This weather is making me crave SOUUUUUPPPP!!!

It is nasty in New England right now. Thankfully I can telecommute for most of my job because E, L and I all got colds this Friday. Since we've been cooped up I haven't had a chance to get groceries, so E was nice enough to venture out to Pho Pasteur and get me the Vietnamese food I've been craving. Here is me housing some Pho Dac Biet yesterday afternoon.

Fun fact about Pho Pasteur is that it is in the space formerly occupied by a strip club in the old "combat zone" of Boston's chinatown. So E and I refer to it as "Pussycat Lounge" and it's actually programmed into his cell phone that way!!

This morning I had leftover Banh Xeo for breakfast! Mmmmm....

Japanese Hot Pot Party!

Before I attended this feast I was ignorant to the fact that Japanese Hot Pot and Shabu Shabu are two separate things. Both involve cooking at the table, but in Japanese Hot Pot everything is put in at the same time, whereas with Shabu Shabu, the meat is put in at various times throughout the meal. The thinly sliced meats make a specific "swishy" sound which is where the name comes from. Ponzu sauce is an integral component of this meal as it lends a lot of flavor to the meat -- in this case it was halibut and chicken meatballs. Towards the end of the soup-fest, we added udon noodles. Yum!

Our gracious hosts had us over in January, at a time in Boston when hot soup is very much appreciated! They had a very fancy hot pot apparatus which they brought with them from Japan when they moved over here.



There were several tasty appetizers - an asparagus dish and a tasty Japanese fried chicken that Japanese boys have a particular liking for. My friend Mayumi (the chef), claims this is very easy to make and that her husband can even make it, so has challenged the other boys to also make it for themselves. That sounds like a Japanese fried chicken throwdown!




Some happy hot pot participants!

Vietnamese Sour Soup - Canh Chua

This is hands down my favourite kind of soup. Lots of flavour, lots of veggies, lots of crunch and pretty healthy! What more could you ask for? I also find it refreshing, yet comforting all at the same time. Somewhat a feat for a soup if you ask me!

I must admit that I don't really make it from scratch because the soup base packages or cubes that you can get at the local Asian grocery store are pretty darn tasty and since tamarinds aren't really locally available here in New England, I don't really want to go through all that effort. I guess I could get the tamarind paste and play around with that, but I guess I'm too lazy.

One of my favourite parts of this soup is being able to use this weird vegetable that's hard to describe. In Vietnamese, it is called 'Bac Ha' and in English it is referred to by many names -- taro stem, elephant ear. See here for a much better explanation than I can give. My favourite part about putting this veggie in this soup is that the little holes take up a bunch of the soup broth so then when you crunch into a piece there is sour soup flavour explosion in your mouth! Careful if it's hot though!



I made mine with catfish, bean sprouts, tomatoes and sprinkled some fresh chopped cilantro and Thai basil on top. I think that traditionally this soup is eaten over white rice, but I had run out, so it was vermicelli noodles this time. Some people also like to eat it with pineapple, but I think canned pineapple leaves something to be desired and didn't have any fresh pineapple on hand, so left that out this time. Still tasted great!