Eating Vietnamese
From "Ravenous" column for Ulster Publishing.
Vietnamese food deserves its burgeoning popularity, managing to taste rich and complex while being light and healthy, laced with fresh herbs, lemongrass, galangal, ginger, garlic, lime, hot chilies and star anise, based on fresh vegetables, fruits and rice, with small amounts of savory meats. Once you taste it done right you’ll be hooked like I was.
In my house we’re celebrating New Year’s now, Vietnamese New Year, that is. We’re welcoming The Year of the Pig for Tet, a holiday we celebrate because my daughter was born in Hanoi. Before we adopted her five years ago I didn’t know much about Vietnamese food, had eaten mediocre, lackluster versions in a couple restaurants, but didn’t really know what it was all about. As we waited interminably for the unknown child we were told would probably be a boy, I bought a Vietnamese cookbook, and another, and another, studying, cooking, discovering. After two trips there that totaled five weeks time, lots of cooking Vietnamese dishes at home, with a trip to Little Saigon in Orange County, Cal. thrown in, I understand it better. And I’m in love for life with its vibrancy, harmonious balance and its intoxicating variety of flavor, color and textures.
Traditional for Tet is banh chung, a big bundle of a banana leaf wrapped around a layer of green-tinged rice, then peppered pork and mung beans. I did make it a couple years ago but it’s a project perhaps best left to the pros. Other traditional Tet dishes are stewed pig feet with bamboo shoots, dried pig skin soup, boiled chicken, papaya salad, and a heaping tray of mut: candied rose petals, peach blossoms, kumquats, mandarin oranges and persimmons, even potatoes and carrots, all soaked in sugar and cooked.
Last year for a party I made pork braised in coconut juice and nem, or cha gio, crispy spring rolls filled with crab or shrimp and pork, wrapped in lettuce and dipped in nuoc cham sauce, but this year I just cooked a simple meal of dishes that I could get the ingredients for: a lush chicken rice dish with dried shiitakes and canned straw mushrooms from Nicole Routhier’s The Foods of Vietnam (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1989), sweet marinated barbecued pork, green beans sautéed with slivered garlic, fish sauce and black pepper and a silky coconut flan, none of them traditional Tet dishes, but all of them good.
On our first trip to Vietnam we stayed in a big suite in a sumptuous palace that straddled the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where American GIs were held during what the Vietnamese call the “American War.” Each morning for five days we visited our then two-month-old daughter at her orphanage, for an hour each day, watching her while she slept. Later we wandered crooked, crowded streets scented of jasmine, frankincense and pork smoke, strolling shady boulevards around elegant lakes, dodging motor scooters, and exploring dark musty markets redolent of pungent dried fish and ripe fruits.
With our fellow adopting parents, consoling ourselves for not being able to bring our sweet babies home yet, we went to the lovely Indochine restaurant for live haunting Vietnamese music and chicken and banana flower salad, pork-stuffed squid, fish with lemongrass, meatloaf in bamboo, chicken with chilies, sticky rice steamed with coconut milk and coconut ice cream. And at the French/Vietnamese Hoa Sua, a beautiful restaurant that trains disadvantaged youths in the restaurant business, we had tender pork in caramel sauce, soup with water spinach and chicken meatballs, a salad of soy beans and peanuts, an exquisite omelet with tomato, potato, cheese, ham and fines herbes, lentil and lardon salad, frites, peasant bread and apple tart. At San Ho we listened to live music from two pianos and dined on fried anchovies, mini-pizzas with shrimp, squid, peanuts and cheese, French fries with garlic butter, abalone and mushrooms, huge grilled tiger prawns, steamed sea bass, eggplant with garlic, water spinach with salted bean curd, and a banana fritter.
On our own we ventured off on our own for baguette sandwiches stuffed with French-inspired pâté, or mysterious and sundry-shaped packets of banana leaves wrapped around an assortment of savory treasures within. We crouched on impossibly tiny plastic stools in the street and slurped huge bowls of rich pho, a pork and beef broth scented with anise, fat noodles within, strips of beef parts--rare to well-done--strewn across the top, condiments to make it truly our own, an assortment of herbs familiar and non, with chili sauce to zip it up. In Hanoi pho is a favorite breakfast, and a finer way to start a day I can’t imagine.
There were other succulent noodle dishes, too, like cellophane noodles with fried baby eels at a market stall, and there was a dinner at a place that specialized in the cuisine of Hue, in the central part of the country where there is a spicy imperial cuisine; that one consisted of grilled duck served on a bed of aromatic mint and basil and then stir-fried eel with scallions and cilantro. At eateries from streetside simple to elegant, we had snails boiled with ginger leaves, crispy mini mystery “ribs,” prawns steamed in beer, fish with mushrooms, water spinach with garlic, all with rice as fluffy and aromatic as a perfumed pillow.
