The - crapimisshavingsomeonecookforme(mom!) & Happy Birthday MMT(heart) Bun Rieu recipe:

So I decided to make some home cooking for myself and the bf. I was going between Bun Bo Hue (my favorite Vietnamese soup) to Bun Rieu (one of his favorites) and decided to go the Bun Rieu route since it was for his birthday. Bun Rieu, I believe, originated from Northern Vietnam (where all the best soups come from). It is a seafood/tomato based broth with a whole lot of bang of flavor. My version is easy to make because well... i suck at cooking and my bf knows it.. so this is pretty much a fool-proof way of make Bun Rieu.

I had to think about this a week in advance believe it or not. Cooking is a HUGE deal to me since I don't do it a lot...and when i do it's usually rice & eggs & Ramen. I surfed the internet for any different bun rieu ideas and not surprisingly there weren't a lot of different variations out there. Matter of fact, i believe i only found 2 recipes... but lots of pictures of people who were eating bun rieu. (bastards!)

So to start off here's what you need to buy:
Damage: 1 hour/60 dollars/having to deal with some mean Asian people at the Asian store
Tomatoes (lots, I bought 8 but used 5, so buy 6)
Eggs
Green Onion
Onion
Cilantro
Bean Sprouts
Vermicelli
Chicken Stock (4 cans)
Minced Crab & Prawn meat w/ spices (6 cans)
Shrimp paste (the purple stinky kind. "mam tom" in vietnamese)
Spare Ribs (2 packages)
pre fried tofu
Garlic
Shrimp (a lot)

Prework:
Boil your spareribs for 1-2 hours. The length depends on how tender you like your meat. Cook it for at least 1 hour... I think i cooked mine for about 2:30 hours (i forgot about it) the meat was so tender it fell off the bones. Set aside.
The soup base:
Damage: crying from onions/smelly kitchen. Seriously. Smelly Kitchen. Open your windows, turn on your fans, and feel sorry for your neighbors.

Cut two big tomatoes into wedges. Cut 1 whole onion and smash about 10 cloves of garlic. Heat your pot, once your pot is hot enough, throw in oil and then garlic. Saute your onions until they are clear and then your tomatoes until they are soft.
Throw in two cans of minced prawn and crab stuff. (One can each)
At this point, i got lazy and forgot to take a lot of pictures =(. Pour in 4 big cans of chicken stock and bring it up to a boil, then lower the heat to bring down to a simmer. Cut up the rest of your tomatoes and let the join the party.
Prep every thing else. That is- peel all your shrimp. You may want to taste your broth at this point... if it's not flavorful enough for you, put in squirts of fish sauce for your liking . or if it is too flavorful, add in water.
You can also put your spare ribs into your soup at this time (just the meat not the water!)
Shrimp balls: Normally you mix shrimp with minced pork, but i totally forgot the mince pork so i made strictly shrimp balls.
Place garlic into a food processor. Process.
Place shrimp into same food processor. Process until well blended and mush.
Add salt, pepper, and sugar. How much? i don't know, guesstimate it... it doesn't matter too too much since the shrimp balls will be mixed in with your soup anyway.
Once this is done, take a bowl of oil, dip your fingers in it and grab shrimp and drop them into the pot. Shrimp cooks easily, and they'll start rising to the top.

I'm kind of mad that I didn't take a picture of this part. It's an important interesting part that I've specifically learned from my bf...but because I was just watching and spacing out i forgot to take pictures! The part i'm talking about is the eggs:

If you like eggs you can add as much as you want. We only had about 7 eggs left in the house so that's how many we used. Crack the eggs and seperate the yolk from the whites. Blend all the whites w/ a highspeed blender until you get a foamy froth like texture. Open one more can of shrimp/can meat and fold in with the eggs. Pour the mixture slowly over your broth. You will see that it won't sink in. Cover up in a low-medium heat for the eggs to cook into a yummy goodness.
The prefried tofu can be added later.

