Vua Cua sauces and Banh Mi

“You are so lucky, you get the best dinners every night!” That’s often the reaction I get when people find out what I do. I can’t help be wildly bemused when I hear such an assumption. I don’t challenge the first part, they are lucky, but the second clause can’t be further from reality.

Don’t get me wrong, I love good food but cooking doesn’t happen every night. The ritual of feeding my family can, on some days, drain me and often I’m stumped with what to make. It happens more often than I care to admit. But that’s also because my creativity gets channeled with projects and work that’s unrelated to dinner plans though not always.

When work projects becomes dinner, I am happiest and most productive and that’s usually when you’d be invited over. To see the good parts. For all the other times, I fall back on Vua Cua Sauce and Banh Mi.

I love a good Banh Mi. It's so simple, just dip for a piece of Banh Mi into salted egg sauce, it gives a most satisfying bite. A slather of the salted egg sauce, which I think you should warm because you might want it on demand as soon as you taste it, brings things up a notch. And the chili oil sauce, which I used for a mild spicy can be swapped with a few coils of chili pepper.

If you’re going the protein route, you can mix some crab or other seafood with the seasoning salted egg sauce. It all works. Banh Mi and Vua Cua Sauce are reliable like that.