We Don't Look and Cook the Same

Asia is on the rise and Vietnamese food is hip and hot. More and more Vietnamese crossover restaurants are opening up outside of traditional enclaves, introducing Vietnamese flavors to non-Viet people and creating 'modern' Vietnamese food. Huy Fong's Rooster brand of Vietnamese chili-garlic and Sriracha sauce are becoming ubiquitous. After all these years, I finally get to say that my people are popular!

Anything trendy is bound to be misrepresented. Popularity comes with its burdens as people capitalize on what Vietnam and Vietnamese means.

Indochine Interpretations

During the past couple of weeks, we've been having a spirited discussion on an episode of Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade, a show that airs on the Food Network channel. In early August, they aired a show called "Indochine Brunch" that was quite a sight to see, with the show host sporting a pink kimono.

Mastery of any cuisine is not a birthright, but rather an acquisition. (As many of you know, you don't have to be Vietnamese to cook Vietnamese food!) Sandra Lee and her producers could have done more homework to understand what Indochine is. Instead, theirs was a mishmash of flavors and bad cooking techniques. Catch up and voice your opinion on the "Indochine Brunch".

A company that may be doing a better job at capitalizing on the Indochine exoticism is making Canton liqueur. Simon Bao emailed this morning about the re-released Canton -- made from French cognac, Vietnamese baby ginger, Provencal honey, and vanilla. Years ago, I tried the original version that was made in Guangdong province in China. It was terribly sweet but not bad tasting, though it was discontinued in 1997. The revived and new formula for Canton is looking to cash in on the cachet of being Vietnamese-French, or rather, Indochine. I haven't had a taste since the limited release late last month, but this description from their website captures their strategy: ". . . discover a rare union of tropical romance and continental sophistication."

Fast Food Vietnam

Vietnam may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but that doesn't stop fast food companies from storming in. There's a growing class of urbanites with money to spend. And so the number of clean, convenient, and mono-culture eateries is steadily increasing. McDonald's is coming soon. But should we be concerned? What do such businesses mean for Vietnam? Read and comment on fast food restaurants in Saigon.

But hey, corporations don't have to be the only ones making fast food. Home cooks can too. All you need is freezer space. If you want to make your own convenience food at home, make a batch or two of salmon cakes with dill and garlic and coconut waffles. Both can be made ahead and kept frozen for whenever the urge strikes you.

Top Chef

Speaking of TV, tune in this Wednesday night to watch the new episode of Top Chef, which airs on Bravo. Among the finalists in Season 3 is Hung Huynh, a Vietnamese-American sous chef in Las Vegas. Sara Nguyen, his fellow contestant, was eliminated earlier.

Asian Grandmas Cookbook Project

This isn't my next book.  It belongs to Pat Tanumihardja, a friend of mine who lives in Seattle. She just won the book contract and is looking for recipe contributions. It promises to be a great publication that honors the women who taught many of us how to cook, eat, and enjoy. Details  and contact information are in Pat's call for recipes.

By the way, a few weeks ago, we visited Seattle and Pat invited us to lunch at her mom's new Indonesian restaurant. We practically ran over there as soon as we arrived! Pat is pictured here with her mom at Julia's Indonesian Kitchen, a charming restaurant located in a small home in the Roosevelt neighborhood. I hope some of Julia's well-crafted Indo home cooking gets into Pat's book!

Upcoming Events

Cooking demonstrations, classes and panels will be taking me to various places in Southern California, the Bay Area, and New York. Hope to meet you on one of those occasions.

Comments

[Joel]

Hi Andrea,

Let me say thanks beforehand for your cookbook "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen"! It is a nice and neat one and covers a lot of Vietnamese food I crave (especially pho!).

I'm a Hong Kong Chinese migrant to New Zealand and over in Auckland there are many Vietnamese restaurants run often by Cambodian Chinese or (in a few of them) Vietnamese Chinese. In many cases the restaurants have omitted much of the herbs in the soup and we are left with lime, bean sprouts, onion slices, and shallots as garnishings. I'm not sure if this is authentic?

