Southeast Asian

People often ask me what I remember about my life in Vietnam. I always respond that my memory is filled with photographic images of people and places, but because I was only six years old when we fled, I had not yet experienced enough of life to have fuller pictures. However, one of my most vivid memories is of our cook, Older Sister Thien, squatting and fanning the small charcoal brazier on which she grilled corn on the cob. As the corn cooked to a charred chewy sweetness, she brushed on scallion oil made with home-rendered lard. The aroma and taste were heavenly. Here is my updated version with regular cooking oil. With so many varieties of corn available in summertime, you should have no trouble finding the sweetest one for grilling. This is traditionally a snack food, but it is also a wonderful addition to an Eastern or Western barbecue. Parboiling the ears before grilling ensures that the corn is evenly cooked and the grill work is fast.

Eggplants are prepared in many ways by Viet cooks, but my two favorites are deep-fried, as in this recipe, and grilled or roasted until smoky and soft , as in Grilled Eggplant with Seared Scallion (page 184). Here, I coat thickish eggplant slices with a thin batter, which yields deep-fried pieces with a moist interior and a delicate crust that remains crisp well after frying. For the best results, use slender, firm, blemish-free Chinese, Italian, or Japanese eggplants. They have an appealing meatiness and fry better than large globe eggplants.

Because cool-season crops such as cabbage and cauliflower are difficult to grow in Vietnam, they enjoy a special status. In fact, my dad remembers how his mother carefully tended the cabbage heads in the family garden, covering each one with a cooking pot to encourage the leaves to curl. When we came to the States and found cabbage so readily available, my mother began fixing this easy stir-fry regularly for our weeknight suppers. I have since followed suit, and also sometimes serve it as a simple lunch with rice. The naturally sweet and spicy cabbage ribbons are enriched by a coating of egg, while a final splash of fish sauce adds a nutty, briny flavor.

It is hard to imagine the Viet table without water spinach (a.k.a. morning glory in English, rau muông in Vietnamese, and ong choy in Cantonese; illustrated on page 174), a long, tubular leafy green that is part of the lifeblood of the country and appears in many guises. The tender tops with their pointy leaves are often boiled or stir-fried. The hollow stems are sometimes laboriously split into slender pieces, dropped in water to curl, and then the crunchy raw spirals are used as a garnish for certain noodle dishes, such as Crab and Shrimp Rice Noodle Soup (page 215); as a bed for a beef stir-fry; or as a lightly dressed salad. Water spinach is also pickled. Even today my parents become wistful at the mention of a rustic meal of boiled rau muông, soup prepared from the left over cooking liquid, a heady fish kho, and rice. So, it was a sad moment when we arrived in the United States to discover that we could not afford water spinach, which cost nearly two dollars a pound and was not widely available. What had once been an everyday vegetable was suddenly a splurge. When my parents did buy it, my mother would stir-fry the greens with garlic and fermented shrimp sauce (mâm tôm) and finish the dish with lots of lime. Aromatic, earthy, and tangy, the traditional combination was a comforting reminder of our culinary roots. Nowadays, rau muông is thankfully much less expensive and is easily found at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets. During the peak summer season, prices are downright cheap. Here are two options for stir-frying the bounty: first, the soulful dish of my youth, followed by a more modern preparation flavored with garlic and oyster sauce, which pairs well with Eastern and Western dishes (try it with a steak). If you can’t find water spinach, Western spinach can be used for either of the two stir-fries that follow.

This elegant and easy-to-prepare stew is one of my favorite vegetarian dishes. The Garnet sweet potato (usually mistakenly labeled a yam) has bright orange flesh, and the raw peanuts deliver protein and crunch. When peanuts are boiled, simmered, or steamed, they become beanlike, revealing their true identity as legumes. You may need to look for shelled raw peanuts at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets, as they are rarely carried in regular supermarkets. I often use pinkish tan–skinned banana squash for this recipe, which is typically sold in pieces wrapped in plastic. It is easy to peel and you can buy just as much as you need for the stew. Select a piece that has deep-colored flesh, more orange than yellow. Or, you may use your favorite winter squash, such as butternut, in place of the banana squash.

In the Vietnamese Kitchen, papaya is more than just a sweet fruit. The mild, firm flesh of an unripened green papaya is treated like a vegetable. Green papaya may be pickled, added to soup, or featured in salads like this one. Here, crunchy, light jade papaya shreds are flecked with chopped herbs and bits of shrimp and pork and tossed with a dressing of lime juice, fish sauce, and garlic. Look for green papayas at Vietnamese or Thai markets, Chinese markets with a Southeast Asian clientele, or Latin grocery stores. A bit of yellowing on the skin is fine, but make sure the flesh is neither soft nor mushy. Whole fruits will keep in the refrigerator for about a week.

