Very few dishes bring up vivid memories such as Mi Quảng. This dish originates from central Vietnam and is multi componented as many Vietnamese dishes.
Personally though, it is the story of my uncle which I remember. Whenever I would visit he would cook this dish and for years I tried to replicate it.
Sadly though, he passed away and with it they recipe also. I scoured YouTube and blogs and didn’t really come to a consensus on a good recipe. I asked my mom and cousin for their recipe, but it never came out the same.
Recently I took a trip to visit family and I requested this dish to be cooked. However this time I had the blessing of watching them cook it.
I realized as all good cooks do, my family omitted several key steps to make the dish really good.
What I used to do is to skin the turmeric with a spoon (like ginger, and then grate it to get a fresh paste. However I saw my cousin just out the turmeric in a ziplock bag and mash it until it was in tiny pieces. I never realized that the skin was edible!
Also this technique just makes life infinitely easier as you don’t have to deal with the messes of turmeric staining everything.
The other thing I realized is they Vietnamese chefs put mushroom seasoning and chicken seasoning in everything. If you look at the chemical composition of these powders, they basically are some cousins of msg.
I used to be ideological opposed to these powders, but I’ve made my peace with it and have accepted its use to add more savoriness. It really is no different than a French grandma adding beef bouillon cubes to a stock.
Learning to cook is a tricky thing as there is no panacea. But watching really is a key thing.
Every good Vietnamese dish comes with a ton of herbs. These are almost as important as the dish itself.
This is called ‘fish herb’ and you will either like it or hate it. It kind of has a fishiness note to it.
Another key is to have yellow noodles (rice noodles dyed in turmeric).
The traditional way is to cut up a whole chicken, but to also chop each piece into tinier pieces. This means a chicken thigh might have 4 pieces (you cut through the bone). This makes the broth more viscous as the marrow of the bone leeches out into the stock.
You then garnish with peanuts, rice cracker, and onions.
Finally after all these years I think I’ve discovered a recipe close to what my uncle used to make.