Chicken patties with rice vermicelli and herbs

Last weekend, Bert and I killed time at Vinh-Hung Supermarket before picking up TC from her volunteer orientation.

Seeing some of these prepackaged food items with fresh herbs and noodles inspired me to make something different for lunch that day.

I had some ground chicken waiting to be made into patties. I added some minced pineapple, fish sauce, chopped scallions and seasoned it with garlic powder and black pepper...

It was TC's job to make our wanna be fish dipping sauce (nuoc cham)...

In an empty pasta jar, she squeezed the juice of a few limes, added some fish sauce, sugar, and chili garlic sauce, along with some water. I don't really like vinegar, so it was not included. She adjusted the seasonings, adding more sugar when it seemed too tart. I added a tiny bit more fish sauce to give it that salty boost as well as the chili garlic sauce for some kick.

These vermicelli noodle "patties" (for lack of a better word; they are shaped into rectangles) were something I'd never bought before, but have had at Pho Convoy restaurant.

Herbs bought from Vinh-Hung: mint, tia to (purple perilla) and basil...

I love the fresh herbs and even if this particular combination isn't particularly authentic, I still wanted to have some "greenery" for our lunch.

The seasoned ground chicken was spooned into patties into a lightly oiled and hot frying pan. I hate touching raw meat so it was actually mixed with two spoons. The juice from the chopped and minced pineapples gave it the patties a bit of sweetness.

After a few minutes, I turned the patties over and pressed them lightly. The patties were on the smaller side because I like it like that.

Our lunch last weekend:

We enjoyed the patties with the fresh herbs, rice vermicelli and red leaf lettuce and the homemade dipping sauce.

I also remembered I had these fried onions from Namaste Indian market so we added this for some crunch.

This was a relatively healthy, quick and easy meal. The meat patties took the longest to prepare but I had two frying pans going on so it went faster than anticipated.

I think that is why I really like Vietnamese food so much because of the cuisines use of fresh herbs and vegetables.

Next weekend, we will be up in Mira Mesa again so I might pop on over to Vinh-Hung or even Lucky Seafood once more to experiment with other herbs and noodles.