For breakfast every day we had fine French style baguettes and an array of fruits new and familiar: creamy custard apples, hairy red rambutans, bananas, mango, green oranges, dragon fruit like a huge magenta kohlrabi, sugary baby pineapples and huge white peaches.
Returning to Hanoi two months later to fetch our daughter, we stayed in a much tinier hotel with shoebox rooms but a supportive staff, in a cozier section of Hanoi, and continued to discover the city on foot, this time with our baby in a sling around my neck. We had more pho and tried another delicious Hanoi specialty, bun cha, smoky pork and seasoned ground pork patties cooked over a wood fire and served with rice noodles, a thin sweet-sour sauce and a mountain of herbs for embellishment.
After a few days we flew the length of the skinny country to Saigon, now officially Ho Chi Minh City, where with seven other families we stayed a few weeks longer than planned due to delays imposed by US immigration. Saigon was crazy, huge, teeming with human life and spiffy stucco French colonial villas. There we sampled the cuisine of the South, spicier and sweeter, with aromatic curries rich with coconut milk. With other parents we went to the local “pancake house,” not IHOP but a place specializing in banh xeo, a crispy rice flour/egg/coconut milk crepe studded with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts.
We also had a killer chicken version of pho at a place that served only that but served it perfectly, lemongrass pork chops off a metal plate with cucumbers, everything with the tasty nuoc cham for dipping, made of garlic, lime, fish sauce and chilies, sweet/sour/salty/sweet in a bowl. We ate sections of sweet grapefruit-like pomelo sprinkled with salt and cayenne, clay pot catfish simmered in a sweet/bitter caramel sauce, and comforting chao ga, a chicken porridge far better than it sounds.
All the variety is washed down with myriad beverages as delicious as the food, like exquisite pineapple juice, fresh purifying coconut water, complex, fruity sugarcane juice, aromatic delicate teas, rich fine coffee iced or hot and laced with sweetened condensed milk, freshly made beer on tap.
This is only a hint of the world of Vietnamese food, and we didn’t even try everything when we went, missing cha ca, the classic Hanoi specialty of fish golden with turmeric and laced with dill, chao muc or squid porridge (for real!), glass noodles studded with crabmeat, or fruit bat, lizard or snake wine. Perhaps we'll return when the kids are nine or ten--I truly hope so--but in the meantime I’ll just keep piling up the Vietnamese cookbooks, cooking my butt off and counting the hours until I can go back.
Vietnamese food deserves its burgeoning popularity, managing to taste rich and complex while being light and healthy, laced with fresh herbs, lemongrass, galangal, ginger, garlic, lime, hot chilies and star anise, based on fresh vegetables, fruits and rice, with small amounts of savory meats. Once you taste it done right you’ll be hooked like I was.
In my house we’re celebrating New Year’s now, Vietnamese New Year, that is. We’re welcoming The Year of the Pig for Tet, a holiday we celebrate because my daughter was born in Hanoi. Before we adopted her five years ago I didn’t know much about Vietnamese food, had eaten mediocre, lackluster versions in a couple restaurants, but didn’t really know what it was all about. As we waited interminably for the unknown child we were told would probably be a boy, I bought a Vietnamese cookbook, and another, and another, studying, cooking, discovering. After two trips there that totaled five weeks time, lots of cooking Vietnamese dishes at home, with a trip to Little Saigon in Orange County, Cal. thrown in, I understand it better. And I’m in love for life with its vibrancy, harmonious balance and its intoxicating variety of flavor, color and textures.
Traditional for Tet is banh chung, a big bundle of a banana leaf wrapped around a layer of green-tinged rice, then peppered pork and mung beans. I did make it a couple years ago but it’s a project perhaps best left to the pros. Other traditional Tet dishes are stewed pig feet with bamboo shoots, dried pig skin soup, boiled chicken, papaya salad, and a heaping tray of mut: candied rose petals, peach blossoms, kumquats, mandarin oranges and persimmons, even potatoes and carrots, all soaked in sugar and cooked.
Last year for a party I made pork braised in coconut juice and nem, or cha gio, crispy spring rolls filled with crab or shrimp and pork, wrapped in lettuce and dipped in nuoc cham sauce, but this year I just cooked a simple meal of dishes that I could get the ingredients for: a lush chicken rice dish with dried shiitakes and canned straw mushrooms from Nicole Routhier’s The Foods of Vietnam (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1989), sweet marinated barbecued pork, green beans sautéed with slivered garlic, fish sauce and black pepper and a silky coconut flan, none of them traditional Tet dishes, but all of them good.
