THE first pancake is always a dud. It doesn’t matter how smooth your batter, how hot and Teflonned your pan; the debut is always a crumpled mess that flops sadly onto the plate.
This is true whether it’s an English pancake destined for lemon or sugar, or, as in this case, a turmeric-spiked rice flour and coconut milk crepe, laden with plump prawns and a forest floor’s worth of coriander. Impaled by rogue bean sprouts and soggy rather than crisp, I have utterly massacred food writer Uyen Luu’s sizzling crepes. I hope she will forgive me.
I order in Vietnamese food every chance I get: fragrant chicken pho (‘fuh’); coarsely shredded papaya salads; golden spring rolls and enticingly translucent summer ones; pork-prawn wontons with sesame and chilli oil; chargrilled, fish sauce-drenched aubergines… but until now, I’d never attempted to cook it myself.
Why even try when the depth of flavour seems unfathomable to achieve? When every dish is so zingy and bold, fresh and sprightly? Who has such lightness of touch? Luu, that’s who. And me, it turns out, when armed with Luu’s new recipe collection, Vietnamese.
The dishes in the brilliantly blush pink cookbook are designed to “demystify Vietnamese cooking”, promises Luu, who reckons the most common mistake people make when approaching the cuisine, is “they think it’s more complicated than it is”.
You can’t really blame them (ok, me) when the “flavours feel and taste complex”. However, to hit those key Vietnamese flavours – sweet, sour, salty, umami, hot and bitter – it’s just a matter of combining ingredients, Luu insists. There’s no need to be intimidated.
I start off slow with the stir-fried greens; a tangle of noodles, shards of pak choi and a sauce I didn’t even have to go shopping for (the ingredients – from maple syrup to soy sauce and sesame – are possibly already in your cupboards). It took literally 10 minutes to throw together, and the Thai basil I did go out and buy especially, was fully worth the trip (plus, it added an aniseedy lilt to Rachel Roddy’s Roman cherry tomato pasta a few nights later, when I’d run out of standard basil).
The ginger chicken I try next proves to be an alchemical triumph of caramelised brown sugar, chicken thighs and a hefty scattering of fresh ginger matchsticks. I grow sceptical when told to add a full teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper to the bubbling pan (surely not a full one?) but am an idiot to argue. It brings warmth and depth and almost tricks you into forgetting that really, it’s the fish sauce you should be applauding, because that’s the umami deliciousness holding everything together.
We crunch through spears of asparagus and broccoli on the side, a sign of Luu’s insistence to make things work for you. She just specifies “greens” – whatever greens you’ve got will do perfectly. Hence why my dodgy first crepe is folded scrappily into shells of iceberg and baby cos lettuce, and although I have a few strands of Thai basil left, and a little coriander and mint, I bump it up with chervil from a pot on the balcony too. Greenery of all kinds welcome.
We eat the lettuce-wrapped crepes in shifts, dunking them in a piquant fish sauce that runs down your wrists. They get crispier and crispier as I get more patient (i.e. quit poking around the pan) and the pan itself gets hotter and hotter, until the crepes crackle when they hit the plate. The piles of herbs, abundance of prawns and the elegance of the fish sauce in a blue and white china bowl, make this crepe supper feel special, memorable, but also achievable. And that’s the crux – Luu wants us to feel confident making these dishes, if not every night of the week, at least once or twice.
As a general rule, the dishes we cook at home on autopilot are the ones we grew up eating. Ask chefs, food writers and home cooks, ‘Who taught you to cook?’, and we almost always invoke grandmothers, nonnas, abuelas. Being a child, having a tea towel pegged to your top and a wooden spoon put in your hand by an elder, is practically universal.
They can hold the keys to our culinary heritage in a way parents – too close, too busy – tend not to. For many of us, it’s our grandmother’s recipes we long to record, and that we miss most desperately when we realise we’re grown up and have our own kitchens to use. Straying outside the culinary remits of our grandmothers can be difficult.
My childhood was cauliflower bakes, spaghetti Bolognese (with grated cheddar, naturally), Chinese takeaways on Fridays (prawn crackers eaten straight from the bag) and roasts on Sundays. My Granny made treacle tarts and elderflower cordial, bundt cakes, baked potatoes with boiled eggs, and chicken nugget bagels with peas and corn.
