Vietnamese food

This was more food from Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey. Everything I've made from it so far has been a curry, all have been delicious, and wildly different, and all from different countries, but I wanted to try some non curry recipes.
I flicked through, and chose Vietnam, as I've only ever eaten Pho from Vietnam, and even then it was years ago, in Australia.
The recipes I chose were barbecued pork patties with noodles, chicken broth and salad greens (Bun Cha), and clams with beer, black beans and ginger.
First off, I rather stupidly made the chicken stock from scratch, and then strained it straight down the plughole. This is not the first time I've done this.  A good old stock cube was substituted, with the asian flavourings added and simmered.
I can't actually give you the recipe as it's copyrighted, and unfortunately doesn't seem to be online anywhere, but this was pork mince with added fish sauce, palm sugar, garlic, shallots and black pepper, made into small patties and in this case, cooked on a hot griddle pan.  No barbecue here as I'm in an upstairs flat.

 These are served in an asian chicken broth with rice noodles

 The salad didn't really use the recipe.  I used torn little gem lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced spring onions, torn mint, coriander and beansprouts.  The dressing was fish sauce, palm sugar and rice vinegar.
The clams are cooked in a paste of black bean paste, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger and chilli, with lager as the liquid, fosters in this case!  They then have lime juice squeezed over.
This was a really flavoursome, healthy tasting meal.
We tend to think of Vietnamese food as slightly obscure here, at least in a small Scottish town, but all the ingredients are readily available.
I think I'm going to try some dishes from the Cambodian chapter next.