In my native Hong Kong, much of the Vietnamese food has Cantonese influences and more localized. Over there there is a famous Vietnamese "roast chicken with red beancurd flavuors" and a recipe of it is just like Cantonese crispy-skin fried chicken except with red beancurd sauce: (recipe in Chinese if you understand it)

http://www.geocities.com/ver_home/recipe/entree_19.html

I found that this dish is not served in any Vietnamese restaurants anywhere in the world except Hong Kong. Could I ask if it is authentic Vietnamese?

In HK some other Vietnamese dishes recipes like beef dices with black pepper sauce and pork chops seasoned with lemongrass, and the phos only have onions as garnishes and no more herbs. Hopefully this is some information to you.

[Ashley]

Hi Andrea,
You said that people don't have to be Vietnamese to cook Vietnamese food very well, and I agree. But I'm Vietnamese and when I buy Vietnamese cookbooks, I prefer that the authors are Vietnamese. I own about 7 Vietnamese cookbooks, and all of them are written by Vietnamese authors. Even though I'm Vietnamese, I never learned how to cook at home. Now that I'm an adult, I really rely on my 7 Vietnamese cookbooks to cook Vietnamese food because this is my absolute favorite cuisine. Duh! (This is the word you use quite often on this Web site.) I would do the same thing if I were buying Chinese cookbooks, which I prefer to be written buy Chinese authors. I plan on buying a few more Vietnamese cookbooks written by Didier Corlou. I know that Didier Corlou is French, but he's married to a Viet woman and he's been living and working as a chef in Vietnam for years and years. He should know the Vietnamese cuisine thoroughly. Anyway, I'm tickled to death that there are so many Vietnamese authors penning Vietnamese cookbooks. Keep them coming because I'll keep buying them.

Ashley.

[Simon]

Andrea, about Canton and these for-profit commercial re-interpretations of "Indochine"...

I'm not convinced by the advertising copy for this Canton, that it really was long ago "created on the French Indochine ginger root estate of Domaine de Canton." Nor convinced that the liqueur "takes its inspiration from recipes of the European aristocracy of French Indochina in the mid-19th century."

Did some aristocratic French family really send a son out to Vietnam, telling him was going there to run the family "ginger root estate?" If so, he cannot have been the bright son, that's for sure. The smart French who overran and colonized Vietnam and took all the good land did so in order to haul out plantation crops like rubber, coffee, tobacco, tea and coffee... Not to grow ginger. This aristocratic ginger estate is really only plausible if this was run by some French son of nobility who had a severe overbite, a lazy and wandering eye, and was always caught sniffing his own fingertips. The son one didn't want in Paris.

But even if the advertising copy isn't historically accurate, I still appreciate commercial efforts to re-invent "Indochine." To rid us all of harsh unpleasant images of gunboats, unwelcome European invaders, forced labor, mayhem, hunger, repression, oppression, death... And to replace that with a friendlier image of "Indochine" as a warm, comforting time and place inhabited only by Catherine Deneuve, elegant and aristocratic in an ao dai, surrounded by loving and loyal happy brown folk, those very short and newly landless laborers working on her rubber plantation. Exotic, erotic, and with whites comfortably and properly in charge.

In keeping with this trend to re-invent dark times, Dead Drunk Distilleries are pleased to announce their own Fall 2007 liqueur introductions.

Petain! Less of a Blend, More of a Collaboration

Originally created on the historic family estate of Marshal Philippe Petain, this aromatic elixir first became popular among the civil servants, bureaucrats, technocrats, fascists, and profiteers of Vichy France. A hand-crafted infusion of superior Vichyssois potato cognac and the fruits from vineyards confiscated from executed French patriots, Petain is the world’s first premium potato liqueur. Enjoy it in a cocktail and discover that rare union of adventure, romance, and continental sophistication that was Vichy France. Petain suggests a SurrenderTini that mixes equal parts liqueur and vodka with a splash of WaffenKirschWasser.

