Simmer

In the Viet kitchen, tuong refers to various heady sauces made from fermented beans. It might be thin like soy sauce, which some folks call nuoc tuong (tuong water), or thick like this sauce, which accompanies Southern Salad Rolls (page 32), Beef and Jicama Hand Rolls (page 30), chicken meatballs (page 86), and Delightful Crepes (page 277). There are several ways to prepare this sauce, and my family’s version is based on nuoc leo, a sweet and earthy sauce from central Vietnam made with pork liver. We substitute lighter-tasting chicken livers, which are saved from whole chickens used for other dishes. Sweet hoisin sauce tempers the chile and garlic, while tomato paste brightens the sauce, which otherwise would be dull brown. At Vietnamese restaurants, this sauce is often called peanut sauce and made with peanut butter, a nontraditional ingredient. It is convenient and tasty, but not as complex and deeply flavored as this liver version. If you do not like liver or are a vegetarian, make the version in the Note that follows.

Vietnamese cooks, like many other Asian cooks, make jellied treats from agar-agar. When a particularly grand presentation is on the menu, they use intricate molds to create multicolored desserts that look like elaborately decorated Western cakes. This simple almond jelly and fruit combo is a summertime favorite in my home. Originally prepared in China, the mildly sweet chunks of firm white jelly may be eaten alone, but they are more festive when accompanied with fruits. I use lychees and jackfruit, both of which are surprisingly good canned, along with fresh strawberries for contrast, but you may use any macerated or poached fruit you like. Twenty-five-gram packets of agar-agar powder (bot rau câu, or seaweed powder) are sold at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets. If the powder is not shelved with the agar-agar sticks or strands, ask for it; it is sometimes kept at the cash registers. Telephone brand from Thailand is popular. If you cannot find agar-agar, use unflavored gelatin.

Nutty, rich, and just a touch sweet, these candied coconut ribbons are part of the regular assortment of sweets offered to guests during Tet. When I was growing up, the holiday was filled with visits to the homes of relatives and close friends. While the adults chatted and wished one another well for the year, I satiated myself with the sweetmeats and confections. These candied coconut ribbons were my favorites. Several years ago, I decided to make my own from a loosely written recipe found in an old Vietnamese cookbook. I mailed batches to my mother (a coconut lover) and invited her criticisms. After several rounds, I arrived at this recipe. Don’t be daunted by the need to crack open a coconut, as it is much easier than it sounds. In the end, you will be rewarded by the sweet coconut aroma that fills your kitchen and by a big batch of tasty candied coconut.

These sweetmeats are not traditional New Year fare, but since navel oranges are at their peak in California during Tet, the peels have found a place in my annual candy-making production. I use blemish-free organic oranges because the peel is what matters in this recipe. (Scrub the oranges well if they have a waxy coating.) The pith is included, but all the bitterness is removed in the candying process. For a touch of decadence, dip the peels in melted dark chocolate.

In this classic cold sweet soup, maroon adzuki beans and chewy clear tapioca noodles, jokingly called worms in Vietnamese because they are slippery and sticky, swim in rich coconut milk. I usually prepare all the ingredients in advance and then bring everything together at the last minute. The beans and coconut milk base may be prepared a few days ahead and refrigerated until serving time, and the sugar syrup keeps in a jar in the refrigerator indefinitely. The noodles, however, are best if readied only a few hours ahead. Adzuki beans are sold at Asian markets and health-food stores. Once you have made this version, you may substitute other beans, such as black beans, hulled mung beans, or black-eyed peas. You may also blend the beans for a mixture of colors and flavors.

If you have never tried a Vietnamese che (sweet soup), this one is a good place to start. The perfume of the banana comes through wonderfully, and the tapioca pearls, enrobed in coconut milk, cook up to resemble large orbs of clear caviar. Once the tapioca pearls have fully expanded and set, the texture of this mildly sweet treat is like that of a thick Western-style tapioca pudding. Small, creamy bananas, such as the Nino variety, also known as Finger or Baby, are traditionally simmered for this sweet soup. They are sold at Asian and Latin markets. If they are unavailable, substitute regular bananas. Regardless of the variety, use ripe but firm, blemish-free fruits.

