I have been a fan of Vietnamese food ever since the early 1990s, when a friend took me to a small street café just outside Saigon and ordered spring rolls. Like most people, I suspect, I can take or leave spring rolls. Too often they are soggy and taste like something that should really have been left at the bottom of a compost heap. But not these. These were filled with a delicious pork mixture and served with a mound of fresh herbs and crisp lettuce. I was sold. The rest of my time in Saigon was spent testing out the best food I could find - and there was plenty of it. Jump forward twelve years, when I stumbled across a recipe for 'Sweet and Sour Fish Soup' in a recent issue of Harper's Bazaar. This version claimed to be handed down from an unsmiling nanny to her ward and then on to the author of the article. It was too good a challenge to turn down. Canh chua ca (its proper Vietnamese name) has a list of ingredients as long as your arm. Lemongrass, shallots, ginger, spring onions, mint, basil, coriander, lime... this reads like a list of all my favourite ingredients. But in canh chua ca, they all make cameo appearances, for the real star is the tamarind paste. Buying all of these ingredients in my home town of Kota Kinabalu, capital of the state of East Malaysia on the island of Borneo, simply means a trip to the local vegetable market - and the local fish market, handily just opposite. The first attempt had too much tamarind. Three tablespoons to a litre of fish stock leaves you needing mouth wash. The next three attempts produced a more balanced taste and a few modifications to the recipe. One tablespoon of tamarind is ample, red snapper is better than sea bass, little red onions can replace shallots, bean sprouts are essential and the pineapple needs to be juicy.  | | | The golden bowl: but even canh chua ca in Hanoi can’t compare to home-made |
A recent trip to Hanoi allowed me to put my soup up against the real thing. The first sample featured dill and vinegar and the fish was trout. The tomato was cut into bigger portions, which I liked, but there was no scattering of fresh herbs on top. Not bad, but not really up to scratch. The next had bits of celery floating on top of a rather watery fluid. This inauspicious start continued with a broth of no complexity, very little if any tamarind and doc mung, which the Vietnamese translate as 'mud fish'. The name says it all. After three days of tests, I came to the reluctant but very self-satisfied conclusion that my canh chua ca was better than any I had eaten in Hanoi. Feeling smug, I sat down to a dinner party with friends who had recently worked in Saigon. "Canh chua ca?" they echoed. "Wonderful stuff. There is an island in the middle of the Mekong that is famous for it. You must go there." And one day I will. There is no end to the quest for perfection. | 
