Mekong Food Bounties 2

The second dose of the Mekong Bounties was again mostly pork. They got the BBQ grill out. Rudimentary but effective in getting the job done. The smell of the fish sauce's marinated meat was making us hungry while under the fire. 

The bellypork has the fat and lean meat. They made great companion for each other, not only canceling out the other's weaknesses but also brought the best out of each other. Fat was needed to smoothen out the rough lean meat and the lean meat made the fat edible. Alone the fat may be too oily and some find it revolting. 

The braised pork with quail and chicken eggs was so tasty. The sauce was incredible. We just keep on having a go at the gravy. 

Then we had stir fried beef with vegetables. A good break from pork. Again the Vietnamese cook loved to topped off stir fried with a tonne of crushed black pepper. Amazing.

The last dish was a big surprise. Vietnamese were used to taking the common and make something good out of it. We have Water Mimosa and it looked like weeds. Further the leaves were folded and you got to see mostly the stems. 

These grew around water and the stems looked like that of the kangkung/water spinach. The beauty part of this was the stem became crunchy and it was especially suited for salad. The cook cut it down to size and added some vinegar and sugar to it and tossed it around so that you can see the stems and the leaves were well coated. It tasted great with a slight bitter aftertaste from the leaves.