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Some of us are blessed by partners who are culinarily curious and shower us with love from the kitchen. One visitor to the site wanted to please his wife with a very special Vietnamese dish -- mi Quang. Don't know what it is or how to make it? Read on!

Question:

Dear Andrea,

My wife just got back from a trip to Vietnam and can't stop talking about a dish called Mi Quang. I have found a lot of info but no recipes. I am hoping you may be able to find one or many, if there are variations, for me.

Thank you in advance.

Answer:

Thanks for your inquiry about mi Quang. It's a specialty of the central region of Vietnam, from Quang Nam province. (Note that the Quang is capitalized as a reference to the locale.) Did your wife enjoy it in Da Nang or Hoi An?

Unfortunately, I don't have a personal recipe for it. Because it's a fairly complicated dish (you'll see below!), I eat it out at Viet restaurants that specialize in central Vietnamese food. I've never made it at home. However, below are my comments and a loose outline for you to follow in order to prepare mi Quang.

Essentially it's a rice noodle dish but with not much broth. The broth doesn't cover the noodles, as you'd expect in a bowl of pho. Rather, it just sort of helps move the noodles around the bowl. The broth is fairly well cooked down, with perhaps chicken and shrimp, or pork (use pork neck bones), crab, fish or beef -- sort of whatever you've got around. In some of my Vietnamese language cookbooks, they say for you to sauté the protein elements first for your broth. (I've also seen recommendations for you to marinate these ingredients before making the broth but that doesn't seem necessary.) Then flavor them with the usual Viet suspects -- fish sauce, salt, pepper and perhaps a bit of sugar. Add in your water and then some onion, tomato and pineapple and let the broth simmer for hours. (My guess is about 2 to 3 hours.)

The tomato gives just a touch of orange color, so don't use a ton, but rather 1 regular tomato or 2 Romas. I imagine that the pineapple adds an interesting tart-sweet note; you don't need a whole peeled pineapple, perhaps just a 1-inch thick round. Get your wife to verify the seasoning and adjust the flavor with fish sauce, salt and sugar. Vietnamese cooks would use MSG to give a bit of extra boost. The broth should be very flavorful because you're not going to use much of it in the bowl. Keep simmering until you're satisfied and then strain the broth.

As for the noodles, use medium to wide width (about 1/4 inch wide) rice noodles (banh pho). Soak in hot water to soften and then blanch individual portions in boiling water to cook. Get together your vegetable components: mung bean sprouts, herbs (culantro, cilantro, Asian/Thai basil), thin slices of banana blossom (soak in acidulated water and use just the petals) and shredded lettuce (use romaine for crunch).

Among the rather long list of protein garnishes are some feasible items that you can prepare or purchase: poached shrimp, slices of poached chicken, slices of Vietnamese steamed pork pate (gio), pork cracklings and chopped roasted unsalted peanuts. You may want to use some slices of cooked pork. If you do, poach a pork chop in the broth, as you would similarly poach the shrimp. Throw the bones and shells back into the broth to add extra flavor. As for the poached chicken, if you use chicken carcasses, poach a chicken breast in the broth as it cooks. If you're using a whole chicken to make the broth, pull the meat off after about 45 minutes of simmering.

You also need some toasted rice cracker (ba trang nuong/ba da) that's broken up into shards.

Now, assemble each bowl by:

1) Lining the bowl with your vegetables.
2) Adding a mound of cooked noodles.
3) Topping with your selection of protein garnishes.
4) Ladling in some boiling hot broth -- not to completely cover the noodles, just enough to grace the noodles, perhaps covering them by about 1/3.
5) Garnish with 2 or 3 shards of toasted rice cracker. The shards are usually smallish pieces about 3 inches wide.

When you eat this dish, break the rice cracker shards up into smaller pieces and mix everything up. Diners may add a squirt of lime or some chili slices for heat.

Oddly enough, all of this together tastes pretty good. That's the full-on approach. I suppose you could cheat and doctor up some thinned out canned chicken stock (1 stock: 2 water) and perhaps a little dried shrimp along with the other broth ingredients. You could try this at first and see what she thinks. The broth really does vary so much and the only constant is the onion, tomato and pineapple. If you use canned stock then reduce the total simmering time to 1 hour. It won't be as complex but will save you time.