A hybrid dish (cua means “crab” in Vietnamese, and farci means “stuffed” in French), this deviled crab is enriched by butter and employs fish sauce to amplify the brininess of the crustacean. Many cooks stuff the crab shells with the raw filling and then fry them. Because it is hard to tell when the filling is cooked, I was taught to sauté it first, which also yields a more flavorful result. I also forgo frying and instead bake the filling in ramekins, topping them with bread crumbs for a crispy finish. What makes this deviled crab special is fresh crabmeat and tomalley (liver) and fat, which you can only get if you start with a whole crab. (If you don’t like the tomalley and fat, omit them for a less rich dish.) Find the freshest, feistiest crab you can, even if it is not a Dungeness, my local species. Live crabs are available at Asian and other markets, but already cooked crabs will work, too—as long as you have a trustworthy fishmonger. Ask when the crab was cooked. And if it has an ammonia-like smell, it is over the hill, so pass it up. You will need about 1/2 pound of crabmeat.

This is probably the most commonly served salad in the Vietnamese repertoire. Festive looking and tasty, goi dua chuot often makes an appearance at our family celebrations. In fact, my mother made it for the one hundred guests at my wedding reception. Vietnamese delis pack this popular salad for their customers with the dressing on the side. But those versions are often prepared with cucumbers that have thick, waxed skins. I recommend pickling or English cucumbers, as their skins are thin and not waxed and their flavors are superior. Small, briny bay shrimp are easily distributed throughout the salad, to accent every bite, while the chicken and pork lend richness. For an extra note of authenticity, serve the salad with Fried Shrimp Chips (page 37) or Toasted Sesame Rice Crackers (page 320) for scooping up bitefuls.

A northern specialty, this dish traditionally features oc buou (apple snail), a freshwater mollusk with a shell that resembles the escargot shells sold in plastic tubes at gourmet markets. The chewy mollusk meat is made into a stuffing with mushroom and scallion and then steamed in the original shells with strips of ginger or lemongrass leaves. To eat the snails, you pull up the leaves, which lifts out the stuffing, and then you dip the stuffing into a ginger-lime sauce. Finally, you pour the aromatic cooking juice left over in the shell into a spoon and sip it like a fine consommé. Because fresh Vietnamese snails aren’t available in the States, I replicate this delicious dish with frozen apple snail or periwinkle meat. The yellowish chunks are sold in one-pound packages at Chinese and Vietnamese markets; sometimes periwinkle is available thawed and packed in Styrofoam trays. (Or, substitute conch or other sea snails normally used for chowder.) Without shells to stuff, I use ceramic egg cups or tall sake cups. The presentation isn’t as provocative, but it is still lovely. Ribbons cut from lemongrass stalks, more aromatic and more readily available than ginger leaves, harness the stuffing in the cups and give the cooking juices a heady citrus flavor.

The easy availability of butter in America was a boon for my mother, who saw endless possibilities for perfecting French pâtés chaud, large puff pastry rounds filled with an aromatic meat mixture. She regularly made the rich pastries from scratch, and they were standard breakfast fare for my siblings and me growing up. As adults, we have scaled back our consumption, making the pastries smaller and serving them as finger food on special occasions. Shaping tiny round pastries is laborious, so we form logs and cut them into diamonds. Unlike my mom, I don’t have the patience or time to make my own puff pastry. Instead, I rely on a local bakery for frozen sheets of all-butter puff pastry or use the frozen puff pastry sold at supermarkets. The latter are usually sold two sheets to a box, with each sheet weighing about 1/2 pound and measuring about ten inches square.

As you fry these stuffed squid, the fragrant aromas that rise from the pan will have you dreaming of enjoying them along with a cold beer. Many Vietnamese cooks add minced garlic to the stuffing, but our family prefers ginger, a nod to ginger-centric northern Vietnam. The tart, spicy, salty dipping sauce heightens the flavors in the stuffing. Select young, fresh squid with bodies about five inches long, not including the tentacles. For the best flavor, clean the squid yourself, rather than buying them already cleaned. Because both squid sizes and a cook’s stuffing technique can vary, this recipe makes more stuffing than you will need. If only a little is left over, discard it. If there is a fair amount, mix in an egg or two and fry up into an omelet (see Pork and Mushroom Omelet, page 97, for cooking instructions).

Shrimp chips, usually labeled shrimp crackers, are the Southeast Asian equivalent of the American potato chip. They are made by mixing a dough of primarily ground shrimp and tapioca starch, steaming it, slicing it, and setting the slices out in the hot sun to dry. The hard chips are then deep-fried in oil, puffing and expanding to about twice their original size. Made well, the essence of shrimp is captured in each chip. Most cooks buy the dry chips, rather than make them. The frying is fast and neither messy nor oily. Plus, the chips may be fried hours in advance, making a bowl of bánh phong tôm an easy accompaniment to cocktails. They are also used to scoop up salads, such as Cucumber and Shrimp Salad (page 46). As with all snack foods, not all shrimp chips are equal. The inexpensive colorful ones sold in boxes are pretty but not much else. Indonesian shrimp chips, called krupuk, are consistently good and packed with real shrimp flavor. Imports from Vietnam are getting steadily better. Most of them are from Sa Dec, a city known for its tasty shrimp.

