Silver Travel Cook Club - February 2020
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This month’s Silver Travel
Cook Club features a mouth watering recipe for Saigon fresh summer rolls, courtesy of sponsor Emerald Waterways and inspired by their 23-day
Grand
Tour of Vietnam & Cambodia.And you could win an Emerald Waterways goodie
bag and a copy of Street Food Vietnam
by Jerry Mai.
Marvel at the inimitable landscapes, meet the welcoming locals and try some of the most delicious food, as we take your senses on a truly vibrant adventure. Hanoi’s labyrinthine streets are filled with food stalls and markets. Journey to Halong Bay and embark on a traditional junk boat as you sail its ethereal waters, and drive through Da Nang before crossing the Pass of Ocean Clouds. Discover Ho Chi Minh City’s Cu Chi Tunnels, before meeting Emerald Harmony and sailing the Mekong, stopping off in My Tho, Sa Dec and Phnom Penh. Conclude your trip with three nights in Siem Reap, attending the Phare Cambodian Circus and visiting the historic Angkor Wat.
Departure dates and pricing:
- 23 days, July-December 2020 and January-April 2021
- Prices from £4,395 pp including flights, tips, excursion options and wine and beer at lunch and dinner
Recipe: Emerald Waterways’ Saigon fresh summer rolls
Ingredients (makes 6):
- 6 sheets, about 22cm rice paper
- 150g pork belly
- 18 king prawns, shelled and deveined
- 30g rice vermicelli
- 6 lettuce leaves
- 12 coriander sprigs, stalk on, chopped
- 18 garden or hot mint leaves, chopped
- 3 mint sprigs
- 6 garlic chives, halved and head removed
- 1 tbsp cooking oil
- 1 garlic clove, chopped
- 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
- ½ tbsp white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
- 1 tsp sugar
- ½ tbsp sriracha chilli sauce
- 2 tbsp roasted salted peanuts, crushed
Preparation:
Bring a saucepan of water and a few pinches of salt to the boil. Add the pork, cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes or until the juices run clear when you prick it with a knife. Allow to cool, then cut off the skin and very thinly slice the meat. Put the prawns and a pinch of salt in a saucepan of boiling water and poach for 2 minutes, or until opaque. Drain and allow to cool.
Put the rice
vermicelli, a pinch of salt and a dash of vinegar in a bowl or pan of boiling
water, cover and allow to cook for 5–10 minutes or until soft. Drain and rinse
with hot water.
Once the pork, prawns and vermicelli are ready, put them and the remaining filling ingredients in their own individual bowls in front of you. Pour some warm water into a tray deep and large enough to submerge the rice paper sheets. Use a plastic board as a base on which to make the rolls.
Dip a sheet of rice paper into the water and take it out as soon as it is moist all over – do not let it sit in the water. Lay the sheet on the plastic board. Imagine the sheet is a face and now place the filling where the mouth should be: line up a couple of pork slices, 3 prawns, 1 lettuce leaf, and one-sixth of the vermicelli and herbs. Fold the 2 sides inward over the filling, as if making an envelope.
Now fold the bottom corner over the filling. Put 3–4 pieces of garlic chives along the roll with the tips sticking out of one end of the roll. Start to roll up the package tightly, pushing it forward and tucking in the filling in a neat cylinder as you roll it towards the far side of the sheet. Keep in an airtight container or wrap in cling film while you assemble the remaining rolls.
For the dipping sauce, heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Fry the garlic until it browns slightly. Add the hoisin sauce, vinegar, sugar, chilli sauce and 1 tbsp. water and bring to a gentle boil. Pour into dipping bowls and sprinkle the peanuts on top. Serve with the rolls for dipping.
How to win an Emerald Waterways goodie bag and a copy
of Street Food Vietnam
Simply tell us in the Comments section below about your favourite street food experience, and where you enjoyed it. We’d love to know, and the best entry will win a super Emerald Waterways goodie bag and a copy of this fabulous book.
Read more about all of our Silver Travel Cook Club recipes.
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The best entry will win a fab Emerald Waterways goodie bag and a copy of the mouthwatering 'Street Food Vietnam' book.
I worked on London's Old Street for a few years from around 2012. Lunch most days was chosen from the many amazing street food stalls in the Whitecross Street Market:
http://ilovemarkets.co.uk/listing/whitecross-street-market/
The hardest choice was deciding which country's exotic street food to choose that day. And whether to eat al fresco or inflict on everyone back in the office.
On his back was what looked like a big urn complete various tubes and knobs. As I paused to admire him and his strange apparatus he pushed into my hand the traditional Turkish tea glass which he then proceeded to fill by directing a jet of tea from the gizmo on his back via a tube over his right shoulder and from a distance of several feet. I was so astonished not only at this performance but also at his skill in completing the action without spilling more a few drops.
The resulting hot sweet tea was so refreshing and the performance on some nameless Istanbul side street still is fresh in memory some 18 years later.
A street drink with flair and panache
A couple of years ago I was in Hoi An, Vietnam. I saw a huge queue of people, I couldn't really see what they weee selling. As I waited 95% of.people ordered Banh Mi, I just said the same for me.
I got a huge delicious crunchy baguette filled with tasty morsels, sweet, savoury, meat and salad.
Heaven in my hands. When I finished this delight i noticed the wrapping paper said "Best Banh Mi in the world"
I wouldn't dissagree.
When in Asia: Join the queue it will be worth it.
My own indelible street food memory is while staying in Penang, Malaysia. My Dad spent his National Service at RAF Butterworth on the mainland at the end of the 1940s, and spent much of his R&R time hopping across on the ferry to Penang. He and I went back there in the 1990s, and one of the best memories is of eating street food - usually a curry! - with him, and guzzling a couple of Tiger beers, as we looked across the water from George Town to where Dad had been all those years ago.
Another treat was the fresh pineapple peeled, cut into four and eaten like a lollipop holding the stalk like the stick.
I became friends with a young woman who sold them,despite both of us only speaking a smattering of the others language.
The universal language of smiles is a gift to all.
This was in Mauritius,while visiting relatives of my husband.A never to be forgotten trip.
They sell these items in the supermarkets now ,Ldl and Aldi but they just don't taste the same:(