13320 Tue Oct 05 01:21:43 -0700 2004 6 4 Pacific Northwest 0 27104 Continuing with the coupons, we hit Yen Ha for dinner tonight. It's located on NE Sandy around 68th, not far from places like Sam Ho, Thien Hong, and Pho Oregon. It's a bit of a dive inside and out, like most Vietnamese and Chinese places on that side of town. That's part of the reason we've never hit it before. My wife prefers non-dives. Here's what we ordered: #4, Tom But Lo: broiled shrimp stuffed with pork. Served with salt, black pepper, and lime. $2.95. #12, Goi Ga Rau Ram: marinated chicken, mint, sweet and sour cabbage, topped with peanuts. $5.95 (for a small). #127, Ga Ro Ti: Roasted game hen and sweet rice cooked with coconut milk. $7.95. #155, Banh Hoi Chay: Deep-fried tofu with vermicelli served with assorted vegetables, rice paper, and peanut sauce. $6.95. The shrimp item was really two shrimp opposing each other wrapped with ground pork, breaded, and fried, served with a tasty not-too-sweet and sour sauce. There was just one for the $2.95. But it was pretty fat. The crispy outside was quite nice, though the ground pork was a bit dense. The salad was huge. It was like the size of a chain salad from Applebees or Red Robin. I don't know how big a large would be. It was a nice balance of flavors. The chicken was quite tender. It came with red onions and fried onions in addition to the items in the description. It was a bit too redolent of fish sauce for my wife, but I liked it. The roasted game hen had a wonderful flavor. It was a whole bird with a flavorful skin. The skin wasn't crispy, but was soaked in some sort of sauce. The meat was very tender and juicy. On the side came two rolls of orange sticky rice (why orange, I don't know). It was lightly flavored with coconut milk. They provided a sauce in a ramekin that had a earthy ginger flavor and a bit of spiciness. It was very good. My wife's dish was essentially make-your-own salad rolls. The tofu was nicely cooked with a very good crust. There were multiple kinds of very fresh mint and other herbs. There were also bean sprouts, carrot shavings, sliced cucumber, sliced granny smith apple, two types of noodles, peanut sauce, and the choice of rice paper or lettuce to roll it all in. A little bit of a pain and I am one who prefers to let a chef make my food when I go out. I ended up making them all for my wife. There was really too many noodles. I probably ended up making 8 rolls and still had plenty of stuff left over. I was very encouraged by Yen Ha. Everything we had was at least pretty good. They have a gigantic menu and I don't know Vietnamese dishes well enough (other than the basics) to pick and choose according to my palate. The value was fantastic, too. Tue Oct 05 01:21:43 -0700 2004 0 Nick 1 27112 Did you notice any rau ram (aka polygonum) in your goi ga rau ram, or was it really just mint? Deep fried shallots are a classic topping to this classic dish. It also gets made with shrimp or pork. It sounds like your game hen is one of those Malay/Indian influenced dishes and the orange sticky rice is probably supposed to mimic saffron (or when they're being cheap, tumeric). Your critique of the banh hoy chay comes from a very Western perspective, not invalid mind you, but not really understanding the context. There are a lot of Vietnamese dishes that are meant to be tucked into rice paper along with the "salad" bits (herbs and wild greens or lettuces). It's like injera's role in Ethiopian food, or tortillas in working class Mexican. It's not the chef's job to make them into rolls, they're not supposed to really be rolls, it's the diners job to use the paper as an vehicle to get the other stuff to the mouth, mixing ingredients to suit their taste. Something to keep in mind for next time. If you'd like to learn more about Vietnamese food to get an idea of what you might like to order of a menu, there are a couple of cookbooks that could also function as reference tools. Vietnamese Home Cooking by Robert Carmack, Didier Corlou, and Nguyen Than Van and Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table: Recipes and Reminiscences from Vietnam's Best Market Kitchens, Street Cafes, and Home Cooks by Mai Pham. If I only bought one, I'd buy the second one. regards, trillium regards, trillium Tue Oct 05 14:18:42 -0700 2004 27104 0 trillium 2 27118 Thanks Trillium. It may have been, to use the common name (I had to look it up), Japanese knotweed, but I'm pretty sure there was mint, too. But I don't know that I've had knotweed, so.... There was also an herb, now that I remember, that looked like curry leaves, but wasn't as fragrant. With the banh hoy chai, there was a gree and purple herb, ragged on the outside like mint, but much larger and wider than most mint leaves, that had no smell until you crushed it or twisted it that smell citrusy. I don't know if the desire to not make it myself is so much a western thing. Lots of people in the west enjoy hot pot, Mongolian grill, and Korean BBQ. (An aside: A lot of customers were getting a sukiyaki-like dish where they brought out slices of beef on a plate along with a tiny Mongolian grill looking thing with a sauce sitting in a moat around the middle of a grill being heated from the inside. Made it smokey with the low ceilings and poor ventilation.) Grill your own steaks is certainly a fad right now. Buffets are ever-popular. I think it's just me. The only time I don't mind making it myself is when it would meaningfully hurt the quality, eg, if you were to make fajitas ahead, the juices would soak into the flour tortillas and make them soggy. But with the rice paper, it's especially bad, I think, because they're such a pain to work with. If they had them separated by parchment or plastic sheets it would be easier. You know how sticky they are. It's why I rarely make them at home, because they can be such a pain to work with. I have stacks of rice paper wrappers in my pantry that I never quite get the energy to use. I think where I care the least is when it's something like miang kum, where there's no trouble at all. You just plop some stuff on a leaf and toss it in your mouth. Once you're actually cooking some meat or something, I lose interest in a hurry. Let the expert do it. I'd prefer Korean BBQ to be like Mongolian, where you choose what you want, then they cook it. Well, that ended up being a huge aside with an aside inside. Sorry. Anywho....Trillium, have you been to Yen Ha? What do you think of it? Tue Oct 05 15:32:13 -0700 2004 27112 0 Nick 3 27119 I should have just said knotweed. Japanese knotweed is a specific species of the genus polygonum, which are the knotweeds. I don't know that I've had any of them, and I certainly don't know them by sight. Tue Oct 05 15:33:59 -0700 2004 27118 0 Nick 4 27126 Dude, as the saying goes... .if ya can't smoke it, re-roll it! .or use your knotbong, I guess... Tue Oct 05 16:30:51 -0700 2004 27119 0 Jill-O 3 27131 Polygonum odoratum, as far as I know, isn't what gets called knotweed. I should have given you more info. It has a very strong cilantro-ish flavor. I'm providing a link to an excellent resource, Gernot has collected names in any language he can get a hold of and photographs of spices and herbs. I'm giving you the link for rau ram, but you might want to check out the entry for perilla. I'm guessing the green and purple mintish plant you mention is the Vietnamese version of perilla/shiso. I can see how rice papers would feel like not worth the trouble. At home, it's much easier to work with them if you keep them from drying out and sticking together, but in a restaurant you don't really need to seperate them or make rolls. Just tear off a piece and go to town. I haven't been to Yen Ha, but I'll be sure to check it out. It sounds like my kind of place. regards, trillium Link: http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/engl/generic_frame.html?Poly_odo.html Tue Oct 05 18:48:27 -0700 2004 27118 0 trillium 4 27132 Okay, that's the one that reminded me of curry leaves (by shape, not flavor or aroma). I was trying to distinguish the flavor. But there were so many flavors it was difficult. Link: http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/engl/generic_noframe.html?Murr_koe.html Tue Oct 05 18:58:24 -0700 2004 27131 0 Nick