How to make Vietnamese food from scratch at home

Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our food and drink newsletter for free Get our food and drink newsletter for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. I order in Vietnamese food every chance I get: fragrant chicken pho ; coarsely shredded papaya salads; golden spring rolls and enticingly translucent summer ones; pork-prawn wontons with sesame and chilli oil; chargrilled, fish sauce-drenched aubergines… but until now, I’d never attempted to cook it myself. open image in gallery Ella with her ginger chicken and stir-fried noodles The dishes in the brilliantly blush pink cookbook are designed to “demystify Vietnamese cooking”, promises Luu, who reckons the most common mistake people make when approaching the cuisine, is “they think it’s more complicated than it is”. However, to hit those key Vietnamese flavours – sweet, sour, salty, umami, hot and bitter – it’s just a matter of combining ingredients, Luu insists. And yet, as I prepare Luu’s ginger chicken, and watch long strands of spring onion curl and twist as they’re submerged in a bowl of icy water, they make me think of my granny anyway, and how she’d use scissors to turn lengths of shiny wrapping paper ribbons into cascading spirals.