Old Hickory - Celebrate YOUR Own Manifest Destiny

From the Boilermaker to the Godfather, from the Manhattan to the Mint Julep, nothing is as American as whiskey. Unless it's whiskey and violence. Which is why the introduction of Old Hickory, a luscious new blend of 100-proof Tennessee sourmash whiskey and hickory nut liqueur, seems like such an inspiration. This new elixir takes its inspiration from the recipes of "Old Hickory" himself, Andrew Jackson who provided a steady and abundant supply of this liqueur for the troops he led in campaigns against the Seminole and Creek Indians. The liqueur proofed so invigorating, the US army supplied daily rations to the federal troops who forced the Cherokee nation form its native lands in the east, along the Trail of Tears, to their new sanctuary in Oklahoma. Many a soldier was comforted during that arduous trek by his daily ration of Old Hickory. Rediscover your own Manifest Destiny with a liqueur that evokes a time of adventure, comradery, and conquest!

Maafa - the Transatlantic Triple Threat

The Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast... The Caribe, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados. The essence and flavors of all are captured and offered up in Maafa, the new cordial inspired by the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Maafa is crafted from the world's finest West Indian rums, authentic Madagascar vanilla, West African citrus peel, and Haitian honey to create a delicious all-natural liqueur. Originally created during the infamous Middle Passage by a rainbow coalition of Europe's seafaring slave-shippers, Maafa quickly became popular with slave traders, slave owners, slave drivers, slave overseers, and most of slavery's middle management. Forgotten for over a century, Maafa is the contemporary taste of slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and exploitation. Try yours with a twist of lime.

[Andrea Nguyen]

Aiya -- Joel! The chicken dish you're asking about is a Vietnamese take on Chinese barbecue. My written Chinese is soooooo darn rusty these days. I can speak Mandarin and be somewhat charming.

Anyway, you're asking about "ga nuong chao" which is a chicken take on duck that's marinated with fermented tofu -- that's the "chao." Other seasonings may include coconut milk, rice wine, chiles, lemongrass, sugar, and a little oil. Is that what's in the recipe you linked to?

Thanks for the kind words about the book. I greatly appreciate them!

[Andrea Nguyen]

Ashley -- I'm delighted to hear that you're making your own Vietnamese food at home. Your note is music to my ears.

Another interpretation of "you don't have to be Vietnamese to cook Vietnamese food well" is that frankly, there are good and bad cooks everywhere. Just because someone is Vietnamese doesn't mean she or he is able to turn out good Viet food. With someone like Hung Huynh on Top Chef, he's making French-Cal-Med preparations, not Viet dishes rooted in his past.

But, yes, you want to learn from someone who has an insider's take on a cuisine. Most often times, as you've discovered, that's a person who's native to the culture. A lot of Vietnamese cookbooks in the past were co-authored by a Viet person and a non-Viet person -- which made the cuisine so removed for me. Growing up, I thought, "Why can't we speak for ourselves?" That's why I wrote Into the Vietnamese Kitchen and continue to write, and to get other people to write and cook.

On the other hand, when you have someone who is truly passionate about a cuisine that's not native to them, like Didier Corlou or Barbara Tropp (for Chinese cooking, she spoke fluent Mandarin), then that person is someone you can learn from.

I love the fact that you own 7 Vietnamese cookbooks!

[Andrea Nguyen]

Simon, you're the last person to be convinced by advertising! You're much too jaded for that.

I don't know what the deal is with the plantation ginger thing that Canton liqueur created. The parent company is American owned, no? It's a marketing gimmick that indeed implies subservience. What's with the phallic bamboo bottle? Don't answer, I already know the answer. The original Canton liquor was in a fancy, European style glass container that spoke of Old World, European elegance:

http://www.cocktaildb.com/ingr_galleryDetail?assetID=1217&id=193

If you were to deconstruct the revamped liqueur and assigned cultural values to it, then the French cognac gets steeped by young, nubile ginger (which doesn't have much of a bit as the old, dried stuff), sweetened by southern France honey and enhanced by vanilla from Tahiti -- another French colony. It's a DOUBLE WHAMMY.

Now for the array of offerings from Dead Drunk Distilleries -- you've got a future there. Drink enough of the booze and all the lines get blurred. Oppression, trafficking, and all the bellicose behavior that went with territorial expansion become good things.

I like cantankerous Old Hickory. Andrew Jackson embodied the kick-ass mentality that made American history exciting. Now, we have mergers and acquisitions.

