GỎI ĐU ĐỦ BA KHÍA

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Without thinking too long about it I bought a jar of frozen salted crab I thought I needed for my Thai Som Tam salad. When I inspected the jar more closely at home - it was wrapped in plastic so I could hardly read the label - it actually contains salted Vietnamese BA KHÍA, which are freshwater crabs from the Mekong delta. So, now I will use it for Vietnamese GỎI ĐU ĐỦ BA KHÍA, which translates to Ba khía papaya salad.

Fo the salad you will need to julienne 300 gram green unripe papaya.

Then make the dressing by mixing:

30 gram tôm khô ngâm mềm (dried fermented shrimp, soaked in water).
20 gram đường vàng (sugar).
10 gram tỏi (garlic).
10 gram ờt (red fresh chili).
30 ml nước mắm (fish sauce).

Add 50 ml lime juice and pound in a mortar.

Add the papaya shreds. Then add the following ingredients:

Halved cherry tomatoes and string beans
30 gram Rau răm (Vietnamese coriander).
30 gram Đậu Phộng (peanuts freshly fried, crushed).
30 gram Ngò Gai.
50 gram Mắm ba khía (the freshwater crabs with the liquid from the jar).

Mix well and pound everything in the mortar for another couple of minutes.

Bún đậu mắm tôm

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This dish is typical of northern Vietnam. It is a cold platter of cooked rice vermicelli, fried tofu, cha com, assorted meats, cucumber and fresh leaf vegetables like perilla. The fermented shrimp dipping sauce is essential. It can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I had it in the evening in a small Hà Nội restaurant alongside a cold beer. I’m sure it was not the best Bún đậu mắm tôm in Hà Nội but sometimes you’re just hungry and have to walk into the nearest restaurant.

How to make the dipping sauce. Mix the following ingredients:

2 tbsp fermented shrimp paste.
2 tbsp sugar.
2 tbsp lime juice.
1 tbsp chili, sliced.
2 tbsp hot oil.
Optional: MSG, king of flavour.

Vermicelli & tofu
After cooking the rice vermicelli and cooling, they will be a sticky mess. For this dish you simply cut the vermicelli in bite sized chunks. The tofu is fried in the same bite sized pieces.

Meat
The meat can be pork leg or pork belly. Cook the pork as one big piece with some salt and when done, cool it in ice water. Cut into bite sized slices.
You can also add sliced Vietnamese pork sausage, but this will be hard to find outside Vietnam.

Cha com
To make these green sticky rice patties is more time consuming. You need young green rice, which is the first problem. I’ve never seen green com in The Netherlands so I have to skip this. The ingredients of cha com are:

• 50 g pork minced
• 100 g pork paste
• 50 g green sticky rice
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 1/2 egg beaten
• 2/3 tbsp stock powder
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tbsp garlic minced

Above the shrimp paste for the dipping sauce. In the background my Thai catapult for killing small birds.

Bún chả Hà Nội

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If you break down Bún chả you simply have to get the meat patties right and the dipping sauce. The pickled carrots and kohlrabi/unripe papaya are essential as well, but easy to make.

Side pickle

First make the side pickle:
100g carrot, 1/2 tsp salt
100g kohlrabi (or unripe papaya), 1/2 tsp salt.

Mix above ingredients and let the salt draw out the moisture of the vegetables. Drain and wash the vegetables thoroughly.

Mix with 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp vinegar and 4 tbsp water. Chill for a couple of hours.

Below the different elements you will need the assemble this dish:

Chả

Chả are meat patties and these are made from 100 percent pork. I asked my butcher to mince some pork shoulder. Mix the meat with the following ingredients:

1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp minced shallot
2 tbsp caramel sauce called Nước Màu (see below).
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Barbecue the meat patties.

How to make Nước Màu: dissolve 1/2 cup sugar (100g) on low heat. When caramelised add 1/2 cup hot water and mix until the sauce is a clear liquid.

