June 23, 2015 Lunch-Lamb and sweet potato Bun. Dinner- Roasted Chicken, steamed asparagus, and Caprese Salad

June 23, 2015  lunch-Lamb with Vietnamese rice noodles. Dinner-Roasted Chicken with steamed asparagus and Caprese Salad

I made a fried rice for breakfast with PPI rice and the stir fried Baby Bok Choy.

For lunch I wanted to use the PPI fresh Vietnamese noodles I had bought at Talin several weeks ago.  I decided to try to make a bowl of Bun so I boiled the noodles in water to cook and soften them and I think I overlooked them because they became gooey and stuck together a bit.  Next time I will cook them less.  In bun there is a layer of cucumber, bean sprouts, lettuce, and herbs on the bottom of the bowl, so I picked some lettuce from our garden and chopped it roughly, sliced up one large scallion, and julienned a 3 inch section of cucumber and put those in the bottom of a large soup bowl.

Fish Sauce

  I then made a Vietnamese fish sauce with 4 Tbsp. of lime juice, 4 Tbsp. of fish Sauce, 2 Tbsp. of Sweet chili sauce, 1 crushed clove of garlic, 1/3 Serrano pepper, thinly sliced, and 2 Tbsp. of sugar.

The sweet chile sauce is the left bottle

I heated a PPI grilled lamb chop and 2 slices of grilled sweet potato and sliced them into bite sized pieces and put the warm drained noodles and then the potato and lamb on top of the noodles.

I took a bag of cilantro from the fridge.

To eat the dish I put spoonfuls of fish sauce on  the bun to soak into the warm noodles and flavor them and tore leaves of cilantro and added them to the noodles to add their herbaceous flavor and ate the mass of noodles and other ingredients with cho sticks, being careful to mix the ingredients so each bite would contain some mixture of ingredients.

This was my first attempt to make bun, and except for overcooking the noodles, was pretty tasty. 

Bowl of lamb and sweet potato bun beside bowl of fish sauce 

I called Suzette in the afternoon to ask her to bring home a chicken, preferably one seasoned with lemon and tarragon and she did.  Suzette had bought fresh mozzarella cheese at Costco the other day and we had bought cluster tomato son the vine at Ranchers Market last Sunday, so Suzette picked fresh basil leaves from our garden and made an olive oil and balsamic dressing with Shleman olive oil and drizzled it over the sliced tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil leaves.

When the asparagus were screamed I removed a leg quarter of the chicken to each plate and Suzette placed asparagus and salad on each plate to make a very attractive plate of food. 

The balsamic and olive oil dressing mixed with the chicken and asparagus and enhanced their flavors.

We opened the bottle of Trader Joe’s  2013 Reserve Chilean Sauvignon Blanc that Megan had brought us on Sunday that was still chilled in the fridge and ate this lovely meal under the gazebo in the garden.  We enjoyed the wine and drank the rest of the bottle as we watched the last installment of the Roosevelts’ series on PBS. 

Bon Appetit