noodlepie

Nearly Bun oc

We had what I think was a very successful and pretty darn authentic bash at a Bun oc (Vietnamese snail noodle soup) this past weekend. OK - so there was a Vietnamese brain in the kitchen directing things which is a distinct advantage... but the end result not only looked good, it tasted superb with the usual greenery (mint, basil, spring onion, beansprouts) and nuoc mam thrown in. The secret, as with all Vietnamese soups, is the  stock. In this case that's the long cooked pork variety. This was a slightly sweeter rendition of this native northern Vietnamese soup - for soft Europalates. Snails were sold out on the market, so we plumped for clams. Not quite the same, but not too bad either. More photos here. Way more on Bun oc in the archives. Plus, I just spotted a reader posted recipe (thanks Duc Tran :) which I've pasted below... Look authentic Andrea???

For: 3-4 persons

Ingredients:

- Vermicelli: 1,500g

- Large snail: 1,000g

- Tomato: 100g

- Vegetable oil: 50g

- Vinegar grounds: 200g

- Vinegar: 0.1 litre

- Tamarind fruit: 3-4 pieces

- Pork bone: 300g

- Fish sauce, salt, spices, dried and greenonion, turmeric, garlic, chilly powder or greenchilly, and spicy legumes.

To prepare:

- Leave the snails in the water used to wash rice overnight to purge.

- Chop off the pointed ends of their shells and put the snails in lime water for about 15 minutes; take them out and remove from their shells. Wash and clean them with salt, then season them with fish sauce, crushed turmeric, fat and some vinegar grounds.

- Heat the fat in a saucepan, fry the well-sliced garlic and dried onion, then add the snails and stir.

- Fry the dried onion in boiling fat, add slices of tomato, some vinegar grounds and boiling water and fried snail sauce to make the snail soup, just enough for 3-4 bowls, then add the tamarind fruit (its hard cover already peeled off) and the spices, and boil for 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat and add well-chopped green onion to the soup.

- Heat the fat, then add dried chilly or chilly powder. Stir regularly and then transfer to a little bowl.

- Now, put some vermicelli, part-boiled in hot water into your bowl, put some snails on it, then pour the snail soup over, complete with fried chilly and spicy legumes. It should be served hot.

Snail trail

Meanwhile... back at Thanh Hai snail shop at 14/12 Ky Dong street in District 3, Saigon, les escargots are zapped out faster than Steve Austin on khat. Having previously done the bun oc - good to superb to how do they make this? I want to make it at home - I return for oc ham thuoc bac, or snails in Chinese medicine. Like bun oc, it's a northern dish - like everything else on Thanh Hai's menu for that matter - and one probably best enjoyed on the fragrant shores of Tay Ho, (West Lake) up the road in Hanoi. Oc ham thuoc bac arrives in a covered claypot with a side of sweet chilli sauce.

Whip off the lid and you're greeted by a hot fog of bitter sweet jujube, ginseng, roots, bark and ancient, revered Chinese mandarin fingernail scrapings. Thuoc bac is supposed to be good for all kinds of ailments. Although it appears to have a devastating effect on the written word.

It's a fantastic dish served in the chilly north. It needs a bit more work and imagination in the thermal underwear free south. The freshwater snails have a wee bit of that traditional Vietnamese chew factor. That's no bad thing though. I go French and scoop thuoc bac broth with empty snail shells and guzzle it down. It's bitter and I don't think it should really be ingested this way, but it's a decent sideshow to the blandness of the snailmeat and sweetheat from the red chill dish.

I'm a massive fan of snails done the French way and I've several soft spots for this northern Vietnamese take on the afterlife of gastropods. But, for my money - and at 15,000VD a dish that's admittedly very little money - I'd plump for the classic bun oc if you drop by Thanh Hai. More snail shots and here's the menu. Next visit, stuffed snails. Mmmm.

Technorati Tags: snails, Saigon, Vietnam, super smashing great

Noodles dressed up as noodles

This is Bun Ta - 'Everything is Bun' restaurant at 136 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia street in District 1. It's fairly new and I mentioned it pre-opening, but never got around to blogging it up. I went there for the first time four months ago during its opening week. What's unusual for such a swank 'n' chic, minimal 'n' groovy resto is the menu. It's predominantly filled with the signature dishes of the Saigon streets. Dishes I've never seen any chef jazz up any differently from the next stall. The chefs at Bun Ta adhere to that rule. What we've got here is streetfood on posh plates, at clean tables in snazzy surroundings - Nice idea - All the groovy, beautiful people born with a Motorola attached to their right ear are here. Yep - if you're Vietnamese and you eat at Bun Ta - you've made it.

