I’m a big fan of Vietnamese food and the country itself. But my interest in Vietnam actually started somewhere quite different.
For many years, I was fascinated by the Vietnam War. Especially the reporting and photography, the access journalists had and the footage that brought the war into people’s homes.
About seven years ago, I finally travelled there. I had a vague idea of some of the dishes I would find, but I got blown away by the different flavours and food.
The first thing I ate was a bowl of broth with what I remember as balls made out of liver. I think the dish was called hủ tiếu, although I’m still not completely sure what those balls were. Whatever it was, it was a good start to a journey that influenced my cooking massively.
Most people nowadays know bánh mì, which would actually be the most obvious sandwich for us to try making at Cheat Day.
It’s a great example of how a cuisine changes through outside influences and necessity. The baguette and pâté came through French colonial influence, and Vietnamese cooks made something of their own out of them. You have the richness of the meat and pâté, but also the freshness of herbs and crunchy pickled vegetables.
Sounds absolutely Cheat Day, right?
I already took some of the flavours from that trip and turned them into our Vietnamese pork belly tacos. They became one of our best-selling Sunday specials, usually selling out within a few hours.
The idea of this kind of “fusion” cooking became much clearer to me on that trip. Around Vietnamese New Year, I was in Hội An and found a small shop, just a window in a wall, selling something like tacos. Chicken, pickled papaya and carrots. I don’t remember the name of the dish, but I think I ate about ten of them after finding that place.
Somewhere along that trip, I also ate one of the strangest foods I’ve ever tried.
I met a young guy who offered to take me somewhere special to eat. He asked me if I liked baby duck. I answered yes, because I really like duck. What could possibly go wrong, right?
We came to a little shed beside the main road, and the duck we ordered really was baby duck. It came still inside the egg.
It felt too late to bail, so I dug into the duck.
It was intense, and I probably won’t eat it again. But it still makes a great story today. There are some pictures here of my fight with the duck.
One thing I did happily eat every day was phở.
It didn’t matter what time of day. I slurped up that rich broth with fresh herbs and some chilli. Man, I was in heaven.
After coming back, I made a few attempts at cooking my own phở, and it worked out pretty well. But it takes time, especially if you want to make a good broth. Not really a quick family dish you start cooking when everybody is already hungry.
For Cheat Day Ericeira, though, this phở might be doing something. The only problem: we’re not really a soup place.
So let’s try making a sandwich out of it.
I’m not the first person trying this, but I want to see what our version could become.
What do I want to achieve, and what needs to go in there?
We need a rich broth, thinly sliced beef, fresh herbs, something crunchy and somehow rice noodles. Maybe for the bread we stay with the French influence and use a baguette.
I don’t know yet exactly how the noodles will work or how much broth we can get into the sandwich before it falls apart. That’s what I need to figure out.
I’ll start testing now and keep everybody updated on the progress. Shouldn’t take too long to present the first results.