The dipping sauce

To make the dipping sauce you mix 300ml water, 2,5 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp fish sauce, 2/3 tbsp vinegar or lime juice. All according to taste. The dipping sauce is served warm, not hot or cold.

To serve you add the barbecued pork patties to a bowl, add some of the pickled vegetables and pour over the dipping sauce. Add minced garlic and sliced fresh chili. Serve the noodles on a separate dish and dip the noodles in the dipping sauce.

Below two photographs I made in Hanoi and it should look like this.

I also marinated and barbecued some sliced pork belly. You can serve this as well.

Vietnamese soup stock

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I used six chicken backs and two pieces of pork hock. After washing the bones and meat, I boiled both separately for about 10 minutes. Then I drained the bones and put them in a clean pressure pot and covered the bones with fresh water. I boiled the stock with the lid open for about 45 minutes and removed the pork hock (the meat should be soft by then). Then I boiled the chicken bones in the pot under pressure for about 1,5 hours (3 to 4 hours without a pressure pot). After opening the lid I further boiled the stock to reduce the liquid and brought the stock to taste with salt, some sugar and fish sauce.

The stock was meant for bún riêu, crab noodle soup, but I didn’t have most of the needed ingredients. I just improvised and used the plucked pork meat from the hock, fish balls, fried tofu, paksoi and egg noodles instead of rice noodles. The broth itself was amazing. Next time I will have to find crab meat, soy bean oil, minced pork meat and rice noodles. The recipe also calls for pig’s blood but this will be very difficult to buy in The Netherlands.

Ba chỉ rang sả (lemongrass pork belly)

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In Vietnam I had several dishes, which combine lemongrass with pork. It is a lovely combination.

For 500 gram pork belly you need about:

5 garlic cloves, minced
3 shallots, minced
1 - 2 tablespoon fish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
5-6 lemongrass stalks

Marinate the meat with the finely chopped garlic, shallot, black pepper, fish sauce and sugar.

Fry the meat for 15 minutes. Add the thinly sliced lemongrass and fry until done.

Below a different version with fresh lemongrass and an assortiment of meats.

I saw a different version in which you braise the pork belly in a little water with soy sauce. If the meat is half done add sliced onion, lemon grass, seasoning powder, a little sugar, oyster sauce, dried chili and kaffir leaves.

Cơm bình dân

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Cơm bình dân translates as “rice for the common man”. You will find it as street food, in small restaurants or at bus stops when traveling long distance. It is cheap and served fast. I wish we could have cơm bình dân in The Netherlands instead of the ubiquitous snackbar where you will not find a vegetable of any kind.

Below rice and three dishes served on one plate at the busstop halfway Hà Giang and Hà Nội.

Fried shrimp, pork and preserved vegetables, some tofu with pork and a small bowl of soup.

Bún chả

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Bún chả is served as lunch in Hanoi. The dish consists of grilled pork balls, or patties, served with rice noodles and a dipping sauce. In the south of Vietnam there is a similar dish called bún thịt nướng, which is served with grilled pork on top the rice noodles.

The grilled pork was already served in the dipping sauce with some carrot and sliced green papaya. The dipping sauce is made from diluted fish sauce with sugar, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, crushed garlic and chilli.

You add the rice noodles to the bowl and add fresh chillis and crushed garlic according to taste. Of course there is plenty of fresh kinh giới served on the table.

As a side dish I ordered fried springs rolls, which are called nem rán in Hanoi. In the South of Vietnam they are called chả giò.

Most bún chả restaurants grill the pork on the street, which is great advertising.

One night in Saigon

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This was my first evening in Ho Chi Minh City. The owners of Dai Tin invited me for dinner. I was so busy deconstructing the food, and downing many cans of Saigon beer, I forgot to note down the name of the restaurant. I even forgot to take photos of everybody invited to this dinner!

First plate contained thinly sliced boiled pork with many fresh leaf vegetables, pine apple, star fruit and cóc. For sure there is húng guế (Thai basil) on the plate.

You either dip a piece of meat in the dipping sauce and eat it like it is, or take a thin sheet of rice paper called bánh tráng and make a wrap with some of the leaves and meat. You dip the rolled wrap into the dipping sauce.

