This celebratory pork belly, mung bean, and shrimp floss pizza comes to us from Vietnamese-American Chef Tuan Tran, the pizza-maker and restaurateur and host of the YouTube series, Cooking with Chef Tuan. Inspired by traditional Lunar New Year fare, this pizza is loaded with crispy, salty, umami flavours.  

When he set out to come up with a recipe for a pizza to celebrate Tét (short for Tết Nguyên Đán - one of the most important celebrations in Vietnamese culture, celebrating the arrival of spring), Tuan immediately thought of bánh tét, the sticky rice cake he and his family eat to ring in the New Year. For the uninitiated, these banana-leaf wrapped rolls are filled with sticky (or glutinous) rice, pork belly and mung beans and then steamed. Salty, tender, and a little sweet, these flavours also make for a great pizza.

Tuan grew up in Michigan, eating Italian-American pizza alongside Vietnamese dishes, so naturally, he created a recipe that fuses the two (or more) cultures. He chose some of his favourite Vietnamese ingredients — fish sauce, shrimp floss, and mung beans, among others — to layer on a pizza that draws inspiration from the flavour combinations of traditional Italian pizzas. 

Starting with the base, Tuan drew inspiration from traditional pesto and put his own twist on it using  Thai basil, coriander and peanut pistou for a bright green, nutty, fresh sauce. He adds a drizzle of fish sauce to the pesto as a nod to the typical Italian addition of anchovy. A bit of shrimp floss (dried shrimp that’s been rehydrated, then blitzed in a food processor) is added on top–– for a salty, fishy bite. Mung beans (small, green legumes with a buttery, nutty flavour) combined with a hit of nutritional yeast add a crumbly texture and a Parmesan-like flavour profile. But the main attraction of this pizza is the crispy pork belly. Tuan often takes a shortcut when making this at home, as he buys his pork belly from one of his favourite local Chinese restaurants, but if you’re up for the challenge, we’ve got a Vietnamese porchetta recipe that walks you through making it from scratch. 

If you’re looking for a pork belly substitution, Tuan suggests that “a cube of mortadella will also give you a traditional shape and familiar mouthfeel”, as it mimics the sliced portion size and taste of a silky, steamed pork belly in bánh tét.  So, if you’re not ready to take on making your own pork belly or you live closer to an Italian deli than a Chinese restaurant or supermarket, cubes of mortadella work great.

All of these flavours combined make for a delectable pizza that’s both familiar and celebratory for the Lunar New Year or any other time of year. Upon the first bite of his new concoction, Tuan summed it up nicely by saying, “it just hits home.”