Bun Rieu

My first attempt at making Bun Rieu, a Vietnamese shrimp/crab paste tomato noodle soup. Quite satisfied with the results - but of course it still needs work and more refinement before I can make it for anyone else! So right now, only my hubby SQ is the guinea pig!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• A pot of chicken stock
• 8 medium tomatoes
• 1 lb ground pork
• 2 eggs
• 3 TBSP corn starch
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/3 tsp pepper
• 1/2 jar of crab paste (picture below) - you can find it in Chinese supermarkets
• 1 pack of dried noodles

Optional ingredients:

• Cilantro
• Green onions
• Onions
• Cha Lua (Vietnamese Fancy Pork)
• Bean sprouts

Crab paste

Preparation:

1. Boil a pot of chicken stock using chicken bones under medium low heat for as long as you can (at least 1.5 hrs) to get flavor.

2. Finely dice 5 tomatoes. Chop in bigger pieces the remaining 3 tomatoes (set aside). Tenderize ground pork by pounding the meat with a cleaver.

3. Add corn starch, crab paste, eggs to pork. Season with salt and ground pepper. Mix well.

4. On a small pot, cook the finely diced tomatoes until they become limp and appear sauce-like. Remove any chicken bones from the chicken stock. Then pour the tomato sauce into the chicken stock. Wait until mixture boils again.

5. Using the same small pot, pour 3 ladles of the chicken stock into it. Scoop a spoonful of meat and let it cook in the small pot. Try not to break the meat mixture. If the mixture falls apart, add a little bit more corn starch and mix it up again.

6. When the meat is cooked, transfer it into the big pot of chicken stock. This extra step is to make sure that you don't ruin the big pot with raw meat. Just safer...

7. After all the raw meat has been cook, disgard the small pot of chicken pot.

8. Add the chopped bigger tomatoes into the chicken stock. Boil for a couple of minutes and then turn off the heat.

9. Boil water on a separate pot to cook the dried noodles. After noodle is cooked, add in the soup.

10. Garnish with cilantro, green onions, etc.

Here is the final result of the dish. It tastes quite good.

This is a good start - at least the meat/crab paste is tasty, tender and soft. I think next time I will use cans of tomato paste as well so the soup will be more reddish color (now it's kinda pinkish). It will blend with the tomatoes more. And I will add in more ingredients such as fried tofu (dou-fu bok). There is more experimenting to be done!