Sweet, loose-skinned, and with few seeds mandarin oranges are more popular in Vietnam than regular oranges. The small fruits are commonly eaten as a peel-and-eat snack, but may they also be juiced and frozen for sorbet. Served alone or with a cookie, the sorbet is an elegant conclusion to a meal. Find the best tangerines, clementines, or satsumas in your area and juice them yourself. Avoid pasteurized juice, which can have an unpleasant cooked flavor.

Made with milk, rather than cream and eggs, this ice cream is thickened with cornstarch, which Vietnamese cooks use to yield a smooth texture. The result is a lighter-than-usual ice cream that allows the lemongrass to shine. When preparing the lemongrass, you need to remove only the dry outer leaves and trim any dry edges at the very top. You can then use as much of the stalk as you like, as it is discarded after the milk is infused. In fact, sometimes when I trim lemongrass for other recipes, I freeze the tough top sections for making this ice cream.

This easy sorbet captures the essence of coconut in frozen form. Vanilla amplifies the alluring fragrance of coconut, while salt underscores the sorbet’s delicate sweetness. High-quality canned coconut milk works fine, but freshly made coconut milk yields the best results, with wonderfully delicate and complex flavors.

This is a classic northern interpretation of kho, homey simmered dishes that are part of everyday Viet meals. It reflects the simple art of Vietnamese cooking, requiring just a few ingredients yet yielding a savory result. The chicken releases its juices during cooking, which add to the overall flavor of the bittersweet caramel sauce, a Vietnamese staple. The ginger softens, mellows, and blends with the other ingredients as it cooks, but it still delivers a mild sharpness to the finished dish. Traditionally, this kho calls for cutting bone-in, skin-on chicken into chunks. However, for the sake of ease and health, I, like many other Vietnamese Americans, now use boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Serve with lots of rice to sop up the sauce.

A Batch of Rice in which the grains remain distinct is called com roi (separated rice), while rice that has been compacted by hand into dense balls or logs is called com nam (pressed rice). Like Japanese onigiri (rice balls), com nam is both shaped and eaten by hand. You simply pick up a piece, press it against a boldly flavored food like Caramelized Minced Pork (page 131), Cotton Pork (page 134), or sesame salt (see Note), and pop the morsel into your mouth. For many Vietnamese of my parents’ generation, com nam is an old-fashioned food that conjures up memories of home, perhaps because it was a creative way for moms to get their kids to eat more rice, the main source of sustenance. As a reminder of such times, my dad regularly prepared com nam and then presliced it for family road trips, picnics, and whenever we wanted a fun alternative to eating rice from a bowl.

Vietnamese cooking, like Chinese cooking, takes texture seriously. In fact, ingredients such as dried white tree fungus, a highly prized relative of the wood ear, lack flavor but offer interesting texture. Crunchy, resilient, and gelatinous, white tree fungus is expensive when compared with regular mushrooms and most other fungi and is thus saved for special occasions. It looks like crinkly, golden sponges and is sold in boxes or plastic bags at Chinese and Viet markets. It is important to use a good chicken stock in this recipe. Both the mild-flavored fungus and the vegetables need the contrast of a rich backdrop. The resulting soup will remind you of an underwater scene, the florets of white tree fungus suspended like silvery blades of seaweed among the orange carrot slices and bright green snow peas. For extra flair, add hand-shredded poached chicken breast along with the carrot.

Loaded with asparagus and crab, this soup is elegant looking and delicately flavored. Vietnamese consider it special-occasion fare because it features asparagus, a pricey ingredient introduced by the French as an imported canned good. In Vietnamese, asparagus is mang tay, literally “French bamboo,” an apt name as both asparagus and bamboo shoots grow quickly. Resourceful Viet cooks often maximize the asparagus flavor by adding the spears and their canning liquid to the soup. But the taste is nonetheless rather flat, and canned asparagus is mushy. To achieve a strong asparagus flavor, I use fresh asparagus to prepare the soup. Asparagus declines in sweetness as soon as it is harvested, so choose only the freshest. Spring is asparagus season, and at farmers’ markets the spears are sold within twenty-four hours of being cut. To keep them fresh, stand them in a tall container filled with about an inch of water. (If the ends look dry, trim them first.) Refrigerate the container; there is no need to cover it with plastic.

