Culinary Vietnam

Culinary Vietnam

Daniel Hoyer

CULINARY VIETNAM

Digital Edition v1.0

Text © 2009 Daniel Hoyer

Location Photography © 2009 Aidan Dockery

Food Photography © 2009 Marty Snortum

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith, Publisher

PO Box 667

Layton, UT 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

ISBN: 978-1-4236-1236-0

For you again, Ian: your spirit lingers and continues to guide me. Our journey together has been bittersweet but it always follows the path with a heart. Peace.

Acknowledgments

I owe much thanks to many for this book. For some of you, I do not even know your names, but I am grateful for your help. Those that have especially helped, guided or inspired me include: Pepe, Marny, Phuong, Hue, Tra My, Huy, Ha, Aidan, Moon (Hang), Tung, Marty, and Khai. Nancy and Tristan, thank you for your willingness to try new things and your patience for my harebrained schemes. Tram, thank you for all of your thoughtful insight into the philosophy and practice of food in your amazing country, I am fortunate to have a “niece” like you. Finally, Lai, I do not think you know how much help you have been to me. You opened many doors to Vietnam that I would not have found so easily myself and taught me much about the “Vietnamese way.” I am eternally grateful.

Culinary Vietnam

Table of Contents

Preface

Dipping Sauces & Condiments

Appetizers, Snacks & Beverages

Salads

Soups & Noodle Dishes

Beef Dishes

Pork Dishes

Poultry Dishes

Seafood Dishes

Rice & Banh Dishes

Vegetable Dishes

Sources

Metric Conversion Chart

Along with many of my friends, both American and Vietnamese, you may wonder why I have chosen to write about Vietnamese cooking. The other common question is, “How do you, as a foreigner, have the background, experience, and expertise to try to teach others about this cuisine that has been developing for thousands of years?”

The first one is easy. Vietnam has been beckoning me for many years, starting during the war years, when I was faced with the prospect of being drafted and had watched friends, classmates, relatives, and neighbors who were affected by the war, either by serving or through the clash of ideology that caused so much divisiveness in our country. I received a personal reprieve and was spared a difficult decision when President Nixon cancelled the draft in July of 1973, but not before the war had stamped an indelible impression on me. I lost friends through battle casualties and because of disagreements over the conflict. Our nation is still reeling from that era, and feelings remain deep and intense. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, there was an influx of Vietnamese refugees arriving in the United States, and many of them found work in the restaurant industry or opened places of their own. I had the pleasure of working with some of these amazing people during my restaurant career, and the Vietnamese restaurants that began springing up provided my first taste of what has become one of my favorite foods. Interestingly, some of my new Vietnamese friends and coworkers actually taught me how to cook Chinese food, since many hailed from the Saigon area and had worked for Chinese restaurants or were ethnic Chinese themselves. I applied this newfound knowledge a few years later when I opened a critically acclaimed Chinese restaurant in a ski resort in Colorado—no mean feat for a boy from Kansas.

I continued to be aware of Vietnam and the difficult times the people there were facing during the ’80s and early ’90s, and I noted the positive changes that were taking place in economic development and personal freedoms as the ’90s progressed. During that time, I made a very close friend who was of Vietnamese and French descent. His father’s family had evacuated to France after the collapse of the colonial system, and he was born in France. His father had since returned to his home country, first for some humanitarian work and then to live there again. My friend visited his father in Saigon around 1995, shortly after the country was opened again to Westerners, and then returned to live there for some time. He shared many stories with me and rekindled my interest in Vietnamese food and culture. He also insisted that I needed to visit, as he felt that the cooking there was something that I could relate to and that I would find it a fascinating place. We talked a lot about the possibility of starting some culinary tours there, similar to what I was developing in Mexico. For some reason, we were never able to coordinate our schedules or budgets, and we were unable to travel to Vietnam together.

All of this—along with an emerging Vietnamese restaurant scene, the availability of previously hard-to-find ingredients, and an increasing interest in Asian flavors in America and Europe—fueled my interest in Vietnamese cooking and the possibility of visiting and writing about the country.

As to my credentials for writing a cookbook about Vietnam, I have nothing but a powerful interest and curiosity, a sympathetic view, and experience in writing about another country’s cuisine from a nonnative perspective, namely Mexico. In
Culinary Mexico,
I approached the cooking of that country as an informed outsider who had immense respect for the culture and cooking. In it, I attempted to help illuminate the history, cultural background, traditions, and techniques of the cuisine for the non-Mexican reader. I will let the results speak for themselves; however, one reaction to that effort makes me very proud. Many Mexicans have told me that they recognize some of their favorite dishes and appreciate the accuracy and respect that I have given to the cooking of their native country. They also tell me that they have learned some new aspects to Mexican cooking, as I tried to cover the entire scope of the cuisine, and that there was information available about other regions’ approaches to cooking that they had never understood before. I do not claim to be an expert on all things pertaining to Mexican cooking; I only wanted to give a point of view and to help with preserving some of the traditions and connect them with the contemporary developments in Mexican food. I have the same goals with
Culinary Vietnam.

