It is too easy to lump Vietnamese food in with the food of its South-East Asian neighbours. It is lighter and more delicate than most Chinese food, more subtle than the food of Thailand and more varied than that of Korea.

The fresh, tropical flavours of Vietnamese cookery have merged with a subtle French influence in a legacy of the colonial years. Crisp baguettes, market stalls piled high with frogs’ legs, and freshly sliced charcuterie often surprise first-time visitors to the country. Breakfast could be a fragrant bowl of pho noodle soup, lunch a French bread roll stacked with pressed meat and chilli, and dinner a table covered with grilled meats and fish ready to wrap inside lettuce leaves and dip into tantalising sauces. It is also a relatively healthy cuisine, using little oil, few animal fats and — its defining characteristic — basketloads of fresh herbs and salad greens, leaving an overall effect of light freshness.

Typical ingredients include coriander, dried shrimps, fish sauce, lemongrass, garlic, hot mint (rau ram), ginger, noodles, shallots, rice-paper wrappers (bahn trang), dried shrimp paste, star anise, tamarind, taro and water spinach, all increasingly available in South-East Asian specialists and Chinatowns.

Even if you have only Thai fish sauce and a fresh lime to hand, you can team them with minced pork, garlic and chilli to make these little Vietnamese meatballs (nem nuong) for your own Indochine moment.

Wrap each pork ball in a chilled lettuce leaf with some chopped cucumber and a few mint leaves, dip in tangy sauce and they are ready to eat.

Ingredients
Serves 4 (makes 24)

Prep: 20 min
Cook: 15 min

1 tbsp raw rice, unwashed
400g minced pork
2 garlic cloves, crushed
½tsp salt
¼tsp ground pepper
1tbsp Thai fish sauce
1tbsp castor sugar
1 iceberg lettuce, chilled
1 cucumber, chopped
Good handful of fresh mint

Dipping sauce:

1tsp castor sugar
2tbsp fresh lime juice
3tbsp fish sauce
1 fresh red chilli, sliced

METHOD

Soak eight bamboo skewers in water to prevent them from burning. Dry-fry the rice in a small frying pan until lightly golden. Grind to a powder and set aside. Combine the pork, ground rice, garlic, salt, pepper, fish sauce and sugar and knead until mixed. To make the dipping sauce, combine the sugar and lime juice, then add the fish sauce and chilli.

With wet hands, roll the mixture into small balls the size of a walnut. Thread the balls on to wooden skewers (three to a skewer) and grill on or under a pre-heated grill until golden brown, turning occasionally. Serve with chilled lettuce leaves, cucumber and mint, and steamed rice or rice vermicelli noodles.

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