When I was a child, my mom often kept me busy making wontons, putting three or four packages of the skins and a big bowl of pork-and-shrimp filling in front of me. (That’s 150 to 200 wontons!) She served the fried wontons to family and guests alike, who delighted in dipping the crispy morsels into our homemade sweet-and-sour sauce, a lighter version of the Chinese classic flavored with fish sauce instead of soy sauce.

Sometimes listed on restaurant menus as fresh spring rolls or summer rolls, salad rolls, along with pho, have come to embody Vietnamese food to many non-Vietnamese. They typically combine the elements of a classic Vietnamese goi (salad) but wrapped in rice paper. Southern Vietnamese cooks usually slip a few aromatic Chinese chives into the mix. The chives, dark green, flat blades with a mild garlic flavor, are sold in Asian markets and are also easily grown from seeds. If they are unavailable, omit them and the rolls will still be tasty. Part of the genius of Vietnamese cooking is in how simple ingredients can be crafted into something that is both flavorful and attractive. These rolls reflect that talent.

There is one sandwich in the Vietnamese repertoire and it is a tour de force. Garlicky meats, marinated daikon and carrot, chiles, cucumber, and cilantro tucked into a baguette moistened with mayonnaise and Maggi Seasoning sauce, bánh mì merges European and Asian food traditions. Each mouthful reflects how Vietnamese cooks co-opted French ideas to create new foods. All bánh mì use the same basic framework of ingredients, though a minority of makers use margarine or butter instead of mayonnaise. At Vietnamese delis, you make the call on the main protein element. The dac biet (special) is basically “the works,” a smear of liver pâté and slices of various cold cuts that show off the art of Vietnamese charcuterie (pages 156 to 171). Follow the custom of Viet deli owners and use your imagination to fill the sandwich. Just make sure it is boldly flavored. Pieces of grilled lemongrass beef (page 28), oven-roasted chicken (page 80), five-spice pork steaks (page 143), or char siu pork (page 142; pictured here) are excellent. Seared or grilled firm tofu or left over roasted lamb or beef will work, too. The bread doesn’t have to be one of the airy Vietnamese baguettes made with wheat and rice flours. (In the past, the best baguettes in Vietnam were made from wheat flour only and displayed an amazing crumb and crust.) You can use a regular baguette (though neither sourdough nor too crusty) or a Mexican bolillo (torpedo-shaped roll).

Loaded with beef, crunchy texture, and heady sweet flavors, this specialty of southern Vietnam echoes Chinese mu shu pork and Malaysian and Singaporean poh piah. But instead of rolling the filling in a wheat flour–based wrapper, rice paper is used. Bò bía are traditionally made by street vendors in a to-go format that recalls a Mexican burrito. When we lived in Saigon, my sister Ha and her best friend, Loan, were addicted to the rolls. On the way home from school, my parents or our driver would take them by one of the hawkers strategically positioned on a street corner, hot wok at the ready. Hand rolls and money were exchanged through the car window, with the girls giggling as they dove into their favorite snack. Because we don’t have those wonderful street vendors here, our family makes bò bía at home as a prelude to a big meal or the focus of a light lunch. We set things up at the table for everyone to assemble his or her own rolls. Th is do-it-yourself approach is ideal because these rolls, unlike salad rolls (page 32), can be messy and should be eaten as soon as they are made.

Years ago, I tasted these grilled beef skewers at a restaurant in Orange County’s Little Saigon, where they were served with a hoisin-based peanut sauce. When I got home, I researched the recipe in cookbooks published in Vietnam decades ago and developed this recipe, which includes shrimp sauce (mam tôm) to give the beef a distinctive savory depth. Typical of food from Vietnam’s central region, these skewers are rich and a bit salty. Dipped in the earthy sauce, they are addictively good—the perfect match for a cold beer, margarita, or gimlet. Tri-tip steak (from the bottom loin), a flavorful cut that California cooks like to grill, is ideal for these skewers. A thick piece of flap steak (from the short loin), which is oft en used for carne asada, also works well. For the true flavors of the Southeast Asian table, grill the beef over charcoal or a gas grill. In the absence of a grill, use the broiler.

Traditionally deep-fried, shrimp toasts can be greasy affairs. During frying, the toasts soak up lots of oil and the shrimp topping often slides off the bread. A few years ago, chef Susana Foo, in her eponymous cookbook, offered an excellent solution for making this popular Chinese snack: baking the toasts. Her idea caught my eye, and I was fast to adapt the method for a Vietnamese version. The end product is a crispy, pinkish orange hors d’oeuvre that is delightfully grease free.