noodlepie

Porked

This is one of my favourite dishes in Vietnam, Banh trang phoi suong (literally means "rice pancake exposed in the dew (at night)". It's so simple it's rude. Centre stage we have thin slices of boiled pork, nothing fancy going on, just the pork. The surrounding action has the pork trapped, no escape from a fate worth scoffing. Rustic style rice paper, a sweet nuoc mam (fish sauce), pickled carrots and onion-leek type thing, raw beansprouts and lengthways sliced cucumber. And then comes that mighty herb trough. Trang bang, by the way, is the name of the province the dish comes from.

That's a gargantuan set of greens in anyone's book. It's like no other platter on the Vietnamese table. A plate of this stuff will bring the David Attenborough out of anyone. Dig, delve and forage-mungussly good. Pluck a few leaves of what you fancy, sling them in a rice paper along with your meat, and whatever else you can squeeze in, roll, dip and nibble, munch or hog. I hog, you're probably a bit more polite. The big glossy green leaf is the special fella here. Name anyone? I fully intend to dissect this whole plate at another sitting. Any help mucho appreciated.

There's no real cooking involved here, a bit of boiled pork and someone slings the nuoc mam together. The whole thing's more of a gardening experience than a cooking one. Someone somewhere in this town must have a killer herb garden and this restaurant knows who that is. Whenever we grab this as a take home job there's always enough herbs leftover to hash into something else the next day. Alternatively, we sometimes order an extra plate or two of pork and rice paper to take the same trip the next day. There must be other places serving this in Saigon, although I can't recall seeing one, but when it's this good I'm not really looking for anywhere else anyway.

They serve a few other dishes. I've covered the slurpworthy Banh Canh from here before. Banh trang phoi suong for two with drinks is less than 40,000VD. From Quan Co Tam - Banh Canh Trang Bang, 188 Nguyen Van Thu Street, Phuong Da Kao, District 1. Deffo worth a visit.

Soup simplicity

I first noticed this joint, Quan Co Tam - Banh Canh Trang Bang at 188 Nguyen Van Thu street in District 1, because of the difficulty I had negotiating my way past it one evening. A mob of noodle fans had spilled out of the restaurant and were lining the pavement - 10 slurpers deep, 10 wide - faces bent bowlwards. I saw there was only dish on the conveyer belt - always a good sign - Banh Canh (Pork and udon style noodle soup) and I made a mental note to return one day. There's not an awful lot to a Banh Canh. Some come with shrimp, crab, chicken, a pork hock or a combination effort, but that's about all the variation. A takeaway for 2 costs 20,000VD for the standard Banh Canh with thin slivers of boiled pork, fat trimmed off. Many Vietnamese seem to like fatty meats, but in general it's a no-no for me.

The waitress bagged up the soup, noodles and pork with a dash of spring onions, lettuce, beansprouts. I also scored a Banh trang phoi suong (literally means "rice pancake exposed in the dew (at night)" which is a boiled pork/rice paper herb wrap number. It comes with a mountain of herbs including a long fragrant, glossy green leaf herb which I don't know the name of in any language (I did ask, but no-one seemed to know and it's not here). UPDATE: I blogged that dish here. Apparently, it is quite special and peculiar to this dish. You also get a small bag of freshly chopped red chilies, sliced lemon and a bag of unadulterated nuoc mam (fish sauce). You can add the chili and lemon to taste and whack the fish sauce in a small dish for dipping. Banh Canh doesn't require a souped up nuoc mam, so you won't find any chili, carrot or whatever in with it. You dip the pork into the sauce as you eat, that's all. Not sure how these quirks of taste develop for some soups and not others, but there you go.

After a disappointing Hu Tiu some time ago I was wary of this dish as it is quite similar, just simpler. But, I needn't have worried. It's this simplicity that is Banh Canh's strength. it's a clear soup and has a purity other Vietnamese soups like Pho bo or Banh canh cua lack. Admittedly, I don't have a lot of Banh canh experience, but even I could tell this restaurant's popularity stems from a three pronged attack on the taste buds. First up there's the tenderness of the pork, then, the quality of the broth, which is both meaty and ever so slightly aromatic and lastly there's the freshness of the noodles. Put the lot together and you have one of the simplest Vietnamese soups out there, yet one of the best and, total guesswork here, probably one of the hardest to replicate on the stove back home.