Oops- at some point, you want to cook your vermicelli! Pour your hot broth over some cooked vermicelli add some sriracha hot sauce and you got yourself some mommy did not cook this for me bun rieu!
(feeds 6-8 people)

So for bun rieu the result was:
6 hours of intense labor (1/2 kidding)
backache
feet pain
loads and loads of dish washing
smelly house
happy boyfriend
Enough bun rieu to eat for 5 days straight!


In the middle of all this i also made white cake with greentea creamcheese frosting. It didn't come out the way that i wanted so i won't waste time posting how i made that. It was good, but i couldn't get the green tea taste that i wanted. Why the hell is it so hard to find Matcha green tea powder around here?!

....damn i suck at cooking/recipe instructions. There goes my cook book dream.

oh well! Enjoy!

Jinx! (You owe me a Coke)

Remember that line? Who and how the hell did that get made up? Anyway, I think I continually jinx myself... every time I type in my blog that I need to update my blog more, I freaking don't. I do the exact opposite of that, I blog even less! How will I ever have a lucrative blog career if I keep this up??

There's these lyrics in my head today that I can't seem to get out. It goes: "Happiness... is not a fish that you can catch. Imagination can't resist the laziness..." Why is this song in my head? This morning while i was emailing my friend CC away and not working, I was talking to her about how I sit on the couch or in bed every day after work, think about all the things I could be doing or should be doing and then that's it... I just think about it, I don't do it. And then I complain about how my life is so uneventful and boring and lonesome. So that song popped into my head. I always thought I'd be a good radio dj where I can play a great song when someone called in with their problems. I'm also really good at talking to myself and making very long conversations about nothing all day long. When I'm with other people? Not so much. I think I would probably scare some people with the random thoughts that constantly run through my head. Too bad radio djs don't make that much and it takes a long while to be nationally or locally good enough to get paid well. Also too bad that I have a cartooney kid voice that would probably even annoy the shit out of me.

Also I don't think it'd go very well if I played "Superman" by Eminem everytime someone called in about a breakup.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, being too lazy to do something. Well this weekend i'm going to try really really hard to do some stuff... and that stuff will be cooking/baking! Just on Saturday though. Sunday is laundry and sleep day.

As Mr. Doctor would say, "baby steps my friend... baby steps"

You ever realize how much crap you have to go through to cook!? You have to get into your car, fight traffic, go to 2 different stores because all the asian stores can't store everything you freaking need, prep, cook for 5 hours, clean, clean and clean again. Good lord do dishes stack up easily, wtf?! and then you eat for like 10 minutes and BAM! You're done. It's like 10 hours of prep time for 10 minutes of food. WTF?!

Yeah but I'm going to do it.... I'll post pictures, don't worry!

Oh Green Apple Mentos - Where have you been all my working life?









Seriously?! I've always loved mentos but never in my life have i seen or tried one of these until today.
Speaking of candy, when i started working at the age of 10, my whole salary went to candy, i mean what else would a 10 year old asian girl buy in the ghettos? speaking of working, i worked numerous under the table jobs growing up... i don't know how i did it. Does the average american have any awareness on what goes on with these damn products they buy?

By the way, Crabtree & Evelyn soaps and shit? Illegal factory. Underpaid workers. Hours and hours of standing and cardboard papercuts. I would never buy their product, especially at the price they sell it at?? Psh.....

and now i leave you with another Excel tip: +
that's right, +

Happy OMFGICAN'TBELIEVEIT'S June all!!!!

whywhatwhowherehuhhuhhuhhuh?!?

I tried to watch House last night at a friend's house. A friend who has 3 kids who wanted me to watch the show in their bedroom. NOT A GOOD IDEA. All I got were 10000000000 questions thrown at me, "why is he sick?, what are they doing?, why is he sick?, who's that?, why is he sick?, they don't know why he's sick yet?, why is his face white?, what's Cancer?, what's Leukemia?, how do you get cancer? what's a bone marrow transplant?, NEEDLE! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!, and finally, is he going to die?!"
Like WHOA! Stupidly, I tired to actually explain some of the stuff, and of course i didn't catch the ending because i was too busy answering their questions, so i said YES they both LIVED!!!!!!

