Rick Stein and Vietnamese food

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Posted at 9:40AM, 15 February 2008 by Graham Holliday - Blogger

Rick Stein, him of Padstow fish and chips fame, food heroes and also my favourite TV chef, is in my top food destination - Vietnam. I know this because Cathy at the excellent Gastronomy blog blogged about it yesterday morning.

Rick is in town filming for a new BBC TV series entitled Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey. Rick rocked up to the mammoth Ben Thanh market food hall, slapbang in the centre of Saigon and he let the blogger lead the way. Cathy treated him to Banh hoi thit nuong (steamed vermicelli rice noodle cakes with grilled pork) and Bun chao tom (fresh vermicelli rice noodles with shrimp paste and sugarcane).

Both of these dishes are ubiquitous in the south of Vietnam and plenty tasty, particularly the Chao Tom, which you can see being made here.

I expect I'll be screaming with jealousy at Rick and Cathy when the show airs in 2009. You see, much like returning lovestruck from a fabulous Greek island holiday and desperately trying to recreate those unforgettable grilled sardines you had at that beach hut bistro in Naxos, it's just never gonna happen. It's the same with Vietnamese food - even if you manage to scrape together the ingredients, the subsequent recreation is a limp imitation of the desired original.

Paradoxically, of all the dishes I tried throughout the decade I lived in Vietnam the one I long for the most is the simplest. It's also impossible to recreate outside Vietnam. Not just Vietnam, it's impossible to recreate outside one small area of southern Vietnam.

Banh trang phoi suong consists of thin slices of boiled pork, served with separate plates of pickled carrots and onions, beansprouts, a mountain of herbs and green leaves and a dish of fresh rice papers. You pick what you want, wrap it up in rice paper, dip it in a chilli-stoked fish sauce and nibble away. The only cooking involved is the pork. The bulk of the flavour comes from the voluminous hedgerow of greens. And it's the hedgerow that plays the 'Lord Lucan' role here. Much of it doesn't grow, and isn't even known about, outside one province of southern Vietnam.

I hope Rick did get to try Banh Trang Phoi Suong, but if it appears in his new series next year there'll be tears...and shouting at the TV.

Comments

Gregg

17 February 2008, 7:08AM
Gregg

Absolutely right, you can never truly recreate dishes you've had abroad, especially if the country in question has a completely different climate. I always wondered if I'd ever witness a young Neapolitan looking forward to Mamas Lancashire Hotpot!

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Anne

18 February 2008, 3:49PM
Anne

Maybe it has more to do with who is doing the cooking? My son has a Thai girlfriend, & when she is here, & the ingredients have been bought in Chinatown, the result is absolutely authentic.

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