical local pho restaurant (but there are definite improvements in the general area than 10 years ago), and best thing is, every week they rotate two items onto their 50% off special list. Which isn't that big of a deal since we've noticed a LOT of places doing that these days, but we decided on this place for the evening.

As figured, husband ordered a bowl of Beef Pho... any type of beef pho was 50% off. I decided to go with the Rice with Sauteed Beef dish that was currently on the 50% list. And because it was 50%, I decided to splurge with a Passion fruit juice with jelly (1.99) :)

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. The dish was actually quite yum (instead of "just okay"). Rice was typical, and the beef was tender and flavorful, sauteed with onions, fresh green jalapenos, a hint of lemongrass and some dried red pepper. And like most Vietnamese restaurants, rice dishes typically come with a small bowl of brothy soup (usually pho-based with green onions and cilantro). And of course my yummy passionfruit and jelly drink.

Combined with Kyle's bowl of pho (and water) and tax, our bill came out to 10.36. Not bad, I'd say.