.: evil jungle prince :.

When I lived in Honolulu, there was a Vietnamese place down the street which specialized in rice stick dishes -- that is, various types of grilled or fried foods placed on a bed of cool rice noodles. These were such simple dishes but so elegant and refreshing with their liberal use of fresh, aromatic herbs. Channeling that incredible restaurant, I'd thought I'd try my best to recreate one of their dishes.

For a first attempt, I was fairly happy* with the result. Following is how I prepared the dish:

1. First I prepared the rice sticks by covering them in boiling water and allowing them to sit for ten minutes. (Note that I don't mean boiled for ten minutes -- I mean poured the water over the noodles and allowed them to sit without further cooking. Otherwise the noodles will fall apart.) These were then drained, rinsed with cold water, drained again, and then placed into the refrigerator to cool down.

2. Meanwhile I prepared a sweet/sour salad. (This dish originally uses turnips instead of daikon but I was using what I had on hand. I also remembered seeing a Khmer recipe for the same dish using daikon.) First I I julienned equal parts daikon and carrot and then tossed in a little salt, allowing the mixture to sweat. I then rinsed out the salt and drained the mixture. I then added 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup rice vinegar, and 1/2 cup water to the mixture, combined, and placed into the refrigerator to cool.

3. Next I prepared the sweet/sour fish sauce by boiling 4 tsp sugar, 8 tsp water. This was allowed to cool. I then added 1.5 tsp lime juice, 1.5 tsp fish sauce, 1 clove minced garlic, and 1 minced red chili. This was then placed into the refrigerator to cool.

5. Finally, I placed some slightly salted, raw shrimp on kebabs and grilled them briefly. All the ingredients were then combined, placing the shrimp, sweet/sour salad, some chopped peanuts, and fresh basil on top of the cooled rice stick noodles. Before eating, I poured the sweet/sour fish sauce on top of the noodles.

*This pretty much turned out the way I wanted it with only two problems which I hope to remedy next time:

Problem #1: the shrimp did not blacken on the grill as I remember them at the restaurant. I was a little disappointed by this, as the slight blackening really gave the shrimp a real kick. The problem here, I assume, was my use of a grill pan as opposed to a barbeque with actual flames. Any ideas on achieving a slight blackening?

Problem #2: the few remaining rice sticks I had in my pantry went stale and some fell apart when cooked. Obviously, the answer here is to use fresh ones! And, in the future, I may experiment cooking stale rice sticks for a shorter period to see if this help sto remedy the problem.