Our Blog
Welcome to our blog! We’re here to share our traditional Vietnamese and other recipes. We hope you find our recipes to be:
- Delicious – always the main thing! Most of our recipes have to past the taste test from some pretty ruthless family critics. If they are happy we hope you will be too!
- Authentic – we are part of a large Vietnamese family, and know what Vietnamese food should taste like. While our recipes aren’t always 100% traditional we do try to stay true to the dish, just maybe with a few clever extra ingredients or cheats along the way. You definitely won’t find avocado pho, banana rice paper rolls or anything like that here!
- Detailed – we want you to succeed in the kitchen, so you’ll find our blog posts have lots of tips and advice, especially around anything that’s likely to trip you up with a recipe. We also know lots of detail isn’t always what you want, so if you just need the recipe there is a “Jump to Recipe” button at the top of every blog post.
Who Exactly Are Scruff & Steph?
We’re a married couple living in Canberra, Australia. We’ve been together since our teens, which makes it close to twenty years now!
Scruff
Scruff’s real name is Andrew. He’s had the nickname Scruff since high school because he’s super scruffy. Many of his friends don’t know his real name.
Scruff’s parents were Vietnamese refugees who arrived in Australia in the early 1980’s. He has been eating Vietnamese food his whole life, and despite never doing any cooking growing up he was actually able to learn a whole lot just by watching his mum. He is now *nearly* as good a cook as she is. Scruff does most of the recipe development and photography on our blog.
While not working on our blog he is a stay-at-home dad to our two daughters.
Scruff’s favourite recipes are: Crispy Roast Pork Belly in Air Fryer, Quick Seafood and Garlic Linguine and Vietnamese Pork and Thick Noodle Soup (Banh Canh).
Steph
Steph is of Scottish/Cantonese descent, was born in the UK and has been in Australia since she was five. Steph grew up with a great mix of food from both her parents, and is responsible for introducing Scruff to warm puddings, Christmas turkey and great British classics like toad-in-the-hole.
Steph does most of the back-end work on our blog, as well as a lot of taste testing, washing up and reminding Scruff he really needs to get another post out.
While not working on our blog she works as an accountant.
Steph’s favourite recipes are: The Best Chinese Chicken and Egg Noodle Soup, Vietnamese Savoury Sticky Rice – Xoi Man (Cheat Version) and Vietnamese Caramelised Ginger Chicken (Ga Kho Gung).
Start Here…
If you’re new to Vietnamese cooking then you are about to discover an incredibly flavoursome, comforting and healthy cuisine. Do not be intimidated – cooking beautiful Vietnamese food is not as hard as it may seem, and while some ingredients may be unfamiliar there are many dishes that make use of common ingredients.
If you are just starting out, we recommend you try these recipes:
- Vietnamese Chicken Pho (Pho Ga)
- Easy Vietnamese Chicken Curry (Ca Ri Ga)
- Vietnamese Honeycomb Cake (Banh Bo Nuong)
- Vietnamese Lemongrass Pork Chops in Air Fryer
- Banh Flan (Vietnamese Creme Caramel)
Connect
We love connecting with our readers! You can keep in touch with us through:
Facebook @Recipes by Scruff & Steph
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Thank you for visiting our blog!