Cha Ca La Vong
The most delicious turmeric, dill, spring onion fish dish. Close your eyes and you're in Hanoi 🙈🇻🇳
Ingredients
For the marinade:
- Large knob peeled ginger (approx 6cm long), chopped
- 4 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 3 tsp turmeric powder (or 2 pieces of fresh turmeric if available (approx 5cm lengths) + 1 tsp turmeric powder)
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- 600g firm, fleshy white fish (ling, hake, snapper), cut into 2 inch chunks
For the Nuoc Cham Sauce:
- 2 limes, juiced
- 4 tbsp sugar (if you want to make this really healthy, you can substitute Natvia granules, do about 1.5 tbsp)
- 6 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tbsp garlic, thinly sliced
- 1-2 fresh chilli, finely chopped (optional)
- 1 bunch (6 - 8) spring onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
- 1 large bunch of fresh dill, chopped in 3cm lengths
- 1 bunch of fresh coriander, leaves picked
- 1 bunch of fresh mint, leaves picked
- ¾ cup granulated peanuts
- 300g vermicelli noodles
Serves 4
Method
- Place the marinade ingredients in a food processor and pulse until it resembles a fine paste (if you don’t have a food processor, use a fine grater/microplane to shave).
- Gently toss fish through to coat.
- Cover and marinade in the fridge, either overnight or at least 2 hours.
- Prepare nuoc cham sauce. Combine lime juice and sugar and stir until sugar has dissolved. Then add fish sauce, garlic and chilli (to taste).
- Mix together coriander and mint in a small serving bowl.
- Lightly toast peanuts in a pan and place in a small serving bowl.
- Cook vermicelli noodles according to packet instructions and drain, then run cold water over to cool down. Set aside.
- Heat a large frying pan on medium-high heat.
- When pan is hot, add the fish in two batches, scraping out any remaining marinade into the pan.
- Fry fish for 2-3 minutes on each side, allowing fish to crisp up and go slightly golden.
- Place cooked fish on a paper towel and continue to cook remaining batches.
- When fish is cooked, add dill and spring onions to pan and sauté off for 1-2 minutes until they have softened slightly.
- Turn heat off, add fish back to pan and gently mix fish with the cooked herbs.
- Place in a serving bowl.
- Pour some boiling water through the rice noodles to reheat, drain and place in a serving bowl.
- Place on the table your fish mix, coriander/mint bowl, peanuts, nuoc cham, and rice noodles.
- Serve yourselves! Layer the noodles, fish, mint and coriander, peanuts and spoon nuoc cham over the top.
1 comment
Definitely the best 🙌🏼