The key to a Vietnamese table are nước chấm, dipping sauces. You are free to mix your own dipping sauce according to your preferences with what is available on the table. You can squeeze lime in a dipping sauce or add fresh chilli. Dipping sauces can be based on fish sauce, soy sauce, fermented shrimp sauce, fermented soy beans (tương) or simply salt, black pepper mixed with lime juice for a more neutral taste. The basic ingredients can be mixed with (rice) vinegar and sugar.

Second dish was a bowl of fried shrimp, vegetables and fruit. The shrimp are so small you eat them whole. A large rice cracker with black sesame seeds was served, which you can use as a scoop for the shrimp mixture. The rice cracker is called Bánh tráng mè or Bánh đa vừng in North Vietnam.

I think this egg was either a goose or a duck egg. Served in fish sauce. You break up the egg and add some Vietnamese luffa or sponge gourd. Mix and eat. Lovely.

Next up was fried fish. These fish are typically dried for just one day, so that they retain some moist, and then deep fried. Again served with fresh leaves. I think I recognise Xà Lách (Vietnamese Lettuce). For the fish a soy based dipping sauce is appropriate.

This vegetable stir-fry was the prelude to the final dish. The stir-fry contained the heart and offal meat of the helmeted guineafowl. This bird is native to Africa.

The final dish was the shredded helmeted guineafowl. The rich dipping sauce contained BBQued garlic and pepper corns. By then I was sure I had 20 cans of beer, poured over a large block of ice.

Bún Thịt Nướng

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Thịt Nướng simply means ‘barbecued meat’ and bún is noodles. The meat is usually pork shoulder. I used pork neck.

Two components which make the taste: the marinade and the dipping sauce nước mắm.

Marinade for pork:

2 shallot, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons vegetables oil
1 tablespoon superfine sugar.

Dipping sauce:

Nước mắm is a generic term for dipping sauce.

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped.
3 bird’s eyes chilies, thinly sliced.
75 ml fish sauce.
50 ml white vinegar'.
40 gram superfine sugar.

Bún
For the noodles you should use thin (1 mm) rice noodles. Pour boiling water over the noodles and soak for 10 minutes. Wash the noodles in cold water until all the starch is removed and they don’t stick together. The noodles are served cold.

Toppings:
Roasted peanuts, coarsely crushed.
Cucumber.
Pickled carrot and daikon.
Fried shallot.
Spring onion oil.
Vietnamese mint.
Thai sweet basil.

Before assembling the dish.

When eating you mix everything together, I think this is the proper way to eat.

Crispy shallot. Before frying mix the sliced shallot with salt and soak in water for 10 minutes. Dry the shallot before frying. This will draw out moisture and make the shallot more crispy. You can use the same technique when frying tofu.

Mở hành (onion oil).

BÚN THIT BÌ

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Vermicelles au porc grillé et au porc émincé.

Vermicelles au porc grillé et au porc émincé.

For the sauce:

Cho vào tô 2 muỗng canh nước mắm, 2 muỗng canh nước lọc, 3 muỗng canh đường và 1 muỗng canh nước cốt chanh, khuấy đều cho tan hỗn hợp.

Tiếp theo, cho hết phần tỏi băm còn lại và ớt sừng băm vào nước mắm rồi khuấy đều một lần nữa là đã hoàn tất phần nước mắm.

Put in a bowl 2 tablespoons fish sauce, 2 tablespoons water, 3 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon lemon juice, stir well to dissolve the mixture.

Next, add the rest of the minced garlic and minced chili to the fish sauce and stir again to complete the fish sauce.

Assemble the dish:

Put bean sprouts and chopped herbs (rau thơm in Vietnamese, which can be mint leaves and Thai basil) in the bottom of the bowl, add a layer of vermicelli, top off with the pork and lettuce, and more chopped herbs.

Sprinkle some peanuts, fried onions to make the dish more attractive.

Add a small amount of fish sauce and mix the ingredients before eating.