“See what you think,” said Georgia, the lovely editor of the Australian Healthy Food Guide. “If you don’t like the look of it, we can go to the café next door”. She was taking me out for lunch in Sydney after a tough morning of planning and figuring out when we were going to schedule all the great story ideas we’d come up with for the NZ and Aussie magazines.

But it was the side dishes that were the most exciting thing about this meal. It was a help-yourself buffet of the usual pho condiments – lemon wedges, chillies, bean shoots, hoisin sauce. And the most inspiring and intriguing extra sauce. It was chilli, but mild, and smoky, with a smooth, thick texture. I couldn’t get enough if it. “It’s like these chillies have been roasted”, I said as I rolled it around in my mouth, and Georgia laughed and said “I love it that you taste that!” She could see the cogs in my little brain turning over, trying to figure out what was in there. Eventually I asked, and the smiling man who’d served us told me that he and his brother made the sauce (for which I didn’t get a name) themselves every week. I was right (yes!) about the roasted chillies, garlic, shallots, sugar etc, and completely wrong about the fish sauce. What I hadn’t picked was the peanuts, but as soon as he said it I mentally slapped my forehead; of course that’s what it was. I’m guessing very finely ground peanuts. He said it was very slowly cooked together over several hours, which made sense given its rich, deep flavour.
I briefly toyed with running the gauntlet of NZ biosecurity and bringing a jar home, but thought better of it. So the next step: recreating this at home! I’ve searched online and looked though all my Asian cookbooks without unearthing anything that seems quite right. I’m not a Vietnamese cooking expert, so clearly I need help. Anyone able to point me in the right direction, speak up!
No comments:
Post a Comment