Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Mixed noodle soup (Bún thang)
Bun thang is ranked highly among the culinary specialities of Vietnam. Part of 
the disk is that it is not so easy to find and so one does not get to taste it everyday. Moreover, bun thang might taste delicious in one place but not neccessarily be as good somewhere else.
the disk is that it is not so easy to find and so one does not get to taste it everyday. Moreover, bun thang might taste delicious in one place but not neccessarily be as good somewhere else.People often have a party serving bun thang on the 4th or 5th of the Tet holiday. When one feels tired of banh chung or greasy food like pook pie, spring roll, trotter stew, meat pie, bun thang is the ideal dish. This delicacy satisfies all the requirements for an interesting soup full of sour, hot, and tasty flavours without being heavy or greasy.
Like other kinds of noodle soup, bun thangs delicacy uses similar ingredients: roung rice noodles blanched briefly in boiling water, broth, some protein, spices... However, to make it perfect requires particularly strict and rigorous cooking techniques.
A savoury bowl of bun thang depends fist and foremost on broth. The sweetness of the broth should not come from monosodium glutamate and should be free from the strong flavour of boiled ox or buffalo bones. Therefore, the broth has to be prepared from chicken broth cooked with prawns, shelled shrimp or sa sung (sea leech), and the aforementioned bones. These ingredients together bring about the required sweetness, which is neither fatty nor smelly and result in a clear broth.
The broth should be incessantly boiled right up to the time of serving. one has to disperse the heat by blowing at the bowl before tasting the soup.
On top of a bowl of bun thang lies a layer of different ingredients, not mixed randomly together, but arranged so each element occupies a corner of the bowl: shreds of pork pie and thin-fried egg, soft chicken fillets cut into shreds, fluffy shredded sea shrimp, each in its place, each set off from the other ingredients.
Most of these have a yellow colour, though with different nuances: the ivory yellow of pork pie, the bright yellow of fried egg, the plain yellow of shredded sea shrimp, and the shiny yellow of chicken fillet, all situated against the background of very white rice noodles.
Several kinds of herbs can also add colour to a bowl of bun thang: the fresh green of coriander, the dark green of basil, the plain green of flagrant knotweed, the jet-black of pepper, and the bright red of chilli.
Bun thang, obviously, must be served in big bowls. Small bowls cannot keep the heat of the broth for a long time, thus reducing the deliciousness of the dish.The bowl of bun thang should also be filled up to the top with the broth, which is as clear and ivory-yellow as honey.
The essence of this specialty, the quintessence which bun thang cannot stand without, is belostomatid (cà cuống) , an essence squeezed from a particular kind of beetle. Just a little of belostomatid and a spoonful of shrimp paste perfectly highlight the rich flavour of the dish. The hot savour of belostomatid and the strong smell of shrimp paste, though they may be considered as two opposite musical notes, harmonise with each other to form a wonderful chord.
# posted by Jimmy @ 9:17 AM 
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