After one of my epic Cô Giang food crawls, I always end up where the street intersects with Đe Thám. Here, you’ll find one of the busiest and biggest street food stalls in the vicinity. They’ve got three wok cooks, right on the street, generating lots of fire and smoke and hissing sounds; it’s ultra-high energy, the place is always pumping and you cannot miss it. I either order their crisp egg noodles or this dish, called ‘shaking beef’ in English. It’s a simple stir-fry, but the secret to its success is an extremely hot wok. Your wok needs to be so hot that when you add your cubes of beef, they immediately become engulfed in flame. Don’t worry, the flames die down pretty quickly, by which time they’ve imparted the smoky, charred flavours (or ‘breath of the wok’) essential to this dish, without which it would be a bit ordinary. The best way to cook it at home is in small batches, rather than the full recipe all at once, so you don’t crowd the wok. And please don’t cook the beef past medium or it won’t taste very good at all.