Even if he had a choice in the matter, Lucas Doan would have still cooked for a living.
The head chef of Luna Lu, an Asian-fusion restaurant in Sydney, was roped into working at the family restaurant in Vietnam when he was nine years old. His job was cooking the fried eggs for fried rice.
"It takes me a couple of times and I burn myself a couple of times until I got it," he says. "At the beginning, I did not really like it, but mum asked and then I enjoyed it and kept doing it every day."
Lucas Doan's mum helped to teach him how to cook. Source: Luna Lu
Like many Asian mothers, her cooking instructions were vague and it took Doan a while to figure out what to do, but one day it just clicked.
"I don't think I can be a good cook, I don't understand seasoning in the beginning - how much salt to put in, how much sugar, how do I know? My mum, she says, 'You have to add more'."
But he didn't know how much more to put in, and she didn't explain how to balance flavours.
"I just copy her and she tastes and she says, 'OK'. I kept following her and one day, I feel like it's not enough seasoning. It takes me a couple of years to figure out how to do it," he says.
He got to the stage where he didn't need to use a recipe to season dishes and balance flavours. "It's an important skill of chef, especially when cooking Asian food. We barely have proper recipes, the balance of the chef have to be good and they know what they are doing."
Half-Chinese and half-Vietnamese, Doan lived in Vietnam until he was 14.
"Mum is Vietnamese and Dad is Chinese, but I grow up more with Vietnamese food," he says.
He grew up in Ho Chi Minh City where his parents have a restaurant. "It's still going, Hai Anh restaurant. We are known for our seafood spring rolls with prawns and scallops, it's a signature dish."
Doan's mother also taught him how to make spring rolls.
"I watch her rolling every single roll for hours, day upon day, and that is how I learnt to make them," he says.
He says that rolling spring rolls is easy, but making them look nice is hard. "The trick how to roll the spring roll is the amount of filling inside, it is the most important thing. Too much filling and it is not rolled properly and comes out of the skin when frying it."
A young Lucas Doan. Source: Supplied
It's also important to fold the edges correctly otherwise the contents will come out. "Also, one trick is after you roll the spring roll you have to leave it in the freezer to let everything set and then fry it. For a really good shape, you have to leave everything set for about an hour."
I absolutely fall in love with this dish.
One of the dishes at Luna Lu is a duck spring roll, inspired by Doan's mum.
"One day she made a duck spring roll and added in so many different types of mushrooms. I absolutely fall in love with this dish, it become one of my favourite dishes to eat when I was a child, and now one of my favourite dishes to prepare as an adult," he says.
Spring rolls are a popular Vietnamese dish, but chefs can be creative when it comes to the filling. Meanwhile, roast duck is a popular Chinese mainstay. "My dad wasn't a chef but he loved that dish and he learned how to cook it."
His menu features more nostalgic flavours inspired by his mum, who used to hide vegetables in his rice.
Vietnamese spring rolls are a Doan family favourite. Source: Luna Lu
"When making fried rice, instead of traditional Chinese style, I bring my fried-rice memory with the bright colour. The purple rice was inspired by mum," he says.
If he didn't eat spinach, she'd blend it into puree and add it to the fried rice to make it more appealing.
At Luna Lu, the seafood candied rice marries the flavours of sweet and sour and gets its bright pink hue from beetroot.
"Luna Lu is a really special restaurant. It's Asian fusion so I'm doing a lot of techniques from a lot of countries," he says.
"What I like about my Chinese and Vietnamese heritage is that the Chinese cuisine have the really good technique to cook and the Vietnamese have the flavour. Mixing them together it becomes really good dishes."
Photographs by Luna Lu.
Duck spring rolls
Makes 16
Ingredients
- 16 x 20cm frozen spring roll wrappers, thawed
- 400 g roast duck meat, diced into small pieces
- 200 g shiitake mushroom
- 200 g Swiss brown mushroom
- 200 g button mushroom
- 100 g white fungus
- 3 tbsp plain flour, mixed with 3 tbsp water
- Vegetable oil for deep frying
Method
- To make the duck filling, place the mushrooms into a food processor and blend into tiny pieces.
- Heat a pan with vegetable oil on high heat and cook the mushrooms until soft. Add 1 tbsp of salt.
- Add roast duck meat and mix well.
- Chop the white fungus and add it to the mixture.
- Let the mixture rest for 30 minutes in the fridge.
- To make the spring rolls, place a wrapper on a clean bench top with one corner closest to you. Spread wrapper with 1 tsp of hoisin sauce and top with duck filling.
- Fold the bottom corner of the wrapper over the filling. Then fold in the sides and roll up from the bottom to the top. Just before reaching the top corner, use your finger to brush the corner with flour mixture and continue to roll to form a seal.
- Repeat until you have 16 spring rolls.
- Rest in the freezer for 1 hour.
- Heat to 180°C enough vegetable oil to deep fry the spring rolls. The oil is hot enough when you place a wooden spoon into the oil and this results in lots of bubbles. Fry spring rolls in batches for 2-3 minutes or until golden.
- Drain on a paper towel and serve warm.
VIETNAMESE AND CHINESE FOOD
Comfort calls for Vietnamese chicken congee (chao ga)
