Name: Cha Ca La Vong noodles
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: 4 cm piece fresh galangal or root ginger, peeled; 500 g firm white fish fillet (conger eel, monkfish, pollack, whiting), skinned and cut into chunks; handful each of mint and basil leaves; 4 cm fresh turmeric root or 2 tsp ground turmeric; 3 fat cloves garlic; ½ tsp caster sugar; vegetable oil; 2 very big bunches of dill, roughly chopped; 300 g vermicelli noodles, cooked, drained and rinsed, according to the packet’s instructions; 4 spring onions, each sliced into 4; 4 tbsp lightly crushed toasted peanuts; nuoc cham; 2 tsp fish sauce; salt and black pepper; pinch of ground chilli

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Food and Travels

By Alastair Hendy

Published 2004

About

This is a beauty, now a classic, and one that you should really know. Everything is set out on the table, then each person chopsticks some noodles into their bowl, piles on the dilled fish, herb leaves and some peanuts and then spills over a little nuoc cham. If you’re non-plussed about the DIY scheme of things, serve it all assembled in bowls.