There is no possibility that I can cover all aspects of Vietnamese cooking, which would be a daunting, near-impossible task even for a native-born Vietnamese cook. The cuisine has a history of thousands of years in development and countless influences from other cultures, as well as regional and personal variations too numerous to catalog. I am not attempting to write the definitive collection of Vietnamese recipes; what I hope to do is to open a window into the methods, theories, and background of the cuisine and to give some historical and cultural context to it all while showing the reader just how broad the scope of Vietnamese cooking is. My target readers are Western cooks, but my hope is that Vietnamese cooks will also find it accurate, interesting, and informative. I have used all of the resources that I had available: several visits to the country, where I observed, experienced, and took in as much about the food and culture as I could; cookbooks; magazines; restaurants; markets; advice, instruction, and recipes from Vietnamese friends and acquaintances; the Internet; and countless hours of experimenting and practicing in my own kitchen. The recipes herein are unavoidably colored and informed by my own cultural background, experiences, cooking style, and tastes; however, at all times I have tried to honor the soul of Vietnamese cooking and to give an accurate portrayal of the cuisine of that country. In some cases, I have changed ingredients to suit my tastes, the tastes of Western cooks, and the availability of ingredients in the West. I have tried to remain true to the premise or essence of the dishes though. My goal is to inspire cooks everywhere to cook more Vietnamese dishes and to help them along on a journey of learning and enjoying the wonderful food of this amazing country.

Vietnam is a country that has a long and colorful history. It was first populated by a variety of indigenous groups, many who are still evident today. The Chinese were early invaders and had a lasting influence on the cooking and culture of the country. From India came the Buddhist philosophy that was integrated with many of the animist beliefs that were widely held. Vietnam has a long and storied royal lineage and was later colonized by the French. Revolutions followed, and the recent war with the U.S. and the unification of the country in 1975 all had a profound effect. Throughout their sometimes difficult history, the Vietnamese people have proven to be clever, resilient, hardworking, family-centric, gracious, and joyful.

The food of Vietnam reflects the history, climate, and geography of the country as well as the spirit of the populace. The country is situated in Southeast Asia, roughly between 9 degrees and 22 degrees north of the equator, giving it a tropical to subtropical climate. That, along with some variation in altitude and two monsoon seasons affording it an abundance of water in most locations, has created a diverse selection and bounty of ingredients, many available year-round. In the north, anchored by the dignified ancient capital city of Hanoi, there is the agricultural bounty of the Red River Delta region, the far-northern hills and mountains with several all-but-isolated hill tribe groups, and the coastline that runs north to south the entire length of the country. The North has the greatest influence from China and more of a preference for wheat over rice as a food staple than in the south. The food in the north tends to be a bit more austere than its southern counterpart, utilizing a simpler array of seasonings and a more conservative approach, but flavor and sophistication are not lacking by any means.

The central portion of Vietnam contains an agrarian base, and Hue was the royal seat in the past. This royal gastronomy tradition continues to be sustained, and its somewhat closely guarded secrets mark one of the finer cuisines of the world. The royal cuisine stills exerts some influences in the central region even today; from home cooking to street and market stalls and restaurants, the portions tend to be smaller with a larger array of plates offered, reminiscent of the bounty laid out for the emperor and his court. The cooks in the central area also favor some bold flavors such as chiles, fermented shrimp sauce, and pickled items. Peanuts are often used as a garnish.

In the south, cosmopolitan Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is the largest metropolitan area, and it is teeming with over six million residents. The south enjoys a warm and tropical climate year-round and includes the fertile Mekong Delta and the coastline, dotted with fishing villages and a new influx of seaside and island resorts. The cooking there is rice-based and includes fresh fruits and a large assortment of vegetables as well as a vast array of seafood delicacies. Outside influences have been freely incorporated into the exuberant cooking of the south. Dishes from other parts of Southeast Asia, India, China, and the West all make appearances on the tables of the south or at least lend some flavors and techniques to inform the cooking here.

In general, Vietnamese cooking is a tantalizing blend of clean, fresh, bright, sweet, and hot flavors. Steaming, stewing, and grilling techniques are more common than frying. Fresh herbs and hot chiles play an important role. The aspects of flavor, aroma, texture, color, contrast, balance, and even the sound a food makes are all taken into consideration in the planning and creation of a Vietnamese meal. This simple, agricultural-based peasant cuisine has been infused with a gracious and unpretentious sophistication through the European influence of the French and the royal cuisine of Hue, as evidenced in part by the first-rate baguette available nearly everywhere around the nation. Today’s Vietnamese cooking has been informed and shaped into its unique identity through its history, climate, and geography and, perhaps more than anything else, by the tenacious, resourceful, creative, clever, and gracious people of that country.