So that's it... ONLY CARTOONS FOR MY KIDS!!

Anyway, I came up with this fabulous idea from my dream last night. Lasagna topped with mac&cheese.

YUM! Who wants to come over and try to make it for me?!

On the look out for FOOD:

It is true, I've led a sad life. There are a lot of foods I didn't get to eat until I was working and semi out of college. In my family, there was no such thing as eating out at restaurants- not with 7 kids. Even when my older brother and sister had a job they never took me out to eat!! WHAT!! So when I made enough money I pretty much spent it all on food... what can I say, food is my first love.

Even with money I didn't get to experience a lot of food since I came from a small city. I did find all the local yumyums and finally realized small mom and pop restaurants had way better food than the big chains. There are two types of food that I think about now and then and actually feel a little sad that I didn't have a chance to eat it when i was younger.

One is SUSHI... man, I can still hardly afford sushi dinners... now a days I see h.s. kids all up in those restaurants and I think wth!??? Yeah, I'm pretty bitter that I came from big poor family.

The second food is girl scout cookies... people always always talked about girl scout cookies, i never got to taste them until i started a real full time job!! I didn't even know what those stupid boxes looked like... i never had a girl scout come knocking on my door selling those suckers. Anyway, come the job and a mother is selling it for her daughter- i figured they HAD to be good, everyone talked about them, and2.50 a box?? MAD CHEAP!! So i bought 5 boxes...and ate them all... and then learned that that drug only came around like once a year. So the next year i stocked up and bought 10 boxes!!!!!!! Man, thinking back... i can remember how happy and pudgy i was... mmm...

After that first job, no one sold girl scout cookies to me (again)...which was weird, because, we moved to a better neighborhood... and we all know girl scouts come from the better neighborhoods!! Anyway... i didn't think about them damn cookies again until this year. When i heard people in the office talking about it, and telling each other that their boxes came in. Man I was sad... I was SO SAD. Ask Mr Man T. I talked about it... which caused him to steal a half eaten box from his job, but whatever! I was so happy when i saw that box...but still sad that i couldn't buy all the different flavors and knew i had to savor that box so i ate like 3... and put the box away.

Come last weekend when we had to go to Walmart for some diet stuff and Hallelujah!!! Girl scouts selling girl scout cookies outside the freaking store (i don't know how they landed that location). So the little hyperactive girls were like, WANNA BUY SOME GIRL SCOUT COOOOKIES?!?! ::SMILESMILESMILE:: and i'm like YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!

and now here i am trying to eat girl scout cookies and type in my blog about my love for them.

i think my keyboard is broken, honey what did you do to it?!?!!!

oh yeah, so the point of this post is that if anyone knows of any food that you think i may have not tried or eaten yet, please please please let me know so i can leave this darkness behind me forever.

Thanks.

The definition of "lucky":

I've always talked about how good of a cook Mr. Man T is... if i didn't love this man and wasn't able to make him my bf, I'd hire him to be my "personal chef" hint! hint!
Below is a very very small display of what I've been blessed with over the last 3 months. I wish I took more pictures, i wish i took pictures with an actual camera rather than my shitty cam.phone, i wish i could blog about each and every meal. i wish i could eat all of this over again without gaining 1 pound. Those who've had a taste of his cooking cannot deny...

This is one talented person.

99% of these pictures are from home (my home!) cooked meals.
Going from Top Left to Bottom Right:
Ramen;primedryagedsteakdinnerwithlobstermedleysweetwhitecornbroccolinicreminimushrooms; steakdinneragain;
steaktip&steakfries;crabcake;asparaguswintersoup;
asparaguswintersoupagain;wine;tetfruit;
hotpot;teasmokedducksaladwithrasberryorangevinagrette;blackberry jalapeno crustedrackoflamb;
lamb&pasta;lamb&pastaagain;wine;
banhcuon;duck;duck;
frencheggsinapastrypuffmyabsolutelyfavoritebreakfastever;
shabushabuhotpotwithcraband4differentmeats;bunbohue

you
seriously
can
not
beat
that
.

hello my name is hanh and this is my blog.
that's the only intro you'll get.

