Recipes > Barbecued Pork with Rice Noodles (Bun Thit Nuong)

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound rice sticks (bun) or 2-1/2 packets of Japanese alimentary paste noodles (somen)
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon MSG (optional)
• 3 tablespoons roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
• basic vegetable platter
• 3 shallots or white part of 3 scallions
• 1-1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 pound pork butt, sliced paper thin against the grain
• carrot and sweet radish in vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• double recipe of Nuoc Cham
• 2 scallions, green part only, thinly sliced

Preparation Method

1. Prepare the rice sticks according to the directions.

2. Combine the shallots, garlic, and sugar in a mortar and pound to a paste. Add the fish sauce, black pepper, and optional MSG.

3. Marinate the meat in the shallot-garlic mixture for 1 hour.

4. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking pan with aluminum foil. Arrange the pork on the foil in overlapping slices. (It's best not to separate the pieces, as this will cause them to dry while cooking.) Bake for 20 minutes on one side; then turn the pieces over and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Remove from the oven.

5. To serve, place the pork in individual bowls, preferably shallow ones. Sprinkle with nuoc cham, enough to cover the pork almost completely. Sprinkle with the roasted peanuts, then add radish and carrot flowers to cover the meat. Sprinkle with thinly sliced scallion greens.

6. Each person is given another bowl containing a small amount of noodles. From the large vegetable platter, he then takes a little of each vegetable and puts them over the noodles. The diner transfers small amounts of the contents of the pork bowl into the noodle bowl and eats from the noodle bowl.