Meredith's Meatball Phở

Once upon a time in 1984, when my family moved to the United States, I was a little girl, and our neighbors became good friends with my parents. They had a daughter that was the same age as me, and we became fast friends. We roller skated in her garage, to the Pointer Sisters, Wham! and Prince, and swam in the lake, and caught sunfish and left them to "dry" on the pontoon, where we forgot them for several days, and then decided to toss them back in the lake. Who knew that sun-dried sunfish were buoyant? They floated to shore and bobbed in the waves.

As a child of the 80s, it's also worth noting, that my dear friend got me my very own  Cabbage Patch doll for my birthday. And for one glorious week in the summer, our two families rented a full sized motor home and vacationed together all over Minnesota and Wisconsin, hitting up all the mini golf courses, RV parks, water theme parks, and camp sites. These are those lingering sweet memories of my youth.  Anyway, we moved many times, time passed, and we did -- as kids did in those days -- stay in touch via regular letter writing. Thanks to modern times, internet, and social media, we are now still able to exchange photos and updates with far more frequency than we did the last few years.  And since I'm a newbie mom with little to no time to blog about recipes, I asked her to share a guest post with me that she had written about on Facebook.

She had me at "Phở" ... This Vietnamese savory soup is easily one of my favorites! (Note: I may add more photos when I get a chance to make this myself. )

So here it is:

Meredith's Meatball Phở

1 lb. Ground pork

1 cup water chestnuts, small dice; divided.

1/2 cup soy sauce; divided

1/4 cup fish sauce

1 tsp. Fresh ginger puree; divided

1 tsp. Fresh garlic puree; divided

1Tbsp. Dark sesame oil

2 quarts chicken stock

1 package rice noodles (fresh preferred)

1 cup asparagus chopped into 1" pieces

1 cup oyster mushrooms, cleaned and chopped into bite-size pieces

1 head bok choy, sliced

1 cup snow peas, halved

Garnish:

1 bunch green onions, chopped; divided

1 bunch pea shoots (or bean sprouts)

Fresh cilantro, chopped

Sriracha

Fresh lime (optional)

For meatballs:

Place ground pork, half of the pureed ginger, garlic, water chestnuts and soy sauce in a bowl. Mix well with your hands, and roll into approximately one and a half inch meatballs. (Should make about 24). Place on baking sheet and bake in 350° oven for 20-25 minutes.

For soup:

In a large pot on medium low heat,  combine stock, remaining ginger, garlic and soy sauce. Add fish sauce and bring to a simmer. Add in snow peas and asparagus and simmer for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, bok choy, some green onions and noodles. Cook until noodles are soft.

When ready to serve, add meatballs and garnish as you like.

This is ALWAYS a hit in our house no matter what fresh ingredients I use!

 

 

      

Spring Rolls

(Edited on 02/16/2011 for additional optional ingredients & alternate soaking directions).

Maybe it is the pressure of being challenged to do new things in my cooking, as spurred on by this food blog, but wandering down the Asian food aisle, I think was what inspired me to buy the rice-wrappers for spring rolls.  I love so many Asian dishes, but sometimes it just simply doesn’t occur to me to make them myself.  That was my incentive to change things up, and make something new.
I always enjoy eating the spring rolls at restaurants, and realize there is no hard and fast rule as to what should go in them. 

My process came with a steep and fast learning curve.  For instance, those little wrappers are delicate, so I have learned that the kind of lettuce I had on hand was way too stiff to be rolled up without tearing the wrappers up. A few of them had to be double wrapped to be contained properly.
 
INGREDIENTS:
1 package spring roll rice-wrappers
1/4 package rice vermicelli / rice sticks (i.e., pad thai noodles) OR
1/4 package "glass" noodles (they will have different thicknesses / textures so experiment with which type you prefer)

The first step, depending on the type of noodle, can take up to 30-40 minutes.  So check the soaking directions on your noodle package, and get a large skillet out, and pour about 2 cups of water in it… heat it up until boiling, turn the heat off, and then soak the rice noodles in it until soft—usually about half an hour.  After that, rinse them in a colander in cold water to get excess starch off.  Let them sit in the colander in the sink to drain.
 
Filling suggestions:
In this batch, I used the following--
cilantro
basil
carrots
red cabbage
green onions
rice noodles
lettuce (butter lettuce would probably work better than what I had, because it’s softer and rolls up better)
Other tasty ideas would be fresh bean sprouts, red bell peppers, cucumber or zucchini, endives….

While your noodles are soaking, wash and mince your herbs, wash, peel and finely sliver or julienne all the veggies length-wise for easiest assembly.  Leave each veggie in a separate pile on your cutting board so you can assembly-line the … uh… assembly.  (That’s a whole lot of assembling there.  But I guess that is where the art-form is inherent. My spring rolls—not so much! Yet.)
 
Simultaneously pour some fresh water into your large skillet, and heat it up, and then shut the burner off.  Use this hot water to soak your rice wrappers for 15-20 seconds each.  Lay out a clean and wetted tea towel on your countertop, and when you pull your moistened rice wrapper out of the skillet, carefully spread it out on the tea towel, and dab off the excess moisture if necessary.

Next, place a lettuce leaf in the center of a rice wrapper, topped with about 1/4 cup of rice noodles, and arrange a pinch of all the vegetables in a stack, leaving about 1 1/2 inches on the ends, plus enough on the sides of the wrapper to roll it up like a burrito.  Except it is a spring roll.  Not a burrito.

Finally, fold the short ends of the wrapper into the middle, grab one of the long sides, and gently, gently roll it together.  The rice wrapper should be sticky enough to seal itself.  If you have never had these before, they are served cold, so they make a good side dish for a hot protein, or an appetizer, or – as my husband said – a portable salad!

Serve with your favorite satay peanut sauce, or as I did, Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce, 25-Ounce Bottle (Pack of 2) which is The Goodness in dipping sauce.

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