Mì Quảng

As tradition built it

Serves a table. The noodle is bought, or made the day before.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

For the nhưn, the Phú Chiêm way

• 500g shrimp, shelled, the shells kept
• 700g pork belly
• shallot
• fresh turmeric
• lemongrass
• peanuts, soaked, skinned and ground to a paste
• 3 to 4 duck eggs, beaten with sugar
• pork broth
• 2 tbsp fish sauce, for the pork
• ½ tbsp salt, for the pork
• to taste pepper, for the pork
• peanut oil
• 1kg mì Quảng noodles, white and turmeric
• to serve banana flower, sliced thin
• to serve lettuce
• to serve mint
• to serve coriander
• to serve bean sprouts
• 100g roasted peanuts, crushed
• to serve toasted rice paper, bánh tráng nướng
• to serve lime
• to serve chilli
• to serve chilli paste

Method

1. Pound the shrimp shells, add a little water and strain, keeping the liquid for the flavour base; this is the Phú Chiêm cooks' first step.
2. Marinate the pork belly for 30 minutes in the fish sauce and salt, with pepper. Grind the turmeric and lemongrass with shallot and bloom them in peanut oil. Sear the marinated pork belly and the shrimp in it; the seared belly is cooled and sliced thin. Some cooks braise the pork with the shrimp instead.
3. Add a little pork broth, the shell liquid and the peanut paste, and simmer until the nhưn is thick and scant; Đinh Thị Thuận marinates her shrimp without fish sauce to keep them sweet, and some cooks add pineapple juice and tomato.
4. Pour in the duck eggs, beaten with sugar, at the boil so they set in yellow threads; Thanh Niên's cooks use the white only.
5. Put the herbs, the lettuce, mint, coriander and bean sprouts, on a plate and the noodles in the bowl. Ladle over just enough nhưn to wet them. Add the banana flower, the peanuts, a squeeze of lime and chilli, and break the toasted rice paper over the top. Mix it through before eating.

What a modern chef changes

The nhưn as a glaze, the noodle cut by hand

Rungs 1 and 2

Method

1. Make the shell stock in a pressure cooker, 20 minutes, and reduce it by half before it meets the pan; it is where the crab essence of the Phú Chiêm bowl comes from and a thin one has none.
2. Bloom the turmeric and lemongrass low in the oil until the oil is orange and the raw edge is gone, then raise the heat for the pork; the two temperatures are the two flavours.
3. Spread a rice batter on a cloth over a steamer, oil the sheet with shallot oil and cut it by hand in strands a little under a centimetre; a flat dried phở noodle is the British stand in.
4. Slice the banana flower on a mandoline into acidulated water so it curls and stays pale; if you cannot find one, leave it out, because nothing in Britain replaces it.