A Lazy Saturday Supper

Bun with Grilled Pompano and Nước Chấm

For nước chấm:
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. lime juice or rice vinegar
1/3 c. nước mắm (fish sauce)
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 t. red chilli flake
1 T. brown sugar (okay, I used palm sugar, but I a shameless geek. Use brown sugar).

Ninety-nine recipes out of a hundred will tell you to heat the liquid part of this recipe in order to disolve the sugar—and you can. Or you can just stir it a bunch like I did. It worked by and by, and I never needed to cool the mixture. I read at least one recipe that claimed that the boiling stage would allow you to keep the sauce longer. I wonder about that. The acid in the vinegar or lime juice and the salt in the fish sauce would work to preserve the stuff, but not enough to make it shelf-stable. With the garlic in there, you'd still need to refrigerate it and eat it sooner rather than later. Frankly, I never have any left over at the end of a meal, anyway. Oh, yes: set this aside until you're ready to eat.


For bún:
bún (Some. I don't know. A package? Two? It costs practically nothing.)
2 carrots, peeled and julienned (I use a Benriner, and a mandolin would work nicely)
1/2 bunch cilantro, torn whimsically
1/2 bunch fresh mint, handled similarly to the cilantro
1/2 head iceburg lettuce, chiffonade (or use a couple of head of butter lettuce)
cucumber, peel on, julienned
peanuts, chopped
Sriracha and hoisin sauces (for the table)

Follow the package directions to prepare the bún. This seems to always involve soaking the stuff in hot water. I tend to boil water for this purpose. If I don't, the noodles seem too wirey to my teeth. If you like yours softer, you might throw them into a boiling pot, but be careful to keep them at least passably al dente. Prepare all of the vegetables, taking care not to fuss over how they turn out. If you don't have a slicer, chop them by hand, as finely as you can manage. To prepare the bowl, put the lettuce and cucumber in the bottom of the bowl, topped with the noodles, topped with the herbs, carrots, and peanuts. (or some other order that suits you. It is totally irrelevant.) Set aside.

For grilled pompano:
(for about three pounds of whole fish)
3 T. fresh ginger, peeled and grated
6 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped fine
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
3 T. nước mắm (fish sauce—I used Three Crabs brand)
pompano or other small fish, about a pound of whole-fish weight per person (using pompano, this amounts to about three fish per serving)
coarse salt
lime wedges (for the platter)

Combine ginger, garlic, cilantro, and fish sauce in a bowl. Set aside.

Scale and clean fish if necessary. When working with the small, farm-raised pompano, I found kitchen shears worked best for removing the dorsal and pectoral fins and gills. Rinse fish clean and pat dry with kitchen towels. Using a sharp knife, make three sharp incisions in each side of the fish, cutting through the fillet to the spine but not through it. These cuts will let the marinade penetrate the fish. Toss the fish in the marinade, taking care to rub the mixture well into the cuts. Leave fish in bowl with marinade. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for as much time as you can manage, at least an hour or two.

Preheat your grill. I used an old, filthy, run-down propane Weber that suits me fine. If you have the time and patience to fire up charcoal or, saints preserve us, hardwood, more power to you. I prefer to eat an hour sooner, and while I can tell the difference, I can't say it seems worth the bother. Pull fish from marinade and wipe dry. Brush with oil or, better yet, spritz with a high-quality cooking spray (I use expeller-pressed sunflower oil from Spectrum. It works like Pam without the low-culture stigma.) The aerosol makes it easy to get a thin, even coat. Above all, make sure the fish isn't dripping oil, which will lead to sooty flare-ups, especially if you're being hardcore and using solid fuel under our grill. Salt the fish generously, remembering that much of it will fall off on the grill. The heat at grill time will vary with the size of your fish. Using tiny pompano, I ran the grill at the highest heat and left the burners on directly under the fish. Each side took about five minutes, which cooked the fish just through and nicely crisped the skin. If you use a bigger fish, you will want to use lower heat and leave the fish on the grill longer. If the fish is monstrous, you might want to cook the fish indirectly, but I would still leave the other burners on high.

To bring it all together, set out the grilled fish on a platter with some lime wedges. Give each diner a noodle bowl and a side of nước chấm. MY pompano were very bony, so my people needed plates for the fish, someplace to pick through the bones. If you had a fleshier fish, your people might be able to pull chunks of grilled fish from the carcass directly to their bowls. Splash the whole affair with lime juice and, if you care to, with Sriracha and/or hoisin sauces.

Here's the thing: I have a sad yet profound infatuation with Sriracha sauce. I think it goes back to a bar I used to drink at in Portland, OR, that used the stuff in lieu of ketchup with its fries. That got me hooked, and my jaded palatte now often doesn't register that I'd been fed unless I swallow down a half bottle of the stuff. Don't get me wrong: I doubt very much if this dish needs the added spice. I certainly don't think that the subtletly of the fish is embellished by the salty, searing condiment. But what can you do? I'm gonna eat it no matter what.