[Joel]

Hi Andrea, it is a little different from the recipe we have in HK. Usually HK's Vietnamese restaurants don't use coconut milk and lemongress and no chilli either. Here is my rough tarnslation the recipe I linked to (sorry for my poor cookery English :)) and it also appeared in the late Lee Tsang Pang Chin's Enjoy Southeast Asian Cuisine (Hong Kong, 1988):

Vietnamese fried/roast chicken with fermented red beancurd flavour (nam yee in Cantonese, chao in Vietnamese as you mentioned?)

1 chicken of about 2 catty (jin in Mandarin) (~=1.3 kg or 3 pounds)
2 blocks of fermented red beancurd
garlic
ginger
3 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
"Mei Kuei Lu" rice wine (Meiguilu jiu in Mandarin)
maltose
white rice vinegar

1. Rinse the chicken, and pat dry.
2. Prepared crushed ginger, crushed garlic, and mash fermented beancurd.
3. Prepare the marinade: mix together salt, sugar, crushed ginger, crushed garlic, mashed fermented red beancurd, "Mei Kuei Lu" wine.
4. Rub some marinade thinly onto tyhe chicken skin, and fill the cavity with the remaining marinade. Seal teh cavity with iron needles.
4. Mix vinegar and maltose, and rub onto the skin.
5. Hang the chicken over a place with ample circulating air, and let it dry for 6 to 8 hours.
6. Heat oil in wok, and put the chicken into the oil to fry for about 5 minute. Then use a ladle to lift up the chicken to just above the oil level. Carefully use another ladle to pour oil onto the chicken, one ladle at a time, to carefully control how it is cooked. When the skin is golden brown and meat cooked sufficiently enough (takes about 20 minutes), transfer to a dish.
7. Crave and serve.

To be honest it sounds more Cantonese to me now that I have lived overseas for quite some time - I have seen it in many Cantonese restaurants in HK as well and the way it is prepared smacks of Cantonese cooking. But nevertheless, it is a signature dish in many middle to higher-end Vietnamese restaurants in HK like Golden Bull, and a very tasty dish on its own. Often it will be served with braised flower bud which I don't know the name in English or Vietnamese, in Cantonese it is called "kam cham choi" looking like fine needles.

(PS I can't find any website of the Goldeb Bull Restaurant, but here's a review of the restaurant in Chinese and English http://www.openrice.com/big5/sr2.htm?shopid=971 , and it is expensive by HK standards - be prepared to spend at least US$25 per person).

[Simon]

Andrea, the more I think of it the more persuaded I am that these French aristocrats at Domaine de Canton are just fictional creatures, a kind of Marketing Backstory invented to lend the stuff some "cachet." About as real as Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, or the Keebler Elves. And the aristocrats' "ginger root estate" as real a place as the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant. I did a little checking and the company that produced the discontinued OLD Canton ginger liqueur (Jacquins) is the very same company that is now producing the NEW Canton ginger liqueur. I've emailed them with an offer to teach them how to make some authentic Ruou Ran, snake wine, but haven't heard back from them. I even went to the trouble of attaching photographs. C'est dommage....

[Binh]

I wholeheartedly agree with Simon on the topic of reinventing dark times. If we let Sandra Lee banking on Indochine exoticism, one day she might even do a special on Annam-ese food dressed in a Foreign Legion uniform.

[Andrea Nguyen]

Joel, thanks for taking the time to type in the recipe (with Cantonese and Mandarin). Yeah, what you're tasting in HK is a Cantonese chicken preparation. The red bean curd is better than the white bean curd, which Vietnamese people eat with rice. The recipe sounds really nice, especially with the Mei Kwei Lu (rose petal sorghum liquor). I suppose you could substitute Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry if the Mei Kwei Lu isn't available. I like the deep frying which would give the skin a nice crisp finish but keep the flesh moist. Do you think they finish it in the oven, or are you suppose to keep pouring oil over the chicken for 20 minutes straight?

In the U.S. small chickens are hard to come by. Julia (Pat's mom pictured above) told me that she can't bear to eat a large American chicken. They're grossly big to her. She cooks up game hens (smaller, about 1-1/2 pounds) for her Indonesian dishes. I think those would work well here. Looks like you've given me a task here.

