Cơm Tấm

What to Put on the Table With Cơm Tấm

• Iced Vietnamese coffee
• A cold beer
• Canh, a light clear soup, on the side

Making Cơm Tấm, Step by Step

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1. Pound the lemongrass, garlic and shallots to a rough paste, then mix with the fish sauce, honey, sugar, soy, oil and pepper.

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2. Pound the pork chops lightly to an even thickness and marinate them, covered, in the fridge for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.

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3. Dissolve the sugar in the warm water for the nước chấm, then add the fish sauce and lime juice. Taste — it should be balanced, not aggressive. Add the garlic and chilli last so they float.

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4. Rinse and cook the broken rice with slightly less water than usual, as the grains absorb faster. It should be soft and slightly clumping.

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5. Heat a griddle pan or barbecue to high.

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6. Grill the pork for 4 to 5 minutes a side, basting with the leftover marinade for the first turn only, until well charred at the edges and cooked through.

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7. Rest the pork 5 minutes, then slice thickly.

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8. Fry the eggs so the whites are crisp at the edges and the yolks still run.

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9. Mound rice on each plate, lay the pork alongside, top with a fried egg, and add pickles, cucumber and tomato. Spoon over spring onion oil and serve the nước chấm in a bowl to pour over everything.

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Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Choosing rice.

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Worth Knowing Before You Cook

Stop basting with the raw marinade in the final minutes so the surface can char rather than steam.

Broken rice is sold in Vietnamese shops and is worth seeking out; jasmine rice works but is not the same.

Make more nước chấm than you think you need. It goes on everything on the plate.

Swaps and Variations

• Out of spring onion? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
• Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the red chillies. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
• Lemon is the everyday swap for lime in this kind of dish — the acidity plays the same role even though the flavour is not identical.

Keeping What's Left

Marinated pork keeps 2 days raw and 3 days cooked. Nước chấm keeps 1 week refrigerated.

Questions and Answers

Nutrition per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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