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When I was five, my family lived in a small pre-war apartment in Hanoi. All I remember is that it was damp. The tropical climate brought so much rain, and water leaked from the ceiling to my bed all the time. Winter was rough. I got sick on quite a regular basis because of that. When I fell ill, my grandmother always cooked me a bowl of crab noodle soup (bún riêu cua) and it instantly cheered me up. I grew up thinking it was a magic cure to all of life's problems. Although I know now that money is that magic cure, this dish still holds a special place in my heart.
Bún riêu cua is my grandmother's famous specialty and also my favorite offering of Vietnamese cuisine. It is a rich blend of texture: the chewiness of the crabmeat, the softness of sautéed tomatoes, the crispiness of fried tofu, and the crunchiness of bean sprouts, all drenched in a "seafoody," flavorful soup broth. It embraces maximalism in cooking, and while maximalism often takes a lot to succeed and little to fail, this dish is a prime example of when it works. The moment I set out to create "Sieu in the Kitchen," this was no doubt the first dish I wanted to make.
In Vietnamese, we cook the crab noodle soup with the tiny crabs from rice paddy fields (cua đồng). That is not available in the U.S. (whenever I asked my mom to ship it over, she laughed it off; apparently that's not allowed). I went with the next best alternative: a crab ball mixture of crab paste, ground pork, shrimp, and eggs. The taste and texture are quite close to the dish back home, so I still got the dose of nostalgia I badly needed.
VIDEO CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:40 Ingredients
1:27 Blanch the bones
1:57 Fry the tofu
3:13 Chop veggies
3:49 Cook the broth
4:13 Sauté tomatoes
5:02 Make crab balls
6:46 Make noodles
7:23 Cook the toppings
8:22 Assemble
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[Music: "The Jazz Piano," "Hip Jazz," "All That" and "Romantic" from Bensound.com]
