Bún mắm

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 6. 45 minutes.

Ingredients

• 200 to 300 g fermented fish paste (mắm cá linh or mắm cá sặc; mắm bò hóc in the Khmer original)
• 1.5 to 2 litres water (or 500ml fresh coconut water plus 500ml water)
• 200 g each of pork belly, shrimp and squid pork belly, shrimp, squid, sliced
• 2 eggplant
• to serve rau nhút (water mimosa), bông súng (water lily stem), rau muống (water spinach)
• 1 kg bún (rice vermicelli)
• to taste fresh chilli, lime

Method

1. Dissolve the fermented fish paste into the water (or coconut water and water) over a gentle simmer until fully broken down.
2. Strain two to three times to remove bones and sediment.
3. Return the strained broth to the heat, add pork belly and simmer until tender, then eggplant, shrimp and squid towards the end.
4. Serve over bún with a wide spread of raw and blanched vegetables and herbs, rau nhút, bông súng and rau muống among them, chilli and lime alongside.

Notes

The local proverb for this dish's demands is exact: a proper version needs "mắm ngon, cá tươi, rau đồng," good fermented fish, fresh fish, countryside vegetables, three separate standards that cannot substitute for one another. In its Khmer original, mắm bò hóc, not the delta's own cá linh or cá sặc paste, is the base; the substitution happened on arrival in Vietnam, and the dish reached wide popularity in Sài Gòn only from around the 1970s.

What a modern chef changes

The fermentation-control principle, applied to a UK kitchen without the original paste

Rung 3

Method

1. Build the broth from mắm tôm or mắm nêm (see Sourcing, below, since mắm cá linh, mắm cá sặc and mắm bò hóc are none of them realistically buyable in Britain), seasoned up with lime, sugar and garlic until the pungency reads as depth rather than assault, an honest, stated approximation, not a claimed equivalent.
2. Strain through the chinois after the standard two to three straining passes, for a broth genuinely, not just visually, clear.
3. Plate the vegetable spread as its own course, water mimosa, water lily stem, water spinach and herbs arranged deliberately rather than piled, since the proverb itself treats "rau đồng" as equal in importance to the broth.