Mini buncha on top of our lettuce

lettuce washed in our sink

washed and ripped lettuce pieces

We used our recently harvested kale and lettuce to make this buncha dish. The dish was for a potluck birthday dinner party that we got invited to with just one day's notice!

We didn't have enough time to cook this meal according to the original recipe so we took some shortcuts.
Main changes to the original recipe:

• no nuoc mam sauce but instead had lemon wedges (but the meat patty themselves have plenty of nuoc mam sauce mixed in so it's flavoured in that way already)
• smaller patties, to cook faster!
• buncha patties to be laid on a bed of lettuce (harvested from our plot) rather than on vermicelli noodles)

buncha meat patties cooked to perfection

the final dish: mini buncha on bed of organic lettuce

We cooked the rest of the mince meat the next day; my wife said it tasted better today because we learnt that cooking it on higher heat keeps the meat more moist and adds a harder crust. (Have to be careful not to burn it, though!) And this time we had it on vermicelli noodles with the nuoc mam sauce that she made. She did a great job with the sauce too.

fresh, light lunch

We have lots of baby coriander growing at the moment, but unfortunately not ready for harvesting and using in this dish. The most important herb, though, is the thai basil, which I hope to grow one day. I still don't know where to obtain the seeds. We also want to have one or two lemon trees. And garlic chives should be easy to grow too. For now, our only home-grown ingredient was the oak lettuce that grows all over our plot on its own, spreading almost like a weed.

My wife has been craving this dish for a while … and then for dinner we went to our favourite Vietnamese restaurant. She told me she was probably a Vietnamese in her past life, and I believe it's true :)