Vietnamese Chicken Bùn

Mmm, that cold rice vermicelli salad, or whatever Anglo-ish name you can come up with. You know what I'm talking about. Aside from phở (especially on those hungover or sick days), one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes is bùn (dude, I am not Vietnamese, if you couldn't already tell. Sorry if I mess up on any terms). I usually go for the one with barbecued shrimp and pork, or spring rolls and barbecued pork.

Given the fact that I have a slight fear of grilling (sorry to be a female stereotype), I decided to venture forth by myself with my apartment complex's gas grills and some boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Yay for dark poultry meat! I once succumbed to the notion that white meat was more desirable. But who wants dry-ass meat? Asians know what's up. I feel more at ease cooking chicken than pork. I don't know why...I've made pork dishes several times, but maybe the next meat venture is grilling pork. Anyway, it was a Monday, so I decided to prepare the chicken two ways so I could have a variety of meals for the rest of the week. Way 1 was simply salt and pepper. Way two was a Vietnamese-style marinade. BTW, I wasn't aware of the fact that Andrea Nguyen is a modern-day Vietnamese cooking master. But her name kept popping up during my recipe searches, so kudos to her!

Vietnamese-style Marinade for Chicken

2 to 3 lbs chicken (use whatever kind you like, bone-in or boneless)

1/4 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1 tsb. fish sauce (aaahhh! The stage crew for a local SF theater group once substituted in fish sauce instead of apple juice for a fake shot an actor was to take on stage. LOL)

1 tsb lime juice (can also use lemon juice or vinegar. I think you can also use more lime juice than fish sauce if you're freaked out by the, um, pugent nature of fish sauce)

2 tsb. canola oil or whatever neutral oil you have on hand

Mix the marinade ingredients together, wash and dry your chicken, then submerge the chicken into the marinade and massage the crap out of it. OK maybe not that much, but you want some good flavor! Let it marinade for 30 minutes to two hours.

Heat your grill to medium and throw the chicken on, turning every five minutes until the juices run clear. Because I was using boneless, skinless chicken thighs, I only needed to turn the chicken once for a total cook time of about 10 minutes. Juicy grill success! Now for the rest...

Vietnamese Chicken Bùn (for one serving)

1 to 2 pieces of Vietnamese grilled chicken, sliced

rice vermicelli

cilantro

mint

Thai basil (for me, this is optional)

shredded or julienned carrots

shredded or julienned cucumbers (seeded if you like)

1 to 2 pieces of soft leaf lettuce, chiffonaded

1/3 to 1/2 cup nước chấm (nuoc cham without the diacriticals...I'm just linking the recipe here because this post is getting long! At the time I didn't have any Thai chilis and used chili-garlic sauce instead, which worked well enough for me. Here's an article comparing that with sambal oelek and Sriracha.)

If you're using dried vermicelli, soak it in hot water for about 10 minutes, then drain. I like to line the bottom of a giant bowl (a mixing bowl, no joke) with the lettuce, then put the noodles on top. I arrange the veggies, herbs and chicken into sections for presentation's sake, then I douse the whole thing with the nuoc cham. Stir it up and eat it up.

Spam Báhn Mì

It seems appropriate that my first post represent where I currently live — Honolulu, Hawai‘i. What would a good Hawai‘i food post be would be without a mention of the beloved SPAM? Unless you're a vegetarian or something more extreme than that, there isn't a reason to love the pink cube of mysterious meat. If you're a meat lover and don't like Spam — you just don't know how to eat it properly. Same thing can be said for foods such as tofu. If cooked the right way(s), it's one of the most delicious things in the world. A perfect way eat Spam is fried and balanced out with some kind of carb, be it rice, noodles, bread or whatever else your creativity can think up. Just look at the annual Spam Jam event website to get some ideas of what you can do with the stuff.

Combining my love of Spam (which I think I eat on an average of once every two or three weeks) with my latest obsession with Vietnamese food, I thought a Spam Vietnamese sandwich (or bánh mì) would be perfect. You always see the sandwiches offered with ham, pate and headcheese, among other things. Why not Spam? Probably made of the same products, anyway. The salty meat balanced out with things cool, crisp, pickled and spicy sounds like an ideal meal experience.

The Battle of the Bánh Mí website was helpful in creating my first sandwich of this kind.

1 Vietnamese-style baguette (you can use any other kind of baguette if you can't find the Vietnamese kind)

Mayonnaise (the original spread is a mixture of egg yolks and vegetable oil. Sometimes I just use butter and mayo)

Do chua (pickled shredded daikon and carrots)

Cilantro

Cucumber slices

1 slice of fried Spam

Tomato slices (optional)

Jalapeño slices (optional)

I assume you know how to assemble a sandwich. Thưởng thức! Bon apetit!