What The Food on Monday, Nov 21 2011

Broken Rice with Pork

Broken Rice with Pork / Cơm Tấm Sườn

Ingredients

Broken rice (can be bought from super markets: Coop mart, Lotte Mart or a store in a market)

 1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon hot water

1 teaspoon nuoc mam (Fish sauce)

A little bit lime juice

A little bit of a ground garlic and red pepper

Pork (called “cotelette”– that is sliced back-meat with bones still attached)

 The sauce to marinate the pork slices

 Salt (or nuoc mam)

Pepper

Honey

MSG (chemical seasoning)

Garlic

Red onion

 Other stuff

Leek oil

Minced leeks (a spring onion)

Vegetable oil

 A side dish (optional)

 Pickled radishes and carrots,

Tomatoes, or

Cucumber, etc

 Instruction

 1. Wash broken rice well. Drain in a strainer and leave it for about two hours. Cook rice (in a restaurant, the rice is cooked with more water than it is supposed to have and the extra water is removed in the process of cooking the rice. It might be better to have less water when cooking at home).

 2. To make sauce, put sugar in little bit of hot water and mix with ingredients such as nuoc mam (Please see instruction for making homemade fish sauce).

 3. To make the barbecued pork, leave the pork (with bones) in the sauce for a while before cooking. Each restaurant has its own secret recipe for the sauce so it tastes different. The sauce is basically made with salt (or fish sauce), pepper, honey, MSG, a ground garlic and red onion, and some restaurant add lemongrass, soy sauce, or pineapple juice to the sauce and differentiate from others. After leaving the pork in the sauce, roast the pork. Many of the restaurants roast the pork outside to release the small. The good smell helps pulling hungry people into a restaurant.

 4. To make leek oil, heat small amount of oil. Put minced leek and lightly fry. When the leek gets soft and while the leek is still green, put out the fire.

 5. Put the rice and the barbecued pork on a plate, and pour the leek oil. Garnish picked radishes and carrots, tomatoes, and sliced cucumbers: and then serve. Put some sauce as you eat.

Plain Broken Rice When Cooked with Leek Oil on Top

(Translated and Edited by What The Food team)

 

Up Cafe – Where Everything Is Upside Down

Front View of Up Cafe

Style: Young, Refreshing Cafe

Price: 30,000-60,000VND

Special: Violin & Guitar live music every Tue & Fri night, from 8.30pm

Description

Inspired by the idea of the “up-side-down”, UP café pays all effort to play around this concept in and outside the coffee shop.

Up café from the front side is highly attractive and impressive. The first impression about Up café is that this is a wooden house just [exactly] like the house in the Up cartoons. But more interestingly, it is overturned and imposing the wide open space.

There is outside space with a couple of table and chairs serving for those who love the fresh air can freely enjoy their conversation. This is a pretty nice sitting corner because the customers can clearly see the entire overview and unique architecture of the café.

To come to the inside area, there is nicely wide open space. This is the largest room of Up café, which is sufficient for seminars, events, buffets, parties, birthdays for up to 100 people. The interior decorations are “being” glued to the ceiling, from the long dining table, chairs, bookcases, cabinets, pedestal pictures and an impressive white piano.

The center room is a white grand piano made of real wood, which was gutted and light-weighted, while reinforcing the ceiling through a very solid iron frame. You are assured, however, so do not worry if it falls down on you.

The main light used in Up is golden light. Costumes of the staff are quite consistent with the two colors red and white furniture. Also, employees are highly appreciated in their courtesy and attitude for customer care.

The Look from The Inside

Reported and Edited by What The Food Team)

 

Instruction for making homemade fish sauce

vietnamese fish sauce

Vietnamese homemade fish sauce

 Ingredients

1/2 cup of original fish sauce (can buy it in the supermarket),

 4 cloves garlic pressed, 2 red chili, peppers, minced

3 teaspoons sugar, 1½ tablespoons fresh lime juice in order to taste, 1 cup of water

 Implementation

1. Use mortar and pestle to mash the garlic, chili

 2. Add peppers and sugar into a paste

 3. Add the fish sauce, water and lime juice

 4. Blend well.

It is ready to use now or you can put it in a small bottle, seal it tightly and refrigerate until whenever you want.

It is best to use in 1 day.

 Vietnamese usually make fish sauce to reduce the salinity in original fish sauce and taste more differently with the mix of garlic, chili and lime juice.

(Translated into English by What The Food Team)