An elegant preparation of northern Vietnam, this soup is special-occasion fare. Rather than simmering the rice until it disintegrates into a silky creaminess, the grains are cooked until their ends “bloom” into flowerlike petals, an effect achieved by parboiling the rice and then simmering it for a shorter time than for standard cháo. Tapioca pearls thicken the soup and lend an interesting shimmer, and the halved shrimp turn into pink corkscrews as they cook, adding a final flourish to the presentation.

This rice soup is the closing dish for the popular Vietnamese seven-course beef feast, where its primary role is to settle the stomach after six indulgent courses. At that point, I find it hard to enjoy the soup because I’m usually stuffed. But I regularly make this soup for lunch. It is a good way to get sustenance without feeling weighed down.

Warm, creamy, and comforting, chao is a staple of the Viet diet. It is eaten at all times of day, and is the magical antidote for whatever ails you—a stomachache, a cold, a hangover. With less than a cup of rice, you can create a pot of soup that will feed people in biblical proportions because it keeps thickening as it cooks and sits, requiring ever more liquid to thin it down. At its most basic, chao is rice simmered in liquid—water, homemade stock, or canned broth (the latter two are best)—until all its starch has been released. The thick finished soup is a versatile canvas. For a flavorful savory addition, eat it with Salted Preserved Eggs (page 101) or a sprinkle of Cotton Pork shreds (page 134). For richness, put a raw egg into the bowl before ladling in the hot soup. For a simple seafood soup, drop in raw peeled shrimp just before serving. Or, make one of the four chao recipes that follow.

This simple soup embodies the Vietnamese canh tradition. The peppery qualities of Vietnamese coriander (rau ram), one of the cuisine’s most popular herbs, are fully displayed, with its headiness standing up well to the beef. Traditionally, hand-minced beef was used, but ground beef is both convenient and fully acceptable. For the best beef flavor, use the tastiest ground beef available, such as what you would select for a good hamburger. Natural, organic, or grass-fed beef is great. Also, remember that ground beef with a little fat, typically chuck, will add richness to the broth.

My Dad and I used to catch small perch at the local harbor for this soup. Amid the sailboats and cabin cruisers, we would lower our poles, the lines baited with thawed frozen peas, to catch the three- to four-inch-long fish, the American equivalent of Vietnamese ca ro. We would bring home about a dozen fish, and my mom would gut them for this classic Viet combination of sweet fish, sharp mustard greens, and ginger. One day, Mom protested that cleaning the fish took too much time, so we stopped catching them, and the soup didn’t grace our table for years. On a trip to Vietnam, I saw a fishmonger at Ben Thanh market in Saigon cleaning ca ro, which reminded me of how good this soup is. Back home, I decided to use whole tilapia, which is sometimes identified as ca ro in Viet markets. It worked just like traditional ca ro in this soup, but its larger size made it much easier to prep and cook. Now, this brightly flavored soup is back on my table as an ideal balance for bold, rich foods like Grilled Lemongrass Pork Riblets (page 145). Whole tilapia is sold at Asian and Latin markets.

To put a tasty canh on the table nightly requires that you make the most of staple ingredients like gio, a raw meat paste used extensively in the Viet kitchen. In fact, I freeze small amounts of this meat paste for whipping up classics like this fragrant soup laden with dumplings made from it. As the dumplings poach, they flavor the broth. Edible chrysanthemum leaves (cai cuc) add their deep green color and musty floral perfume. Called tong ho in Cantonese and shungiku in Japanese, the greens are sold at Asian markets and are easy to grow, too. Watercress may be substituted.

Wonton noodle soups are often on the menus of Vietnamese noodle shops, but they are seldom as nuanced as those prepared by Chinese cooks. Years ago, while living in Southern California, I wanted to find out the Chinese secret to good wonton noodle soup, so I asked my friend Victor Fong. Born and raised in Chinatown, Los Angeles, he took me to the local Mayflower Restaurant, a tiny locals-only establishment on a side street. The noodles had a perfect chewy-tender texture, the crinkly wontons encased a toothsome pork and shrimp filling, and the golden broth was complex and not darkened by too much soy sauce. The owners and their chef turned out to be ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, and though friendly, there were coy about what went into their noodle soup. After eating many bowls at Mayflower and some trial and error at home, I came up with my own version of this noodle soup classic.