Cook-as-you-eat dishes are very popular in Vietnam. This one is made with either the best quality beef or seafood such as shrimp and squid or even clams. Traditionally, the cooking liquor is bought to the tables in a charcoal-fueled steamboat accompanied by two platters with the beef and the rice papers, Vietnamese mint, cilantro and purslane leaves. The dish is often served with slices of green banana or green mango, but unless there is a Vietnamese or Indian store near you, these may be difficult ingredients to come by.

Ingredients:

1 lb
11/3 cups
21/2 cups
3-inch piece
2
1
1
3
4
1 tsp
1 tbsp

To serve:
24


1
1

beef sirloin or fillet
rice wine vinegar
water
fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
tomatoes, quartered
large lemon grass stalk, chopped
onion, halved and thickly sliced
garlic cloves, crushed
scallions, chopped
salt
superfine sugar


prepared rice paper
handful of mint leaves
handful of cilantro leaves
star fruit, thinly sliced (optional)
recipe Nuoc Mam Dipping Sauce

 

Method:

1. Place the beef in the freezer for 1 hour to firm up; this makes it easier to slice thinly. Slice the beef and arrange on a serving plate.

2. Put the rice vinegar, water, ginger, tomatoes, lemon grass, onion, garlic, and scallions in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil briskly for 5 minutes. Add the salt and sugar, and pour into a steamboat or fondue pot.
    

3. Divide the rice papers, mint, cilantro, and star fruit between individual serving plates. Bring the bubbling stock, the plate of beef, the rice papers, and nuoc mam dipping sauce to the table.
    

4. To eat, diners put a few pieces of beef into the simmering stock and cook it to their taste. They lift it out of the stock with chopsticks, place it on a rice paper wrapper with a few herb leaves, and roll it up into a cigar shape, which they dip into the nuoc mam sauce and eat with the star fruit, if liked. The leftover broth can be drunk as a soup.

Serves 4