The Songs Of Sapa

Posted: 11/02/2010 12:35:23 p.m.

Actually they were already in pretty good order before I ever got to them and he was a food editor's dream to collaborate with. He's emerged as a major new talent in Australia over the past 2 years and his primary launchpad has been the sensational Surry Hills restaurant Red Lantern where he cooks and serves some terrific Vietnamese food. But he's also been picked up on not just by Murdoch Books with publishing deals (he's currently working on his third book) but also by SBS with whom he's made a fantastic food-travel show called Luke Nguyen's Vietnam. In that series he chucks himself into the teeming streets and markets of his birth country, interacting and cooking with locals in the most charmingly unpretentious way; food-loving viewers here haven't been able to get enough of him. There's such a seductive humanity (and gritty reality) to the way he presents the food, people and places of Vietnam that it just makes you want to jump on the next flight to H.C.M.C. and get among it all; death-defying traffic, dog meat, Vietnamese Opera and all. 

Luckily, when schedules don't allow for that, reading and cooking from The Songs Of Sapa comes as the next best thing- an escape to Vietnam but without the expense or jet lag. The book is fashioned around chapters referencing various geographical points along this lengthy, skinny country such as Sapa (in fascinating hill tribe territory to the north of Hanoi), Hue (the old Imperial Capital and famous for its' cuisine), Hoi An (a charming old town near Danang) and, naturally, both the capital Hanoi and steamy old Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as it's called these days). Each chapter kicks off with some evocative text from Luke's' extensive travels and this makes for great bed time (or any time, come to that) reading . Another nice touch is the use of Vietnamese sayings strung throughout; "When drinking water, remember where it flowed from; when eating fruit, remember who planted the tree" is an example. I love the grunginess of this book and by that I mean there's an earthiness verging on full-blown dirty going on and this is expressed through the photos, textures and even paper stock. It's a beautiful book but not a glossy one and the matte, rustic feel and slightly masculine design fit the subject perfectly. Alan Benson (photographer) and Luke spent several weeks styling and shooting the recipes in situ, sourcing locations and props as they went and consequently, there's none of the controlled prettiness that so often results when this kind of work is done in a studio. 

As for the recipes themselves, they go way beyond any standard primer in Vietnamese cooking. There's been uncommon interest in Vietnamese food in Oz of late- so much so that some industry observers are calling it "The New Thai". We've had fantastic cheap-and-cheerful pho (rice noodle soup) houses since the post-Vietnam war immigration influx but now the cuisine has been taken to a whole new level by people such as Luke and others of his generation. He's in a unique position to communicate the subject- he's an Aussie boy through-and-through but one profoundly connected to his heritage, language and native cuisine. It's always difficult to generalise about the food of an entire nation given regional and seasonal variants but it's fair to say that Vietnamese dishes are characterised by a certain refinement and a striking use of fresh, bright-flavoured ingredients; aromatic herbs, crisp vegetables, seafood, rice and rice noodles, fragrant stocks, meats (pork and poultry are ubiquitous) with char-grilling, stir-frying ,simmering and steaming predominant techniques. Salads are popular dishes. Almost everything hinges on the use of fish sauce (nuoc mam) with chillies, garlic, star anise, lemon grass, turmeric, lime, sugar, fried shallots, and pepper common seasonings. 

Some of the dishes in this book call for fairly everyday ingredients although naturally you'll need to stock your pantry with an appropriate inventory of South East Asian dry goods to pull most off. Nothing could be simpler than Hoi An White Chicken Rice, for example, where carefully poached chook is accompanied by ginger rice and nuoc mam cham, an easily conjured dipper based on fish sauce. Caramelised pork with sweet pineapple, fish congee, char-grilled lemongrass beef and prawn and corn fritters are other delicious examples of recipes here that should provide little challenge (technically or ingredient-wise) for the home cook. With access to the right produce, those in search of something a tad more exotic will find delights galore. Saigon Chinese sausage and jicama rolls....purple yam and prawn soup....bitter melon salad with dried shrimp...beef wok-tossed with betel leaves....cuttlefish and banana blossom salad.....sweet potato and cassava pudding....it's all bloody delicious stuff. There's even a recipe involving choko (choko stir-fried with school prawns) and we all know how hard it is to make those things palatable let alone scrumptious. But Luke's found a way. Not all the dishes have been photographed, which is always a pity, but enough have to give the gist of what many of the finished recipes should look like. There's a brief glossary of ingredients down the back and a section of Basic Recipes, some of which you might need to prepare before launching into cooking proper; all-in-all this is 344 pages of magnificence that those with more than a passing interest in this unique cuisine really shouldn't be living without. And even if I hadn't worked on The Songs of Sapa and didn't adore Luke's work I'd still be saying exactly the same thing. Honestly.