Dinner: Bun Rieu

Remember that pork broth I made? Well this is one of the noodle dishes I used it for. I never made Bun Rieu or any vietnamese dish so I did a bit of research. Having being raised in a family where they like to experiment with their ingredients and replace some, I wanted to make sure that I want to make it authentic as possible.

I used the recipe from The Ravenous Couple but I halved the quantity as it was only for 2 people. The butcher gave me an odd look when I requested 60g of pork mince. He gave me 90g. oh well more meat. Unfortunately Coles didn't have the tofu I wanted and the asian grocery stores were closed, But it would've been tastier with tofu in the dish.

Used:
Meatball
90g pork mince
1/2c crab meat
1 teaspoon Shrimp Paste in soya bean oil
2 eggs
10g sugar
2.5g pepper
1 teaspoon shallot
2 teaspoon fish sauce

Soup
pork broth
2 tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
fish sauce to season
Fried Tofu

Vermicelli noodles- cooked and set aside

Garnish
Fried shallots
bean sprouts
spring onion

Bring the soup to the boil and turn the heat down to simmer. scoop out the meatball mixture and slowly allow it to cook in the spoon. Turning up the heat will make the meatball to break into tiny pieces..

when the crab mixture is cooked, you can then add the tomatoes and tomato paste to give the broth a pretty orange/red colour. You would add tofu in this step too.

Once the soup is done, you can scoop it out and serve it with the vermicelli noodles and top it up with garnishes.

For the first attempt, it was nice. Tho I had better.... Too much of the meatball mixture tho.... But I love the shrimp paste meatball soup aroma hovering around in the kitchen still.