About

About

Welcome to my website. I am the author of ‘Vietnamese – Simple Vietnamese Food To Cook At Home’. I am a photographer and film maker. You can book into my supper club, Vietnamese cooking classes, buy my book, check out my photography and lots more here.

Please follow me on instagram @loveleluu – Thank you so much for visiting x

Food Styling & Photograhy

My Photography Work

Supper Club

Supper Club

The supper club is held in my home in London Fields, Hackney. It is like a dinner party in the tradition of a Vietnamese feast with homemade Vietnamese food.

Classes

Classes

Vietnamese food is about the balance of flavours, of sweet, salty and sour – there is no measuring device that can ever match your own taste buds.

Subscribe to Blog

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

At Home, In My Kitchen

10670148_687605001308786_3130444070820890968_n

Olive Magazine – Aug 2014 Issue

My kitchen is the central station to everything that I do in life, work and love. Every cook will say its the beating heart, the soul and spirit of the home. My kitchen, “My Vietnamese Kitchen” serves a supper club (or two) every weekend; Vietnamese cooking classes on most Saturdays and during the week it becomes a photographic studio for food photography shoots and the home ec work station of shoots elsewhere. It works every day, all the time.

When I can have it back to it just being mine, I lovingly clean every nook and cranny with the calm, stillness and solitude I sometimes crave so much. The times when I can quietly enjoy making fresh pasta, fresh bread, ragu for the week/ the freezer, a roast dinner or a simple fried egg on toast is heavenly. It is when I can just breathe and feel grateful for the pleasures of such simplicities like being at home, in the kitchen.

10730943_708003962602223_7444859543816430587_n 10645283_707989409270345_1154315853986470631_n

My kitchen had always been upstairs in my “live” unit but it was high time I dug out my credit card and build a new one downstairs in my “work” unit. I just don’t know how I did it before, all those years of climbing those stairs and the kitchen not having unity with the dinning room! It was insane! But I had to cope with it, as I could never afford to build a new kitchen!

But fate changed, with the grandest thanks to Leisure & Beko who sponsored my Leisure Range Cooker; Beko American free standing fridge/ freezer; Beko washing machine & Beko dishwasher.

ellingfort kitchen cropped

I now have a beautiful range cooker with 2 ovens and a grill! Plus somewhere to store all my trays and baking tins! All the space on top means I can use it as a work surface as well as a cooking surface and a plating surface! It is like a dream come true to be able to make 2 different things in the ovens and not having to wait. Or to make use of the two and get things baking for the masses (of supper clubbers).

I can actually have my massive stockpot on the stove and still able to use all the rings! How did I ever do it before?

The fridge is my other most favourite and most useful thing. I can now store all the food in there because it is so big, its like a room in itself! All the food I have to get for the supper club, cooking classes and the photo shoots can all live in there til its needed. Whats also great about it is that it keeps my herbs and vegetables really crisp and fresh – which means it lasts longer too.

I am a very lucky girl indeed!

Not forgetting to mention: do you know how many tea towels I have to wash on a daily basis? Probably 30 a day! So Beko gave me a brilliant integrated washing machine which lets me do quick washes at the temperatures I want and I have a little countdown too, so I know how much time I have to do other things, like relaxing upstairs.

And I can not live without a dishwasher! I do do a lot of the washing up by hand because I need to use something again pretty quickly but for plates, glasses and cutlery – I must put those in because there is nothing else like a clean feel of glass and tableware. I love clean! I also love playing the game of how much you can stack in the dishwasher.

10462678_652136004855686_2074392108121943701_n

10530892_656704027732217_2685884277657440475_n

Uyen Luu - Supper Club - Leisure Range Cooker

Uyen Luu - Supper Club - Leisure Range Cooker

Building a new kitchen from scratch is not something that was done lightly. As anyone whose ever done any DIY or renovating knows, it can be the most stressful of times. Dust and dirt everywhere, having nowhere to be, stuff all over the place… and the builder never turning up on time, then leaving straight away (probably to another job) and promising you fake hopes of the light at the end of the tunnel… I ended up doing most of the redecorating and getting my hands dirty. It turned out well in the end but the stress that came with it was no joy and my pockets were full of holes. I learnt valuable lessons.

Always get a builder whose not a grumpy sod.

Always get everything in writing.

Never pay anyone by the day.

They never deliver when they say they will deliver – especially when everything else is reliant on it.

You always need more grout than it says on the packaging.

The list goes on….

10464111_653078274761459_8852691036772997978_n

Supper Club time!

1465175_658217777580842_6592281993757853894_n

10406634_662704800465473_3184931747219147795_n

I had a beautiful dinning room before (without the new kitchen) full of old things and furniture from when I had boutiques. I loved the things and the memories they gave me. The huge Victorian cabinet was the shop counter for many years when I enjoyed wrapping presents for customers like Kiera Knightley, Katie Holmes, James McAvoy to John Malkovich; where I laughed and danced with my friends but it was time for new memories to be made, one with this new kitchen of mine.

Thank you so much to Leisure & Beko for my wonderful appliances. Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Since then, I have filmed a few recipes for Leisure Range Cookers which I will share in another blog post.

Cubby

My little cubby office

10712951_701138406622112_4901826282224457609_n

A place to set up all the food scenes as well as enjoying a lovely lunch.

Uyen Luu - Supper Club - Leisure Range Cooker

Me with lots of makeup on! Please follow me on instagram @loveleluu for all the joys that comes from this kitchen.