Karaoke & Spring Rolls
How To Make Friends & Sing Your Heart Out
When I was a child, my mother constantly had friends around, it was the worst. She would move all the furniture to the sides of the living room and lay sheets of old newspaper in the middle. On top of the black and white prints, she gathered and arranged lettuce leaves, coriander, mint and Thai basil into three or four plastic colanders and spread them out along the living floor. Everything covered with cling film. Then four large bowls of sweet and sour nước mắm (fish sauce) crowded with finely sliced red chillies and freckles of finely chopped garlic. In each of them, she placed a blue patterned ceramic soup spoon she had purchased from Chinatown for everyone to help themselves. Little dipping bowls stacked beside them. Along the trail of herbs, rice vermicelli, rice paper and sauces, sat four platters, brimming with bright orange bearded unshelled prawns that are displayed with juicy, fatty sliced poached pork belly, a deck of Vietnamese ham slices and golden squares of fried tofu, covered in cling film and dotted with condensation.
When the guests arrived, they immediately took their places like on a train or a flight. They displayed their pot luck offerings. Someone would scatter nem chua, little pink square parcels, about an inch wide, perfect as a bite-sized gift to the mouth. Inside, it wrapped a block of pink fermented ham, embedded with shredded pork skin, garlic and chillies.
Another would unwrap a foil tray of bò lá lốt - skewers of beef in lemongrass, wrapped in betel leaves which demanded grilling and kitchen clattering. Another guest would uncover the foil off a Pyrex tray, condensation dripping and soaking the newspaper. Chả trứng - the steamed egg and minced pork with woodear mushrooms was perfected with a coat of beaten golden egg yolk poured on top and steamed to cook through.
People would gather around the carpet picnic. Someone, always someone’s husband would test out the microphone, tapping, một-hai-một-hai-ba [one-two-one-two-three] and it would always deafeningly feedback and everyone would stretch their necks away from the speakers in disbelief. With the volume at peak, the instrumentals laid foundation to unsung lyrics. Without any encouragement, someone’s husband would drift into the song, as if running to step onto a moving train, mid libretto. He poured his heart and emotions into the music, his voice echoing and waffling out through the seams of the windows.
My mother would bring out her mountain of fried spring rolls, each laid next to each other like holiday go-ers on a beach around a circular plate with carrot pickle, shaped as flowers in the middle. The applause made her blush and beam. Her mind immediately drifted to a time when she didn’t even have a pair of chopsticks or a rice cooker or a home. But now, with everyone clapping, she was proud. She was home and she had friends around. This was a layer of onion that delighted her. At the time, I resented her for having fun. It was boring to be around her loud friends, cheering một hai ba dô and clinking beer glasses. I was still deeply loyal to my aunts and uncles in Vietnam and my father who had disappeared. They were not there.
Our months and the years were like layers, of an onion, or more like the layers of our skin that we grew, each was a milestone of our new life in the UK.
One, arriving to London during a blizzard of snow that winter and moved into a bed and breakfast on Highbury New Park. They gave us a triangular room with a king-sized bed for a family of 4. At the forty-five degree point of the room, sat a bedside table and a kettle, perfect for rehydrating packets of instant ramen.
Two, after 18 months of waiting, we received our first yellow brick council home on a sunny and leafy street stretching between Clissold and Finsbury Park.
Three, with help from the Vietnamese Community Centre, my brother and I were admitted into St Joan Of Arc Primary School - we made an appearance at church every Sunday. My mum smelled out the aisles we passed with gifts of spring rolls and a sweet and sour fish sauce dip. It was all wrapped in brown paper bags she saved from the green grocers. The young blue eyed Irish priest was delighted. She left church swamped with donations from Save The Children full of clothes, table cloths, mugs and an electric whisk.
The layers grew and grew. Eventually, my mother started to afford a new bed for us with duvets instead of itchy brown blankets; then a new fridge and most importantly to her, a karaoke machine.
“I want you to sing,” she said, joyous, watching her friend’s husband untangle cables behind the dusty hi-fi unit and make all the attachments into the Sony amplifier my father had left us with along with a set of records, from Blondie to Dolly Parton to Richard Clayderman.
“I don’t want to sing.” I said, sulking at her glee.
“Imagine if you grow up to be a singer,” she would skittle onto in a daydream, eyes darting upwards to stare at a dream cloud hoovering before the ceiling, mouth curling while I harboured a grudge at her enjoyment and ridiculous delusions. I wanted to listen to The Carpenters not my mother howling Vietnamese songs with her friends.
On that Saturday morning, before everyone came for the carpet picnic, she was busy in the kitchen, cooking and tasting everything with a pair of plastic chopsticks. She enlisted me to roll out spring rolls with rice paper from Chinatown while I was watching Going Live, with Roland Rat and Phillip Scholfield. They were interviewing Bananarama, a smiley and excited girl band with pretty big blow dried blonde hair and colourful ribbons and accessories, bead necklaces, cool t-shirts and short skirts.
