Susan Jung’s recipe for Vietnamese rice vermicelli with pig’s ears and chicken giblets

Vietnam is one of my favourite places for street food. Whether I’m in a big city or small town, there’s always something interesting and delicious to eat. I go from vendor to vendor, looking at what they are preparing before deciding if I still have room in my stomach – and almost always, the answer is yes.

Vietnamese rice vermicelli with pig’s ears, chicken giblets, cha lua and home-made chilli sauce

I tried this dish in Phan Thiet, on the coast of southeast Vietnam, earlier this year. My friends and I were wandering through the fish market by the harbour when we came across a vendor selling banh mi thit and another making a rice noodle dish that I was not familiar with. Even though I had eaten breakfast at the hotel, I was soon downing breakfasts number two and three.

The sandwich was good, of course, because the bread in Vietnam is excellent, but the noodles were fantastic: room-temperature rice vermicelli with sliced pig’s ear, sliced pork liver, cha lua (cold pork sausage with a slightly rubbery texture), bean sprouts and a handful of fresh herbs. After the vendor piled everything into a bowl, I expected her to add some nuoc cham (dipping sauce made up of fish sauce, lime juice, vinegar and sugar) but she ladled a generous amount of chilli-garlic sauce (tuong ot toi) over the ingredients instead. It was tongue-tinglingly spicy but balanced by sweet and sour flavours.

I made the tuong ot toi at home but it took a few attempts to get the spice balance right. It works best if you use equal amounts of spicy red chillies – as many varieties as you can find, for a more complex flavour – and red banana chillies, to balance the heat. It’s important to get the quantities right: weigh the chillies after removing the stems and seeds, and weigh the garlic after removing the skin. This sauce is now a staple in my fridge; it keeps for a few weeks.