The eating area is spick, span and spacious. And it's busy. On this visit, it was almost full by the time we'd finished. The subtitle to the restaurant name gives the menu away. We're in noodleland. Bun rieu, bun mam, canh bun, bun bo, bun moc etc.  Yup - everything really is bun. But is it fun?

Dodging the soup section for a minute we start with chao tom banh hoi - barbecued shrimp paste on sugarcane - served with some trippy colourfully tiedyed bun. It comes with slices of cucumber, starfruit and green banana and a nuoc mam - fish sauce - dip and rice paper to wrap. The chao tom are kinda small, but it looks fabulous and tastes great. The shrimp paste crumbles very easily off the cane into small chunks.  However, it does make for a light lunch and you may need another dish if you want to flex your belt to its more usual position. Next up is bun oc - snail noodle soup.

I've been holding off blogging about Bun Ta as I wanted to gauge this soup with another, more street, bun oc. The Bun Ta bun oc is good, it's very good. Packed with flavour, tofu, tomato, blood and snails. But is it that good? Well... no it's not. I am nitpicking here, but I have three problems with Bun Ta. Firstly, it serves a perfectly respectable soup in pleasant, comfortable, air-conditioned surroundings and you get to sit near lots of gorgeous, nouveau riche Saigonites. But... I'm more... you know... old school. Bit of grime, crusty chilli sauce bottles, flies buzzing around, rusty, dusty fan creaking overhead and soup that arrives with the waitresses thumb inserted in the broth. You won't find any of that at Bun Ta.

Secondly, there's the price. Am I really willing to spend nearly six times the regular price to pay for the surroundings in which I eat? Well. No. I'm not. But plenty of folk will. Saigonese are mad for flash and that's why I think Bun Ta might just do very well, thank you very much. "Give 'em what they like, but dress it up nice and charge them more" The last problem is the location, the owners chose a bitch of a spot. It's right next door to the exceedingly popular, very good, more reaosnably priced, more atmospheric and downhome Quan An Ngon restaurant. If I was in the area and it was a toss up between the two, downhome wins everytime. Lunch for two including drinks and a rice dish for the toad came to 247,250VD. Here are a few more snaps and here's the Bun Ta website. Final bonus link: another diner's point of view.

Tip off: Bun oc

Some nine months ago noodlepie reader Cainieu popped a comment through my door suggesting I swing by 14 or 16 Ky Dong Street in District 3. He (or she) said, "there you find the popular spot for Bun oc. I think it’s tastier than most Bun oc stalls around here in Saigon and it actually attracts loads of southerners apart from their regular northern customers. There are other dishes here like boiling snail and stir-fried snail with green bananas but I suggest you try the Bun rieu oc (that means snail soup with crab-paste)." I never forget a good tip and in a new series - called imaginatively enough Tip off - I'm here for lunch today. The alleyway above is at no. 14 and leads off Ky Dong street.

On the right of the alleyway entrance is a very popular noodle shop I spotted a few weeks back - must check that one out - but today I'm after Cainieu's snails and I walk down the alleyway, past a fine array of shabby lean to joints selling beef, pork and chicken noodle dishes, until I reach a righthand junction at a motorbike mechanic's shop. If you look at the top of the picture above you can just make out the Bun oc sign. We've had it once before elsewhere.

Down this small alleyway is a communal style courtyard with trees, concrete and quiet. Yes I know - quiet in Saigon. How odd. Good odd. I'd forgotten what it's like to sit in a bare bones resto and not suffer motorbike fumes, parping car horns, shouting, grime and crap. Within the courtyard there are no signs out front indicating Thanh Hai restaurant. From my limited experience, this is a very, very good sign. It means everyone i.e. local folk know where it is and what it serves. No need to show off with a big snazzy sign. A quick scan around tells me that it's probably the joint on the right hand side. I ask if this is the snail shack. It is. And we're in.

Mrs. Thanh Hai, who has been selling snails from here since moving to Saigon over twenty years ago, very kindly gives me a tour of her kitchen which is located at the rear of the small, eight tabled restaurant. She repeatedly apologises for the mess, the number of snails lying around in buckets, steamers and basins, the heaps of cleaned greens and the baskets of fresh noodles. Dunno what the hell she's on about - I think this is heaven, although the 40 odd snaps don't really convey that - sorry :)

First up is Oc xao chuoi xanh (Fried snails with green banana) It comes with a wooden stick and chilli/nuoc mam (fish sauce) dip. Scofftastically the freshwater snails - Oc gao - are not at all chewy and the green banana - chuoi xanh - is almost potato like in flavour and texture. The deal is sealed with a handful of a fried purple leaf called tiep to. It's simple. it's no bollocks fayre, unspiced and unrefined and it's bloody great. The texture combination of green nana and snail is unusual and supremely satisfying.

