Vietnamese pork chop rice

why?

LR just simply cannot live without pork and Vietnamese cuisine. It's the sweet and savoury combination that he adores. Whenever we visit Le Viet, we would both order the Grilled meat with vermicelli and douse the dish in the fish sauce without fail, unless on a really cold and rainy day (very unlikely in Singapore), I might go for the Beef Pho! So anyway, I wanted to do the 'exact' dish that we always order, but LR who is so particular about textures in food, insist that the usual beehoon is not the same as Vietnamese vermicelli *sigh* So to get around this, I will focus on the Grilled Meat and serve with rice!

success?

Yummmmyyyyy!!! LR gave his stamp of approval and even LR's mom who eats really little, finished up the 4 pieces given to her.

Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Pork Chop (serves 3)

INGREDIENTS

400g of pork loin sliced 1/2 an inch thick

3 tomatoes, sliced

1 Japanese cucumber, sliced

(A)

3 stalks of lemongrass, use the bottom half and save the top part of the stalk

5 cloves of garlic

5 small shallots

(B)

2 tbs of brown sugar

1 tbs of fish sauce

1 tbs of light soya sauce

A dash of pepper

2 tbs sesame seeds

(C)

1 carrot, very thinly shredded

3 tbs of lemon juice

3 tbs of water

1 tbs of white vinegar

White sugar to taste

METHOD

1. Use the back of a cleaver, hammer gently the pork slices to tenderise them
2. Pound (A) together in a a mortar and pestle
3. Mix (B)
4. Marinate the pork slices thoroughly with (A) and (B)
5. Leave in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours
6. Cook rice with the top half of the lemongrass stalk for fragrant rice
7. Prepare the sauce with (C) and refrigerate.
8. Fry/ Grill the pork till slightly charred on each side
9. Serve with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, rice and sauce at the side

failure?

My sauce still needs tweeking... maybe it's the fish sauce, I've been using the Thai fish sauce instead of the Vietnamese one. Don't know!