The filling was made with chopped king prawns, further minced minced pork, threads of pre-soaked crunchy brown woodear mushrooms, sliced yam that she found in the nearby Turkish shops on Green Lanes, hand julienned carrot strands, tossed with rehydrated glass noodles, cut shorter with a pair of scissors she found in a stationary shop. The seasoning was perfect plus plenty of black pepper which she loved. “This is going to be so good,” she said. She knew because she carried out a test and fried a single roll in a little scratched up teflon frying pan with a small drop of oil. She congratulated herself, well pleased with the results.
Meanwhile, I could hear the clanking and rustling pans as she shuffled them out of tight cupboards and filling them with water, pouring things, draining noodles, the stainless steel sink occasionally bolting with a thump. The broth, made with pork bones was simmering away, causing condensation to the windows that saw a gangway. Every now and again, neighbours cascaded past looking in at what foreign smells they could detect as they were arriving to their flats.
All the while, she cooked, she rehearsed her favourite songs from Khánh Ly, pausing to taste the contents noisily with a slurp or a dip with her cooking chopsticks, tapping them on pans before resting them on the counter. The melodramatic music she sang belonged to old Vietnam, from the days of her youth although she was in her early thirties, her traditional ways of our bygone past did not fit into the world of mothers I had been observing during our layering-ship at school where they were blonde and blue eyed. They drove cars, they chatted to everyone and went abroad on holiday. I thought of all the ways how she did not fit into or could ever be part of the society around us. Then she handed me a plate of noodles, flat rice noodles, softened and seared around the edges, stained with Maggi, topped with spring onion and celery, sliced at a lengthy diagonal. In between the strands of silky noodles, sat little tasty morsels of thinly sliced beef, freckled with black pepper.
“Everything you do is so beautiful,” she noted, admiring my spring rolls, “you have such creative hands, even at aged 9.”
“This looks yummy,” I said.
“Eat up,” she said.
SEAFOOD SPRING ROLLS - CHẢ GIÒ HẢI SẢN
Recipe From ‘Vietnamese,’ by Uyen Luu, published by Hardie Grant.
Makes 12
165 g (51⁄2 oz) raw king prawns, shelled, de-veined, patted dry and coarsely chopped
150 g (5 oz) tinned, frozen or fresh crab meat, moisture pressed out
80 g (3 oz) scallops, patted dry and roughly chopped (optional)
125 g (4 oz) parsnips, julienned
120 g (4 oz) carrots, julienned
75 g (21⁄2 oz) beansprouts
25 g (3⁄4 oz) glass noodles, soaked in cold water for 10 minutes, drained and trimmed to 3 cm (1 in)
1⁄2 tbsp maple syrup
1⁄2 tsp mushroom or chicken seasoning
pinch of coarsely ground black pepper
2 pinches of sea salt
2 spring onions (scallions), thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
12 sheets spring roll rice paper, about 22 cm (8.5 in)
1 litre (34 fl oz/4 cups) sunflower or vegetable oil
For the garnish
1 lettuce, leaves separated
an array of herbs of choice: coriander (cilantro), Vietnamese coriander (cilantro), mint, perilla (shiso)
Fish Sauce Nước mắm
Serves 4
2 bird’s eye chillies, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
4 tbsp fish sauce
80 ml (21/2 fl oz/5 tbsp) hot water
Mix all the ingredients together well.
For the spring rolls
Prepare all the spring roll filling ingredients and combine well together in a large bowl.
Put a pan or wok of oil on a medium high heat until it reaches about 160°C (320°F). If you don’t have a thermometer, the oil is ready if you dip a pair of wooden chopsticks in and it sizzles and bubbles.
Prepare a tray of warm water and dip a piece of rice paper in it to moisten for 1 second, then place it on a clean chopping board. Spoon 2 tablespoons of filling into the bottom middle – where the mouth would be if it were a face. Wait a minute for the paper to soften. Fold in the two sides, as if you are making an envelope, then fold up the bottom flap. Using your fingers to secure the roll, push forward and tuck in as you roll towards the top of the paper making sure it is tight. Repeat until you have made all the rolls. Deep-fry at 160°C (320°F/gas 4), with space between the rolls so that they do not stick together for 4–5 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve immediately with lettuce, herbs (wrapped around the spring roll), dipping sauce and/or with a vermicelli noodle salad.
NOTE: these are excellent in summer rolls at a summer roll party. Simply snip them at a diagonal with a pair of kitchen scissors and place them in your rolls. The soft textures of the uncooked rice paper with the deep fried rolls depicts heaven.
SOME NEWS:
I cook with my mum, come and learn and eat with us at my supper club and/or cooking classes. She cooks with much care and love and you’d feel it in every strand of noodle. My mum is now 72 and still loves to cook. Please book in while you can for an amazing feast and to support us and our work.
I will be on BBC Radio London [94.9 FM] on Wed 3rd April at 715pm with Jacqueline Shepherd to talk about my supper clubs. Have a listen. You can still listen to me on BBC SOUNDS - Robert Elm’s Listed Londoner here from 3hr 14min https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ktqdf7
Message me or EMAIL TO BOOK uyen@uyenluu.com
Supper Club Dates
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I really enjoyed reading this Uyen, a lovely insight into your upbringing and learning about your Mum’s spring rolls.
thank you for re-stacking, this is lovely of you x