Vietnamese Snot with Pork

I had a craving for Vietnamese food tonight. Vietnamese food is my favorite Asian style food. It beats out Thai, Chinese Japanese, Korean, and whatever else that is Asian. I could eat it every day and never get tired of it. (Rather like the Vietnamese, I guess.)

My favorite Vietnamese dish is Bun, vermicelli with roasted pork and fish sauce. Unlike Pho, it's not a soup, it's more like a noodle salad. I can't find any good Vietnamese food anywhere in Oslo, so I learned how to make Bun myself. (My favorite Bun is with roasted pork and eggrolls, but I can't get a decent pre-made eggroll to save my life here so have given up the eggroll part and just go with the pork. I miss the freezers at Central Market where I could get pot stickers and egg rolls and all sorts of nummy bits that tasted just like at the restaurants.)

So, anyhow, I ran home from work and stopped by the grocery store to get a small pork loin. I broiled it with a hoisin glaze and let that rest while I made the Nuoc Cham sauce (fish sauce, lime, sugar and chile) and cut up all the little veggie bits to go with the pork and noodles. Then I made the noodles. The directions said to bring water to boil, drop in noodles, immediately remove from heat and let sit for three minutes. Then rinse in cold water.

Which I did.

And the noodles? Had the exact texture of snot, or possibly a jelly fish. Slimy, clear and sort of disturbing. (Hmm, I thought, this isn't right. I've made this before and I never got snot!)

I really didn't have anything else to substitute. I could have made rice but didn't want to wait the 20 minutes that would take. And I didn't really have enough pork to make it a main dish. Rich is pretty big so I have to think about portions sized enough to fill up a 2 meter tall guy.

So I ended up putting the pork and the vegetables on the snot, as planned, ladled over the Nuoc Cham sauce, and we had a very tasty pork and veggie on snot salad. If you didn't think about snot, it was really good. Tasted just right. And it was filling, too. But next time I will try a different brand of noodle. The Non Snot brand.

I've been in a class all week at work, a safety class, QHSE being a big deal where I work, so haven't had much time to blog. Sorry about that. I promise to do better. (Later). I am very safe now, however, so that is good. I practiced safe cooking tonight and didn't do stupid tricks with the Snot Noodles or anything. So it is possible to learn as you get older. I am proof.

In another completely different direction, here is a book recommendation. I think she is me. I think I wrote this book but nobody told me I did it. Seriously. She even cusses like me AND she's from Austin. She started off as a blogger, and now she has a book AND there's a movie coming out based on her book, so maybe there is hope for me someday. Maybe. Any editors out there wanna take a chance on a Texpat? I cook, blog, cuss, and eat snot noodles (safely). I'm a book waiting to happen!