----
My bf, Mr. Man T., is a master chef in disguise of a jeweler. Since he hasn't been able to bestow his cooking abilities lately he has outsourced his gianormous talents in cooking on me. Me, who has not cooked a single dish (besides eggs/instant noodles/beef & [insert vegetable here]) for 24 years of my existing life. Me, who burnt the one time I tried to cook chicken fried steak. Me, who only made cake out of a box (woot). Me.

My mom has told me numerous times that I will never be able to cook for my husband which made me insist on finding a husband who would be able to cook for me. (So far I am on track.)

Anyway, since I'm as n00b as you can get with cooking, I thought I'd share some hard dishes in an easy to do way for anyone who likes living on the edge of a butcher knife for once.

Hanh trying to cook take 4.5

Bun Bo Hue! Translated: Noodles Beef Hue (city in Vietnam)!

Elements:
Beef Shank (2-5lbs depending how much meat you likey)
Bun Bo Hue Powder 1 (ask the Asian Market lady)
Onion 1
Lemongrass 4 (ask the Asian Market lady)
Garlic (lots)
Pig leg (2-4 legs depending how much pig legs you likey)
Shrimp sauce in brine 1 jar (ask the Asian Market lady)
MSG (if you want your mother to yell at you)
Chicken Broth 4 cans
Rice Vermicelli 2 packages

Shrimp chips 1 bag (to eat while you're prepping)

For the rest of the ingredients I will assume you have in your kitchen... if not I give you this face -_-

The rest is going to go really fast cuz details suck and all the n00bs know that we'll lose interest if it seems to complicated in 5 nano seconds so ready set, go!

Take two pots, one medium size (enough to fit your pig legs) and one b i g (for the broth).
Boil both separately.

Rub salt on your pig legs, like you're massaging oil on a fat lady's thighs.
Medium water comes to boil, throw pig legs in. Take out after 20 mins after water boils up again.
Meanwhile slice up your beef. This shit is hard, you must have a sharp knife. If you don't go out and buy one. Now. or ask your neighbor.
Slice..
Slice..
Slice..

Put the sliced meat up in a big bowl. Slice up a whole onion and add that too.
Also throw in Shrimp sauce like 6 big spoon fulls, don't go cheap on that shit.
Take the bottom of the lemongrass (the whitish part) and about 8 cloves of garlic. Put it in a food processor and chop it up. Add that with the beef as well.
3-4 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of pepper
2 tablespoons of msg (again, if you want your mom to yell at you)
6-7 sprites of fish sauce. No fish sauce?! Asian market lady.
Add one packet of bun bo hue powder

(all numbers are estimates cuz I won't know how much meat ya'll will use. Anyway, less is better (for now) you can always add flavor after the fact. Man I feel so smart right now...

By this time your pig legs should be done, take that shit out and rinse with cold water. Then drop it in with your chicken broth. Add a can of water too.

Fry the meat in a big pan or pot. Fry your meat for about 10-15 minutes. Dump it into the chicken broth
Boil for 1 1/2 hours.
Take one lemongrass and bash the bottom of it. Throw that in the pot.
Cook for another 30 minutes.

Cook your rice vermicelli... uh follow directions on the bag (its kinda like spaghetti)


Put rice vermicelli in a bowl. Pour broth over bowl. Add green onions, cilantro and bean sprouts.




Eat that shit with chopsticks.
Cry from the spiciness and that you've made one of the most popular Vietnamese dishes. Ever.

Damage:

4 Hours (includes shopping time)
Approx 30. dollars (feeds 10+ ppl)
Your mom yelling at you for using msg (and perhaps chicken broth from a can)
Tears from cutting an onion
Food coma

Enjoy!

hanh.