This Month’s Film: Indochine
Cuisine: Vietnamese

With the schedule of festivities I’ve been keeping for the past week, the Soup and Salad phase of my Indochine Vietnamese dinner is about to collide with the day I have chosen for the Main Course. So I will be shopping for both events at once, and preparing them on two separate but consecutive days.

I sent my son Will to the market on his bicycle yesterday for chicken and some fresh ingredients that I will use to make the soup, but I still need some fish filets to make the Golden Fish Nuggets for the salad, some lemongrass for the soup, a fresh papaya, some ginger root, and [fingers crossed] some fresh crabs in the shell for my stuffed crab entree. If not, I may have to improvise with something like crab cakes, which, come to think of it, sound almost as good.

So it looks as if a trip uptown to Trader Joe’s and a couple of other gourmet grocers is in store for me tomorrow. But the good news is that the mesclun greens in my garden are ready to pick for my salad, and perhaps a few snow peas too. So I’ll be making the soup and salad when I return from my shopping trip, and the main course the following day.

A Call for Chopsticks Click here for details.