On our first trip to Vietnam we stayed in a big suite in a sumptuous palace that straddled the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where American GIs were held during what the Vietnamese call the “American War.” Each morning for five days we visited our then two-month-old daughter at her orphanage, for an hour each day, watching her while she slept. Later we wandered crooked, crowded streets scented of jasmine, frankincense and pork smoke, strolling shady boulevards around elegant lakes, dodging motor scooters, and exploring dark musty markets redolent of pungent dried fish and ripe fruits.
With our fellow adopting parents, consoling ourselves for not being able to bring our sweet babies home yet, we went to the lovely Indochine restaurant for live haunting Vietnamese music and chicken and banana flower salad, pork-stuffed squid, fish with lemongrass, meatloaf in bamboo, chicken with chilies, sticky rice steamed with coconut milk and coconut ice cream. And at the French/Vietnamese Hoa Sua, a beautiful restaurant that trains disadvantaged youths in the restaurant business, we had tender pork in caramel sauce, soup with water spinach and chicken meatballs, a salad of soy beans and peanuts, an exquisite omelet with tomato, potato, cheese, ham and fines herbes, lentil and lardon salad, frites, peasant bread and apple tart. At San Ho we listened to live music from two pianos and dined on fried anchovies, mini-pizzas with shrimp, squid, peanuts and cheese, French fries with garlic butter, abalone and mushrooms, huge grilled tiger prawns, steamed sea bass, eggplant with garlic, water spinach with salted bean curd, and a banana fritter.
On our own we ventured off on our own for baguette sandwiches stuffed with French-inspired pâté, or mysterious and sundry-shaped packets of banana leaves wrapped around an assortment of savory treasures within. We crouched on impossibly tiny plastic stools in the street and slurped huge bowls of rich pho, a pork and beef broth scented with anise, fat noodles within, strips of beef parts--rare to well-done--strewn across the top, condiments to make it truly our own, an assortment of herbs familiar and non, with chili sauce to zip it up. In Hanoi pho is a favorite breakfast, and a finer way to start a day I can’t imagine.
There were other succulent noodle dishes, too, like cellophane noodles with fried baby eels at a market stall, and there was a dinner at a place that specialized in the cuisine of Hue, in the central part of the country where there is a spicy imperial cuisine; that one consisted of grilled duck served on a bed of aromatic mint and basil and then stir-fried eel with scallions and cilantro. At eateries from streetside simple to elegant, we had snails boiled with ginger leaves, crispy mini mystery “ribs,” prawns steamed in beer, fish with mushrooms, water spinach with garlic, all with rice as fluffy and aromatic as a perfumed pillow.
For breakfast every day we had fine French style baguettes and an array of fruits new and familiar: creamy custard apples, hairy red rambutans, bananas, mango, green oranges, dragon fruit like a huge magenta kohlrabi, sugary baby pineapples and huge white peaches.
Returning to Hanoi two months later to fetch our daughter, we stayed in a much tinier hotel with shoebox rooms but a supportive staff, in a cozier section of Hanoi, and continued to discover the city on foot, this time with our baby in a sling around my neck. We had more pho and tried another delicious Hanoi specialty, bun cha, smoky pork and seasoned ground pork patties cooked over a wood fire and served with rice noodles, a thin sweet-sour sauce and a mountain of herbs for embellishment.
After a few days we flew the length of the skinny country to Saigon, now officially Ho Chi Minh City, where with seven other families we stayed a few weeks longer than planned due to delays imposed by US immigration. Saigon was crazy, huge, teeming with human life and spiffy stucco French colonial villas. There we sampled the cuisine of the South, spicier and sweeter, with aromatic curries rich with coconut milk. With other parents we went to the local “pancake house,” not IHOP but a place specializing in banh xeo, a crispy rice flour/egg/coconut milk crepe studded with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts.
We also had a killer chicken version of pho at a place that served only that but served it perfectly, lemongrass pork chops off a metal plate with cucumbers, everything with the tasty nuoc cham for dipping, made of garlic, lime, fish sauce and chilies, sweet/sour/salty/sweet in a bowl. We ate sections of sweet grapefruit-like pomelo sprinkled with salt and cayenne, clay pot catfish simmered in a sweet/bitter caramel sauce, and comforting chao ga, a chicken porridge far better than it sounds.
All the variety is washed down with myriad beverages as delicious as the food, like exquisite pineapple juice, fresh purifying coconut water, complex, fruity sugarcane juice, aromatic delicate teas, rich fine coffee iced or hot and laced with sweetened condensed milk, freshly made beer on tap.
This is only a hint of the world of Vietnamese food, and we didn’t even try everything when we went, missing cha ca, the classic Hanoi specialty of fish golden with turmeric and laced with dill, chao muc or squid porridge (for real!), glass noodles studded with crabmeat, or fruit bat, lizard or snake wine. Perhaps we'll return when the kids are nine or ten--I truly hope so--but in the meantime I’ll just keep piling up the Vietnamese cookbooks, cooking my butt off and counting the hours until I can go back.