The thing with mi Quang is that you end up spending lots of time prepping the other garnishes. If you were a small shop in Vietnam specializing in this, well, things would be a lot easier. However, know that Vietnamese food is a series of riffs and that what's important is knowing the basics.

Sorry, I don't have a recipe for this dish. I hope I was able to help you.

Let me know if you attempt to make mi quang and how it turns out. I'd love to know!

Regards,

Andrea

P.S.

I just remembered that one of the unique things about mi Quang is the color of the rice noodles. They're yellow. There's this big deal about how the noodles are made, etc. But, in the U.S. I'm pretty sure that the dried rice noodles (banh pho) are soaked in water to which yellow food coloring has been added. You can add a little ground turmeric to the soaking water for a natural yellow color. I believe that in making fresh noodles for mi Quang, a little turmeric juice is added.

Good luck,

Andrea

Add'l suggestions from visitors:

Suggestion 1:

Mi Quang from Hoi An and Da Nang are served with broad yellowish rice noodle. My parents' cook in the States uses broad rice noodle normally for pho or chowfun, then soaks it with tumeric powder as you mentioned. The broth is made with pork tubular bones and dried shrimps as if one would make for hu tieu Nam Vang (see Khmerkromrecipes.com); then in a separate sauce pan, few bowls of the broth then further reduced by 1/2 prior to serving (more so as a thin sauce than broth). The cook also boils pork with skin in this broth; then use the sliced boiled pork for topping (besides boiled prawns). Mint is a must as garnish, she says.

Suggestion 2 from Toan T. Thai (Upper Darby, PA, USA):

There's a few basic elements implemented by my folks that I should point out in begging to differ to your suggestions, that they do not use tomato and pineapple, instead, they use pumpkin which gives the broth a general yellowish color (the pumpkin is cooked to soften the inner flesh which is then extracted with a spoon, then mix it well in a thick broth of crabmeat, shrimps and pork belly); and the dry, pre-made noodles are being soaked in moderate temperature (not necessary warm or even hot) water for an hour or so before boiling.

Historically and culturally, from what I understand, being a longtime popular dish cherished by the common people throughout the Quang province, mi Quang is variably prepared from house to house, there is no standardized version that serves to epitomize its kind; in my reasoning, this is maybe why it's hard to see someone bold enough to post an official recipe for they might get flamed at being too presumptuous. I guess your VNese is good enough to pick this article up, http://www.xuquang.com/dacsan/htt-khauvimiquang.html; I do agree to what it says, that, unlike those from the North and South of Vietnam, the Quang people like to prepare their dishes in a simple way so to retain and promote the original flavor of the primary substance, the practice is ranged to Quang Ngai, Sa Huynh and even Qui Nhon. Still, this site does feature a quick, generic instruction on how to make mi Quang (http://xuquang.com/dacsan/lammiquang.html), it suggests to use tomato and pineapple like you do. (I don't know where my folks learned to use pumpkin instead--peculiar, huh?!)

[Note that both of the sites above are in Vietnamese only.]

Suggestion 3 from Vy Tran:

Mi quang without the egg is like eating hamburger without the tomato. It still tastes alright but it is not really a mi quang. The story behind the egg is that back when Da Nang was still a semi poor region of Viet Nam (1810-1905), most of the people living in that region were self-sufficient farmers. The reason why mi quang has no historical, written recipe is because it is a dish you'd prepare with whatever you've got at the house at that time.

Since most of the people at that region at that time were farmers that do manual labor all day, eating a hearty breakfast or early meal was importance to them. They realized that by adding a few quail eggs that could not sell for much money at the market could make their day last a bit longer in the field. Since then it has became somewhat a tradition to put egg, especially quail egg in mi quang. Nowadays, people do use duck egg in place of quail egg since it is cheaper. The way to prepare the eggs for mi quang is to boil and peel the eggs then put them in whole to cook with the rest of the ingredients.

If you ever have a chance to visit Da Nang you can try the mi quang at the place of origin. It is located about 12 miles north of Da Nang at a place call Tuy Loan. While there, you might also want to try the fish rice noodle soup (bun cha ca), or poached pork rolled in rice paper (thit luot cuon banh trang) too.