[Andrea Nguyen]

Simon and Binh -- to stoke your flames on this subject, Charles Jacquin et Cie is owned by the Cooper family and is based in Philadelphia. Jacquin produces many distilled liquors. They owned and produced black raspberry Chambord until 2006, when they sold the brand. So Jacquin has a record of creating mystique and cachet out of cordials. Snake wine is rather medicinal, but I'm sure they'd do something clever with it. If I were a Vietnamese snake wine maker, I'd take the lead and do it first!

[Simon]

I like Andrea's points, 1) one doesn't have to be Vietnamese to cook good Vietnamese food, anymore than one must be Italian or Portuguese or Cuban to cook foods from those cuisines. And 2) being Vietnamese is *no* assurance that a person has any idea how to cook Vietnamese food. I know a woman who makes a Knock Me Out pho broth, as good as any out there, but in all other respects she is the worst cook in the state. If not the time zone. Took me a while to figure her out, but I think she's not cooking, she's copying. Doing what she learned to do as a girl or young woman, but with no real understanding, thought, or even curiousity behind it. (Really... the woman cooks the most insanely bad food.)

The Vietnamese cookbooks are kind of a mixed bag - produced at different times, for different intended audiences, with different underlying assumptions about whether to try to be "authentic" or try to "adapt" recipes in different ways. One bit of advice, before purchasing some of the books, check the Reviews of them at Amazon or elsewhere. I don't want to use Andrea's blog to bash any other cookbook author, but if one were to check the reviews for Lemongrass and Lime: New Vietnamese Cooking, one would have a very clear and specific idea of what to expect inside it.

[Joel]

Hi Andrea, I have seen different cooking methods for the chicken. Lee Tsang Pang Chin's cookbook specifies frying in the wok (using the Cantonese method - pouring oil over the chicken) until it is done and so does the recipe I linked to, but Mrs Lee also stated roasting in oven is also feasible. A famed Vietnamese restaurant in HK uses the Chinese roasting oven - about 1 meter high - used to prepare Chinese roasts like barbecued pork (char siu) etc.

In fact even the marinade ingredients could vary between different recipes. Mrs Lee used lemongrass and she suggested poaching the chicken in lemongress scented water before marinating. I'm trying to get hold of Wilson Kwok's "Enjoy Vietnamese Cooking" published by Wan Li Publishing in 2003 for more details on HK-influenced Vietnamese dishes' recipes.

http://www.wanlibk.com/cgi-bin/isbn_pages.asp?txtIsbn=9621425808

[Andrea Nguyen]

Simon is right. Cookbook buyers beware. There are as many good and bad cookbooks as there are good and bad cooks. Cookbooks are instruction manuals as well as textbooks and roadmaps. You want people to successfully arrive at a destination but enjoy the drive along the way. Recipes should be tested well too, as well as edited and copyedited. I collect cookbooks and you learn most from the good ones and the bad ones provide lessons on what not to do.

[Andrea Nguyen]

Joel, the wok method is good and I've done it with quail before. There's a recipe for that in the book. I'll have to try Lee's recipe out and see. Chinese oven roasting at home can be done if you rig things up right.

Thanks for the info on the HK Vietnamese cookbooks. Totally interesting! I love Hong Kong.

[Joel]

Glad you like it Andrea. Could I ask if it will be in your next book? (Hint, hint I would like to see more of the entertaining/restaurant dishes now you have covered pretty much a lot of the home/street food)

I think I really need to dig deep into your book. I must have spent most of the past two months reading just pages 209 to 211! (To those who don't know, this is where the recipe on the traditional beef pho is in the book)

[Simon]

One final note on "Indochine in a Bottle," and perhaps also someone's "Indochine Brunch"... a lecture that someone gave me today at lunch, with an excerpt I want to share; unfortunately, I cannot reproduce the formatting as it appears in print, as it's intended to be seen and read. It's from a lecture by Emilie M. Townes that at some point will be online at http://repository.upenn.edu/boardman

*****************

how do we grasp a-hold of our identity and truly name ourselves

which is, after the all, part of the work of any moral agent

nstead of constantly looking into some strategically placed fun-

house mirror of distortions and innuendos and mass marketing

that smacks its lips and rolls its eyes while chanting

"mmmm mmmm good"

for when (XYZ) identity is property

that can be owned by someone else

defined by someone else

created by someone else

shaped by someone else

and marketed by someone else

we are chattel now dressed in postmodern silks and linens

[Andrea Nguyen]

Simon, did you just pen that poem? It's fabulous. I'm deeply touched.

