RECIPES

Street Food with Luke Nguyen

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Busily working at the southern end of Adelaide’s Chinatown, chef Luke Nguyen is putting the finishing touches to a plate of pork satay for our photo shoot when a young woman on her lunchbreak walks up and asks if this is a new stall. Luke laughs and offers to sell her a few skewers as she quickly realises what’s going on.

For Luke, being mistaken for a street hawker is the ultimate compliment. The owner of Sydney’s award-winning Red Lantern restaurant, Luke is creating three bite-sized dishes, each inspired by the tour of Vietnam he undertook as research for for his latest cookbook The Songs of Sapa, where he tasted and rediscovered the flavours and street food of his ancestors.

These dishes reflect his travels: starting with rice paper rolls inspired by the Cha Ca charcoal grill flavours found around Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam. Luke then moves south to the hills in the centre of Vietnam to present grilled pork satay and homemade nuoc cham dipping sauce. The last dish, a banana cake made with condensed milk, is a favourite on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), where his family originated.

The fresh herbs and vegetables found in Vietnamese street food are what inspire this successful chef, who spent his childhood working in his parents’ Vietnamese noodle house in Sydney’s Cabramatta. Luke combines these fresh flavours with the top-quality meat available in Australia to make unique dishes.

“That’s the best thing about Australia. We have amazing produce,” says Luke, who is best known for his popular SBS television series Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam. “We also have many of the herbs used in Asian cooking.”

Luke was born in 1978 in a Thai refugee camp after his parents fled Vietnam. When he arrived in Australia in 1980, “you couldn’t even get lemongrass. Now people grow it in their back garden.” For the Asian herbs he can’t find, Luke compensates by choosing more common varieties with similar characteristics and flavours.

Cheong Liew wanders up after having grabbed lunch in a nearby food court. His part of the street banquet is inspired by the hawkers of Malaysia. “What I know about street food I learned from South-East Asian hawkers,” says Cheong. “You go to get some food and it takes 20 or more minutes to prepare, so you get to watch.”

For Cheong, it is the rhythm of the street food cooks in South-East Asia that most impresses him. “I sit and try to recall the sequence of the rhythm because that is what is important to the cooking,” he says.

Luke slices into the round, glutinous banana cake he has prepared earlier in the kitchen of the Food Business’ Bistro at the Adelaide Festival Centre and realises it is not the most photogenic piece of food.

“They’d serve this wrapped in newspaper on the street,” says Luke. He takes a quick look around and runs into the Kuo Chi Oriental Supermarket, emerging minutes later with a Vietnamese newspaper and a bunch of steamed rice dumplings woven in pandan leaves.

“I love this place!” he beams. “You can discover all kinds of different cultures and cuisines without needing a passport.”

recipes and photos courtesy of Appetite Magazine

Turmeric and dill mulloway rolled in rice paper and perilla

  • 8 spring onions (scallions)
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1 tbsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tbsp ground turmeric
  • 2 tbsp plain yoghurt
  • 125ml fish sauce
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 3 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 bunch dill
  • 1kg mulloway fillets
  • 125g rice vermicelli
  • 250ml fish stock
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 22 round rice paper sheets
  • 1 bunch perilla leaves*
  • 1 bunch mint
  • 300g bean sprouts
  • 1 tbsp crushed, roasted peanuts
  • 1 tbsp fried Asian shallots
  • 1 cup nuoc cham dipping sauce (see recipe, below)
Start this the day before Put the white heads of the spring onions (reserving the stalks) and garlic into a mortar and pound to a paste. Add the turmeric, curry powder, yoghurt, fish sauce, sugar, 2 tbsp of oil and one-third of the dill, roughly chopped, and mix well. Spread mixture over fish, cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight if possible.

On the day Cook vermicelli in boiling water for 5mins, turn off the heat and let it sit for a further 5mins. Strain into a colander, refresh under cold water and set aside to dry. Thinly slice four of the green stalks of the spring onion. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat, add the remaining oil and fry the fish fillets on one side for 1min. Turn the fillets over, fry for another minute, then add fish stock and simmer for 3-5mins until the fish is cooked through. Pour lemon juice over the fish and turn off heat. Transfer the fish to a colander and allow to cool.

To assemble Soften rice papers with a little water. Taking a couple of rice papers at a time, add to each two perilla leaves, two mint leaves, a sprinkle of spring onions, bean sprouts, vermicelli, fish, peanuts, fried Asian shallots and a sprig of dill hanging out of one end. Fold the ends of rice paper together and tightly roll. Serve with nuoc cham dipping sauce.
*Perilla leaves available from Asian grocers.

Nuoc cham dipping sauce

  • 4 tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup hot water
  • 6 tbsp fish sauce
  • 6 tbsp white vinegar
  • Juice of 1 lime
  • 2 chillis, diced
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled and diced
Dissolve sugar in hot water, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir. This recipes makes enough dipping sauce for both the mulloway rice paper rolls and Berkshire pork dish.

Chargrilled Berkshire pork skewers with vermicelli noodles

  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 4 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tsp freshly ground pepper
  • 6 spring onions, white part only (finely sliced and pounded in mortar and pestle to a paste)
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely diced
  • 500g Berkshire pork neck, finely sliced across the grain into 3mm pieces
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 head butter lettuce
  • 1 bunch mint leaves
  • 1 bunch perilla leaves
  • 1 bunch Vietnamese mint leaves
  • 250g rice vermicelli (follow packet instructions)
  • 4 tbsp spring onion oil*
  • 4 tbsp fried red Asian shallots
  • 4 tbsp crushed roasted peanuts
  • ½ cup nuoc cham dipping sauce (see recipe, above)
  • 12 bamboo skewers (soaked in water for 20mins)
Start this the day before In a large mixing bowl, combine sugar, honey, fish sauce and pepper. Mix until sugar has dissolved. Add bashed spring onion, garlic and sliced pork neck. Coat the pork pieces well then capture the flavours with vegetable oil. Marinate for 2 hours or overnight, if possible, for a better result.

On the day Thread the pork onto skewers and chargrill on medium to high heat for 1-2mins on each side until brown and cooked. On several
long platters, arrange separately the lettuce, fresh herbs and rice vermicelli. Place pork skewers on top of the vermicelli. Spoon spring onion oil over pork skewers, followed by Asian shallots and peanuts. Each guest places all ingredients onto a lettuce leaf and dips it into nuoc cham dipping sauce. To serve, dress each plate with 2 tbsp of nuoc cham dipping sauce, 1 tsp of spring onion oil and sprinkle with fried Asian shallots and crushed peanuts.

*To make spring onion oil Put 250ml vegetable oil and 6-8 thinly sliced spring onions (green part only) in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook the spring onions for about 2mins or until the oil starts to simmer, then remove the pan from heat and allow to cool. Strain the oil into a jar. The oil will keep for up to one week in the fridge.

Saigon baked banana cake

  • 12 ripe finger bananas
  • 60g caster sugar
  • 7 eggs
  • 380g tin sweetened condensed milk
  • 250g unsalted butter, melted
  • 200g plain (all-purpose) flour
Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 24cm round baking tin with butter and line the base with baking paper. Slice bananas thinly on the diagonal and coat with sugar. Cover and set aside at room temperature for 30mins. Beat eggs and combine with condensed milk and melted butter. Add the flour and mix well, then gently fold the bananas through the batter. Pour batter into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour or until the cake is cooked through and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, then cover and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Note: For the best flavour, choose bananas that are ripe, but not turning black.

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