Nime Chow

I’m writing this on Sunday, the day after Sharon’s birthday. Last night we ate at Angkor Restaurant in Providence and had Nime Chow [brief description at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nime_chow – follow links for further elucidation] for the second night running. They were nice – but wow, they didn’t compare with those we’d had the night before (Friday).

On Friday evening we drove over to Danielson in Connecticut to join Jamie for dinner at his house. Jamie is vegetarian, verging on but not entirely, vegan. We’ve stayed with Jamie previously and have therefore eaten here before so we knew we were in for a good meal. He prepared Nime Chow (This was our starter in Bandon, when we had the Thai meal) as a starter and it was superb. The trick with Nime Chow (the ‘e’ seems to come from being Cambodian – it being missing from the Vietnamese version – Nim Chow) is to fill the parcels with tasty, fresh, raw ingredients (or at least those requiring no further cooking – prawns, cooked chicken etc). The parcel itself is made of rice noodle (or in Jamie’s case – tapioca noodle). The result is a fresh tasting combination of flavours. Jamie’s Nime Chow contained his home grown Thai Basil (‘bay-zel‘) and no meat. It was delightful and I think that what made it more delightful was the dipping sauce he’d made. I don’t do the whole “can I have the recipe” thing as a rule but on Friday I did. We also had other very tasty courses at Jamie’s; far too much food – but great food. Thank you Jamie.

We spent Sharon’s birthday touring the east side of Narragansett Bay: http://snipurl.com/q3zx7. The area is mainly farmland and vineyards (we visited the one at Sakonnet) and the scenic drive is very pretty. We stopped at Bristol for a walk round on the way down and it was a real pleasure to see the birds and the boats on the water and around the comfortable little town.

We had a coffee at Newport – after we eventually found the Starbucks. The town is now so quaint that it has Tea shops, candle shops, restaurants and tic-tac shops but nowhere to buy coffee. I’d have been happy to try the tea shop but over here Tea is an art that has yet to be mastered. Mostly, our Starbucks visits have been to take on a Frappuccino [http://snipurl.com/q4g9x] to cool us down.

Then we went out for our Cambodian meal.