Next up is Bun oc rieu cua  (Freshwater snail/crab noodle soup). We've had several Bun rieu before, but never one quite like this. Take a look at the hedgerow for starters. It looks stunning with those green banana shavings... errr... shaved like that. Blimey. In among that lot are also beansprouts, more tiep to, hung cay (basil) and crunch--a-plenty rau muong (stripped morning glory). The broth comes from one of two large vats in the kitchen and is made predominantly, Mrs. Thanh Hai tells me, from freshwater crabs. She's long since ditched the ancient and secret family recipe handed down and carefully guarded through generations since the Tran dynasty in favour of the more well known Knorr family recipe. Tomatoes are added along with chopped spring onions, fresh vermicelli noodles, crabmeat and the snails.

Now sit back a minute and take a look at that soup.... It's fine, it's very fine stuff. And it's big, it's in a big bowl. It's a big soup. I know I'm going to like this, the place, the host, the soup, the look. After a while eating out in Saigon, you just know when something's right. Mrs. Thanh Hai, not surprsingly, tells me (I think) that she serves the best Bun oc in Saigon. As if to emphasise the point she says she's had customers from Germany and Sweden "and now you"... from Britain. We get bloody everywhere us heathens. I've only tried three or four Bun oc in Saigon and this is up there, it's very up there... No strong flavour, no southern sweetness either, just hearty, yet light, fresh scoff. It's formidable.

She also serves steamed snails among other snail-based dishes. I will be back and I will try everything on the menu and I will blog about it. Here is that menu and the business card. Without a blog and without readers like Cainieu it really doesn't matter if I lived in Saigon for donkeys and searched and searched I doubt I'd ever have found this joint single handed. So big up to Cainieu. Nice one. Keep 'em coming. Each dish costs 7,000VD making lunch, with a hand towel and a cuppa tea, an astonishing £0.54 in old money. More snaps.

Snail soup

Bo Ai at 19/12 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street in District 1 specialises in two dishes. Bun oc Ha Noi and Banh da cua. Bun oc is a light Hanoian noodle soup with snails. I have no idea what Banh da cua is, although cua means crab and banh means some kind of cake, although Banh canh is a soup... Crabcakes/Crabcake soup? I'm not sure, and I'm here for the Bun oc anyhow, so let's not stress. Unlike the petite snails we scoffed on Tu xuong street these earthbound molluscs are massive.

We're here early and out on the pavement, restaurant front, snail-prep is underway. This chap takes a snail from a large box, slips off the 'hood' into the red basket, washes the snail in the blue basin, disposes of the snail crap in the yellow colander and puts the edible end of the escargot in the tall blue bucket. Colour co-ordinated escargot prep - how very cool. Below we have the freshly prepared snails. The snail killer did tell me the name of this snail, but I didn't have a pen to hand to note down the particulars and promptly forgot.

The restaurant is open to the street and is filled with the usual aluminium tables, TV and a beer and soft drink filled fridge. Below, the snail slayer's missus takes over in the skullery. She wears one plastic glove to handle the snails - which we previously saw on the pavement outside, handled by hubby sans plastique. The chef's plastic glove is relatively uncommon in Vietnam although I understand there has been pressure from the authorities to improve hygiene standards in these basic restaurants. Glass cabinets, refrigeration and gloves and part of the trend.

It's a mang di ve I'm after today (takeaway) As with other noodle soup takeaways it's thick with bun (vermicelli noodles). Thicker than if you had the sit down version. The snails err towards chewdom, but thankfully don't dwell too long there. There's plenty of them hidden under the noodles in the bowl below. The soup is a bit strange, slightly yellow in colour, but somewhat bland with no chili present. The dish comes with the usual shrubbery including a splodge of banana flowers.

It's a street soup, perhaps best served on the pavements of the chilly north. For myself, I have to say I wasn't too impressed. The Vietnamese have many ways of cooking snails and I hope I get to try a few more of them. However, I would be interested to know what goes into the soup as I couldn't find a recipe via Google. If you can help out, please post a comment. This mix of molluscs and noodles will set you back 8,000VD. View the business card.