van Tran - The Vietnamese market cookbook : spicy, sour, sweet

Love and gratitude to all our colleagues and friends at Bep Collective, present and previous. Thank you for believing in us and coming on board. You are and always will be our Banhmily.

Thanks to Simon Kaempfer, Yuki Suguira, Valerie Berry, Lirong and Patrick, and Risa and Yasu, for our creative education and helping us to realize our aesthetic vision.

Thanks to Broadway Market fellow traders for teaching us about provenance, passion for pursuing ones own journey and community. Thank you, Andy Veitch, for giving us the chance to get started!

Thanks to our familieswe never see you enough, and we never say it in words, but we care. We owe you everything for who we are today.

Thanks to our friends for keeping us sane.

To our UK editor, Rowan Yapp, and Rosemary Davidson, thank you for your guidance and endless support. To our U.S. editor, Kristen Green Wiewora, thank you for making the book even more beautiful.

Above all, thank you to everyone who has chosen to eat with us. You taught us everything we know now and your support is the reason we are still here today. This is our chance to be the generation that takes food back to basicsnatural, beautiful, and bountiful.

Van Tran and Anh Vu represent a new generation of foodies and entrepreneurs, changing expectations of fresh, urban, egalitarian food experiences.

Born in Hanoi eleven months part, they both spent their childhoods in Vietnam, immersed in the countrys rich culinary traditions. Van and Anh received scholarships to come to the U.S. and UK to study before meeting at Oxford University. They didnt train professionally as chefs but worked in finance in New York and London before leaving the city to pursue their passion.

They started their market stall sensation, Banhmi11, at Broadway Market in 2009 and went on to found Bep Collective, opening 101 Great Eastern St, Shoreditch in 2012, 17 Elm Street, Chancery Lane in 2013 and 40 Bow Lane, St Paul in 2014.

Van and Anh were named Young British Foodies by the Guardian and have made television appearances with Nigel Slater and Jamie Oliver. Their recipes are regularly featured in the Telegraph, the Guardian and Waitrose Magazine, among other international publications. Banhmi11 has been listed in Time Outs 100 Top Dishes in London, and in ShortList magazines The Worlds 10 Best Sandwiches. They live in East London.

Please visit them at www.bepcollective.com.

Soup forms an indispensable part of the Vietnamese meal. Its served together with the main course, usually poured over rice. We make easy, everyday soups from the simplest of ingredients: we boil a vegetable from the fridge, add a pinch of sea salt, muddle in a tomato or a few slices of ginger, and voila. The natural sweetness of many vegetables makes them the mainstay of a comforting soup. Vegetable marrow, a light green summer squash, is one of our favorite squashes, and one of the most dependable vegetables. We use it a chunk at a time, like a good piece of farmhouse Cheddar, and the squash lasts us a whole week. In this recipe, you can substitute zucchini just as well.

SERVES 2

For the shrimp:

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fish sauce

teaspoon chopped garlic

7 ounces/200 g fresh peeled shrimp, coarsely chopped

For the soup:

1 (7-ounce/200-g) chunk of vegetable marrow squash (zucchini also works well)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

teaspoon crushed garlic

3 cups/750 ml hot water

1 teaspoon gia vi (or a mix of 2 parts sugar, 1 part sea salt, 1 part ground black pepper, 1 part garlic powder)

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 spring onion, finely sliced, for serving

To prepare the shrimp: Combine the black pepper, fish sauce, and garlic in a medium bowl and toss with the shrimp. Cover and leave to marinate for a couple of minutes while you prepare the soup.

To prepare the soup: Peel the squash, cut it in half lengthways, and remove any seeds. Then use a vegetable peeler to slice the squash into paper-thin slices.

In a heavy-bottomed pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat, then stir in the garlic until the oil is fragrant. Pour in the marinated shrimp and stir quickly until they turn pink.

Pour in the hot water and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam that builds up. Season with the gia vi and the fish sauce, and add the squash slices. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the squash is soft.

Take the pot off the heat and sprinkle with the chopped spring onion before serving.

Note: If you want the broth to be extra-sweet, then buy unpeeled shrimp to peel yourself. Cook the shells separately in the hot water for 5 to 10 minutes. Strain out the shells before adding the water to the sauted shrimp.

A banh mi combines a variety of individual ingredients in a baguette. The filling could include anything from barbecued pork to grilled fish, topped with pickles and fresh herbs to create a culinary delight. Here we give you the essential banh mi, pared down to the key ingredients you wont want to do without.

MAKES 1

1 tablespoon country pt

1 teaspoon unsalted butter

1 demi-baguette

1 teaspoon mayonnaise

1 squirt chili sauce

1 fresh chile, chopped (like Thai or another fruity chile)

3 to 4 slices cucumber

2 to 3 sprigs cilantro

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/gas 4.

In a small pan, melt the pt with the unsalted butter, or put the pt and butter in a small microwave-safe bowl and microwave the mixture for about 1 minute so it is warm and spreadable.

Split the baguette lengthwaysyou might need to remove some of the doughy filling inside.

Smear a layer of mayo on the top half of the baguettejust enough to moisten the bread without drenching itand spread the melted pt on the bottom half.

Close the baguette and toast it in the oven for 3 to 5 minutes, so the inside is warm and the outside is crispy. Take care not to burn it.

Remove the baguette from the oven, using tongs or chopsticks, and flip it open. Spread a little chili sauce on the pt and scatter some chopped chile on top. Arrange slices of cucumber and sprigs of cilantro neatly along the baguette. Close the baguette and use a small knife to push all the ingredients inside. Serve right away.

Each of the ingredients in a banh mi is potentially a recipe in itself, and at Banhmi11 we make everything from scratch. Luckily, these days you can buy nearly all the ingredients ready to go. If you have a good farmers market near you, get hold of some proper butter, pt de campagne, and of course a crisp baguette. Its also worth hunting down authentic chili sauce from an Asian grocer. Perhaps the only thing we would encourage you to spend extra time on is home-made pickles, which add a mouthwatering sourness and crunch to your banh mi.

MAKES 1

1 teaspoon country pt

teaspoon unsalted butter

1 demi-baguette

1 teaspoon mayonnaise

Carrot and Daikon Pickles, as desired (see )

3 to 3 ounces/80 to 100 g Imperial BBQ Pork (see )

1 squirt chili sauce, or to taste

1 fresh chile, chopped (like Thai or another fruity chile)