Home cook: Pham Thi Diem Thu
From the Leaf Kitchen here’s our menu for today. The main course is Nui – Vietnamese Macaroni Soup and for dessert a Jelly with Coconut Milk called Rau Câu.
Serves 3 persons
Cooking Time: 50 minutes
Ingredients
(Optional – Wild Boar / Pork or Beef – 150g)
Spring onions – 2 finely chopped
Spring onion leaves – chopped for garnishing
Vietnamese Basil leaves – a handful to be added just beofore serving
Garlic – 6 cloves finely chopped
Corn – 1 cob of corn sliced into thick sections
Carrot – 1 medium sized carrot – sliced
Radish – 1 medium sized radish – sliced
Macaroni – 200g
Sa tế – Vietnamese chili paste. Served as an accompaniment to the soup.
Coconut oil – 2 table spoons of coconut oil
Salt – 1/2 tea spoon
Sugar – 1.5 table spoons
Nuoc Mam – 1 table spoon (Vietnamese Fish Sauce)
Method (Note the picture below shows the meatless version of the dish)
Chop the onion and garlic into small pieces and fry in oil until golden brown in color (shown in the picture below top-center).
Boil the macaroni, strain and set aside. Chop up the other ingredients and prepare to cook.
Boil water in a pot and (if using meat then boil the meat first), add nuoc mam, salt and sugar.
When the meat is nearly done add in the hard vegetables -corn, carrot and radish. When the meat is done remove it, set aside and slice thinly before serving.
When the vegetables are cooked the soup is ready to be served.
Serve as shown in the picture below; add the spring onion leaves, Vietnamese Basil, Sa tế, fried onion and garlic and meat after pouring the soup onto the macaroni.
What’s for Dessert🍮 Rau Câu – Jelly with Coconut Milk.
Ingredients
1 Packet Agar Jelly Powder
3 1/2 Cups of Water
4 Cups sugar
4 tblspn Condensed Milk (or to suit your taste)
4 tblspn Coconut Milk (or to suit your taste)
Method
1. Mix the sugar, water and jelly powder in a pot and bring to a boil.
2. When the liquid is hot switch-off the flame and pour a portion into a separate cup – this portion is for the first layer of the jelly.
3. Now add the desired food colouring, coconut milk and condensed milk to the cup containing the liquid for the first layer.
4. Pour this into a glass dish that will hold the layers of the Jelly and leave to cool before beginning on the second layer. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other layers. We did three layers of Jelly for our dish (Red, White and Green).
5. When all three layers are poured into the glass dish. Let it cool and then put it in the fridge to set.
6. When the has Jelly has set it can be cut into the desired shapes like the serrated diamond shapes in the photo shown below.
Enjoy !!! 
