Quickies Noodle Challenge: Bun Rieu

Hi everyone! Hope you’re all having a wonderful week! The lovely Denise of Quickies on the Dinner Table and my favorite Mohawk Dude, Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks! are having another Quickies: Morning, Noon and Night Cooking Challenge. So this is my entry. What’s the challenge you ask? Here it is in Denise’s exact words:

The Challenge

“Prepare a noodle dish of your choice. It can be your unique twist on a classic like Mee Goreng, Pad Thai, Char Kuay Teow, Laksa, Fettucine Alfredo, Chicken Noodle Soup, Bucatini all’ Amatriciana, Mac and Cheese, Soba, Udon, …. or a concoction of your very own creation, making its debut here. Use any type of noodle or pasta and ingredients you wish. It can be vegetarian, vegan or piled with meat, fried in a wok, baked in an oven, swimming in soup or broth or sweetened for a dessert. What we’re looking for is a delicious sounding and interesting twist or creation. Think outside the box, turn cooking conventions on their ears, try something you normally wouldn’t. The most appealing and interesting or unexpected entry, wins!”

The prize is Denise’s spectacular cookbook!

If you’ve seen this recipe before on my blog, it’s because this is a repost. Out of all the Vietnamese noodle soups, this is my all time favorite. It’s a tomato based noodle soup with seafood. This dish is called “Bun Rieu”. Some of you may have heard of or seen this in some Vietnamese restaurants. Pagolac Restaurant has this dish as a weekend special. This is my “go to” dish when I have company over. I decided to post this on my blog because a lot of my friends have asked me how I make it. So rather than repeating myself over and over again, now I can just tell them to go to this blog ;-). It’s kind of a win win situation. You get to see and learn how I make this dish and I don’t have to keep repeating myself. Let’s get cooking.

Feeds 4 Garys or 4 – 6 people (you’ll see why I said 4 Garys later :-D)

Ingredients:

• 6-8 cloves chopped garlic
• 1 Tbsp purple shrimp paste (don’t ask me why it’s purple????)
• 3 Tbsp canned minced prawn in spices
• 4 Tbsp cooking oil
• 1 lb peeled and deveined shrimp
• 1 cup clam meat (or 1 can baby clams)
• 1 can escargots
• 1 cup crab meat
• 1 small package of deep fried bean curd
• 3 cans whole tomatoes (or 8-10 fresh tomatoes)
• 1 large can chicken broth
• 1 package of fish tofu

Here are the brand of shrimp paste and hot sauce I like to use. The hot sauce is added to your bowl right before you eat it but never added into the pot of soup.

 Here are the brand of minced prawn in spices, whole tomatoes, and chicken broth that I also use for this soup.

Heat up the oil on high heat and dump in the garlic, shrimp paste, and minced prawn. Mix these around until the garlic turns a slight golden colour. Throw in the shrimp, clams, escargots, crab meat, and deep fried bean curd. Cook for about 10 minutes or until all the shrimp have been fully cooked.

Next throw in the tomatoes and break the tomatoes in half with a spatula inside the pot to let out more juices and flavor. Pour in the chicken broth. Then use the same can from the chicken broth and add in one can of water. Lastly, add in the fish tofu. Once your soup comes to a boil, it is ready to eat. I have a secret ingredient that I like to add to this soup. If you want to make this soup and would like to know, you can definitely shoot me an email. For now, I’m just going to whisper it in my two lovely hosts’ ears ;-). The soup will still taste good without the secret ingredient, but much better with it.

There’s one extra ingredient that you can add if you want but you can leave this out if it’s too much trouble or if you don’t have the time. I think this ingredient is worth the extra time though. You’ll need to add 5 tablespoons of minced prawn into a bowl and 5 large eggs. Some people like to add ground pork here as well, but I’m not a pork fan so I like to leave out the pork. Beat the eggs and the minced prawn together. Cover this and put it in the microwave for 4 minutes.

It should look something like steamed egg when it comes out of the microwave.

Spoon small pieces into your soup.

And now you have a large bowl of “bun rieu” to feed 4 – 6 people.

Don’t forget the vermicelli of course. Basically boil some water and throw in 1 pack of vermicelli. Cook for about 10 to 15 minutes in boiling water. Strain out the water and let the vermicelli cool for about another 10 minutes. Here are some veggies that you can add to your bowl. On the left we have shredded regular and red cabbage. In the middle we have Thai basil (you can use mint as well), shredded ong choy AKA water spinach, and shredded banana flowers, and lastly, some chopped up green onions and cilantro.

This is my bowl. I added all the veggies cause I’m a veggie girl. The kids had a similar bowl like mine but smaller and all cut up into tiny pieces for their tiny munchkin mouths.

Here’s the hubby’s bowl. He added a piece of beef brisket from the beef noodle soup we had the other day (men and their meats). This bowl doesn’t look all that big here, but look at it in the picture below.

The happy, hungry hubby with his gigantic bowl of seafood tomato noodle soup. If you noticed, that bowl is bigger than his head. Dude has been referred to as “the bottomless pit” before.

If you order this at a Vietnamese restaurant, don’t expect to find that much seafood. This is my own special recipe along with the secret ingredient. I know, why I gotta be like that with the secret ingredient and all, right? Gotta keep things interesting around here somehow ;-). I hope you enjoy! Until next time, friends and family. Do you have a favorite Vietnamese dish?