Inspired by Anaïs Aa Dao Van Manen’s Vietnam, the cookbook published by Phaidon, I set out to cook Vietnamese food for myself. There is a certain satisfaction—a quiet, private sense of achievement—when we learn to cook within a familiar cuisine that our hands have never actually prepared.
I did not realize, until drifting through the pages of Vietnam, how central caramelized sugar is to the cuisine—often referred to as a caramel braising sauce. After my first failed attempt at following the Tôm Rim recipe from the cookbook, I turned inward to develop a version that simplifies the process while preserving the dish’s essential tension: the salinity of fish sauce meeting the sweetness of caramelized sugar.
INGREDIENTS
[serves one with rice]
fourteen whole prawns, shells on, slit along the back and deveined
two tablespoons of vegetable oil
one tablespoon of sugar
one tablespoon of fish sauce
one tablespoon of Cambray onion, white part only, diced
one tablespoon of red onion, diced
one clove of garlic, roughly chopped
Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the prawns, and blanch for about one minute. Drain and set aside to cool. Once cool enough to handle, peel them.
Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add the sugar and, using a wooden spoon, spread it evenly across the pan. Do not stir; let the sugar slowly caramelize. It will turn a deep amber. As it begins to reach that color, add the fish sauce and stir to combine. Add the fish sauce gradually while stirring to avoid splattering; the mixture will bubble as it comes together. Working quickly, add the vegetable oil, garlic, and red onion in sequence, stirring briefly as each is added.
Add the prawns and stir to coat them evenly in the sauce, followed by the Cambray onion. Stir to combine, then remove from the heat.
Serve with rice to soothe the intensity of the dish. While white rice is recommended, I served Tôm Rim with a mixture of white rice, lotus rice, and Korean barley.
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