[Simon]

No, Andrea, I honestly did not. I'm clueless when it comes to poetry. That's from a University of Pennsylvania Boardman Lecture in Christian Ethics. Yesterday someone handed me a print copy of the lecture by Emilie M. Townes, titled "The Cultural Production of Evil: Some Notes on Aunt Jemima and the Fantastic Hegemonic Imagination." Normally a title like that will make me suddenly remember I need to be somewhere else. But it's not like any lecture I've ever seen, the complete text reads like a poem by ee cummings.

[Andrea Nguyen]

To borrow from President Bush: "You're a good man. An honest man." Thanks for revealing your source, Simon.

There's been some interesting work lately on Aunt Jemima and how that image came about. The woman who posed for it was named Nancy Green.

No offense to the actual poet and ee cummings but that poem could be turned into a rap song.

[Simon]

Andrea, speaking of Didier Corlou, as you were above, I came across this brief article in the news that mentions him and also 3 he has authored. I checked Amazon, the books are not listed there in the English titles provided in the article... Do you know if the books mentioned are in Vietnamese, or in French, or have English translations forthcoming? Here's an excerpt from the article...

Vietnamese cuisine gaining in popularity
09:53' 12/09/2007 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – In recent years, Vietnamese cuisine has received much coverage on international media and dishes like pho, nem or banh chung are becoming more and more familiar worldwide.

According to the New York Times, for instance, Vietnam is a rising star in culinary terms in Asia and likely to become one of the 10 most popular culinary cultures in the world. Didier Corlou, Sofitel Metropole Hanoi’s chef-in-chief, who has long cooked Vietnamese dishes for high-ranking officials and VIPs from abroad, very much agrees.

The French chef, who has written several works on Vietnamese cuisine including Hanoi Cuisine Past and Present, My Vietnamese Dishes and Mountainous Cuisine, said pho, or the Vietnamese noodle soup, is the best dish in the world. And the things that make Vietnamese cuisine special, according to Mr. Corlou, are spices and flavours from various vegetables...

full article at http://english.vietnamnet.vn/lifestyle/2007/09/739847/

[David]

I think they got the "Domaine" idea from the fact that Jacquin's former partner in Guangdong was called Doumen Canton Liqueurs, Ltd. The Chinese name "Doumen" became "Domaine." I also noticed the interesting usage of "Indochine" on the Food Channel brunch show and the liqueur advertising, and find it very interesting. Hats off to Simon for his excellent and amusing deconstruction of the "colonial mystique"

[Andrea Nguyen]

Simon, I believe that the works cited in the article are printed in small lots in Vietnam. My copies of Corlou's My Vietnamese Dishes came from the Metropole in Hanoi. The only one that he wrote that's widely distributed is "Vietnamese Home Cooking" written with Robert Carmack, which you can get used quite inexpensively.

For a taste of his writing, see his comments on pho at Vietworldkitchen.com:

http://vietworldkitchen.com/features/pho-corlou.htm

[Andrea Nguyen]

David, talk about borrowing ... Doumen to Domaine. Doumen is a district in the city of Zhuhai in the Pearl River Delta in southwest China, so right above Vietnam.

It's quite coincidental that Doumen sounds so much like domaine, a term that I don't think exists in Chinese. Great find, Sherlock.

[Simon]

Andrea, thanks for the info. It was worth asking, the two I'd be interested to see are "Hanoi Cuisine Past and Present" and "Mountainous Cuisine." I'd welcome a chance to learn a bit of culinary history, and also to find out if "Mountainous Cuisine" is what I'm guessing it might be... a work on the cuisines of the northern and central highlands. Only because I know nothing of them...