And yet, as I prepare Luu’s ginger chicken, and watch long strands of spring onion curl and twist as they’re submerged in a bowl of icy water, they make me think of my Granny anyway, and how she’d use scissors to turn lengths of shiny wrapping paper ribbons into cascading spirals.
It turns out the act of learning something new, grasping unfamiliar methods and skills, or mastering a flavour combination that once seemed daunting, can make your brain turn to the person who taught you the first things, way back in the beginning.
Vietnamese: Simple Vietnamese Food To Cook At Home by Uyen Luu is published by Hardie Grant, priced £22. Photography by Uyen Luu.
Sizzling Vietnamese crêpes with prawns form Vietnamese by Uyen Luu
(Makes about 6)
For the crêpe batter:
100g rice flour (Asian Rose Brand, or any non-glutinous)
1tsp heaped ground turmeric
200ml coconut milk
200ml water
1 spring onion, thinly sliced
½tsp sea salt
A pinch of caster (superfine) sugar
Vegetable or coconut oil, for frying
For the filling:
2 round shallots, thinly sliced
200g shelled, de-veined and halved king prawns
100g beansprouts
50g garlic chives or coriander (optional)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the garnish:
Lettuce leaves
Spring onions, cut into short lengths
A variety of Asian herbs, such as coriander, Thai sweet basil, garden mint, perilla (shiso), cockscomb
For the fish sauce (serves 4): mix together well
2 bird’s eye chillies, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3tbsp caster (superfine) sugar
3tbsp white wine vinegar
4tbsp fish sauce
80ml (5tbsp) hot water
Method:
1. Wash and dry the salad leaves and set them aside.
2. Next, make the crêpe batter. Mix together the flour, turmeric, coconut milk, water, spring onion, salt and sugar in a bowl, making sure it is smooth and free of lumps. It should resemble the consistency of single cream.
2. To make the filling, heat one teaspoon of oil in a frying pan over a medium–high heat and fry a few slices of shallot until golden. Season the prawns with salt and pepper and add a couple of pieces to the pan for a minute.
3. Using a shallow ladle, pour in a thin layer of the crêpe batter, swivelling the pan to get it covered all around the edges. Add a handful of beansprouts and chives/coriander (if using) and cover the pan with the lid. Keep the steam in and allow to cook for two minutes with the lid on.
4. Remove the lid and cook for a further minute, making sure the crêpe is crisp and golden. Fold the crêpe in half, serve or set aside. Repeat this process with the remaining shallots, batter and other ingredients to make the rest of the crêpes. Serve with your leaves and dipping sauce on the side.
Fried noodles and greens
(Serves 2)
1 round shallot, sliced
1 lemongrass stalk, finely chopped
1 1/2tbsp vegetable oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
200g or a handful of green leaves such as Chinese mustard leaf, Chinese broccoli, choi sum, pak choi, kale, chard, cavolo nero or even tenderstem broccoli, hard stems removed, roughly sliced
2 nest dry egg noodles
5tbsp noodle water
For the sauce:
2tbsp soy sauce
2tbsp lime or lemon juice
Finely chopped zest of 1 lime
1tbsp maple syrup
2tsp sesame oil
For the garnish:
Spring onions, coriander, Thai basil, mint
Plenty of chilli oil, to taste
Nuts such as pistachios, peanuts, cashews, pine nuts, coarsely chopped
Method:
1. Prepare all the ingredients first. Put the shallot, lemongrass and oil in a frying pan (skillet), not yet on the heat. Mix all the sauce ingredients together, then set that aside.
2. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions. Drain, reserving a little of the noodle water, and rinse with warm running water. Drain and cover until needed.
3. Heat the frying pan and gently fry until the shallots and lemongrass are slightly golden. Turn the heat to medium. Add the greens and garlic with a dash of the reserved noodle water. Cook until wilted and tender, about two minutes or less. If using broccoli, give it five minutes.
4. Add the noodles then the sauce. Using cooking chopsticks or two utensils, stir and mix well together for a minute or until combined. Serve immediately with the garnishes.
