A Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet Sunday Brunch

We dove head first into the challenge this weekend and invited 6 of my husband's co-workers over for a Thai brunch. The menu included the following recipes from the book:

Grilled Chicken with Hot and Sweet Dipping Sauce

Grilled Lemongrass Beef

Vietnamese Grilled Pork Balls

Aromatic Jasmine Rice


We also served a couple of sauces:
Vietnamese Must-Have Table Sauce
Vietnamese Peanut Sauce
Vietnamese Herb and Salad Plate


To supplement the meal we purchased some rice paper rollups (summer rolls) from our neighborhood Vietnamese Cafe.

This was a fabulous brunch. The beef skewers were the biggest hit, followed by the Grilled Chicken as a close second. We followed the Jasmine Rice method as told in the book and it turned out to be the best jasmine rice I had ever made - so light and fluffy. Of the sauces, the peanut sauce bowl was practically licked clean. Surprisingly, the herb and salad plate was nearly polished off. People would take the lettuce leaves, throw in some herbs and some sauce and roll it up like a lettuce wrap.

We had a pretty good game plan. We made the sauces and marinades the night before. When we got up this morning, we started marinating the meats and formed the pork meatballs. About 30 minutes before guests arrived we started grilling the chicken, then pork, then beef. We kept the chicken and pork warm in a low-heated oven. Everything turned out really wonderful ... all the recipes were great finds. What I should post is a picture of my new biceps ... since I purchased a mortar and pestle this weekend, I decided to get the full Thai experience and pounded all my pastes in the mortar (with the help of my husband) ... by the last sauce we decided to switch to the blender!