What I wanted…

My girl asked me if I wanted steamboat for my birthday but I was not all that keen as we have been having that all this while, whatever reason we had for it.

Initially, I suggested going out for dinner. I did not want to have it at home as that would mean that my missus would be busy all day (or for a few days in a row) in the kitchen and besides, at this point in time, we are not all that keen on going all over town in search of the ingredients for this dish or that.

However, as the day grew nearer, I had a change of heart and said I would want a simple dinner of Vietnamese rice paper rolls (gỏi cuốn) – we had the bánh tráng (commonly known as rice paper or cold roll) in the house. Everyone was keen on the idea so we went ahead with it.

I told them not to bother as it looked like a lot of work but they insisted on cooking this Vietnamese pho (beef noodles soup)…

…to go with the rolls. My missus managed to get hold of this very nice and very tender imported Australian beef from the nearby shop in the next lane for the very flavourful clear soup and we just used the dry made-in-Thailand kway teow. I’m sure it would be a whole lot nicer if we could get the very thin and smooth, translucent hor fun from the northern states in the peninsula but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers.

For the gỏi cuốn, I dipped the rice paper skin in water to soften and then I lined it with lettuce…

…followed by some bihun…

…and prawns and taugeh (bean sprouts)…

Instead of the prawns, we also had the other option of adding some of the char siew (barbecued pork) and siew yoke (roast pork)…

…that I went out to buy that morning. They were very nice, much nicer than the nice ones that I would usually go and buy at the nearby stall round the corner from my house. I certainly would not mind going that extra distance, not very far actually, to buy these instead, should we feel like eating these again.

One may opt to have both the prawns and the char siew and siew yoke – that is entirely up to the individual – and the ladies loved to add the Thai basil leaves, the mint leaves, the daun sup (Chinese celery), the sawtooth coriander and even the ulam raja from our garden, the complete works. I prefer mine simple so I went without those or just a bit of each, not too much, and wrapped it all up…

…dipped it in one of these…

…and ate. Clockwise, we had my missus’ chili and garlic dip, the traditional peanut hoisin sauce dip and a special cili padi with toasted sesame seeds and whatever else dip.

Of the three, I prefer the first one…

…and by the way, you may choose to wrap the dip(s) together with the ingredients in the roll and eat instead of dipping into them like this.

That certainly was a delightful dinner, something different for a change. We will have to think about what we are going to have for Christmas next which is right round the corner, how time flies!!!