Viet World Kitchen

Safe Eating while Traveling in Vietnam

We're heading into Vietnam's tourist high season. Visitors -- whether overseas Vietnamese or not -- flock to Vietnam when the weather is cooler and drier.  Of course this all depends on where you are. It's just less hot and humid in and around Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), rather damp, cool and dreary in the Hue area, and downright wet and cold to the bone in Hanoi and its environs. As a long, skinny country, Vietnam's regional climates are as varied as its regional foods. If you're going soon, pack layers should you be traveling the entire country.

A trip to Vietnam is nothing without eating lots of Vietnamese food. Jason emailed last week about his upcoming trip and sent this query:

I'll be traveling to Vietnam this December for 2 weeks, and have a question.

I keep hearing about not eating uncooked vegetables, herbs, fruits etc. But I really don't see how that is possible and still enjoy the cuisine. Basically everything has some sort of uncooked herb or vegetable, which is what makes the cuisine so good. With the recent cholera outbreak this seems to be even more of a concern.

Given that I'm going in great part for the food alone, do you have any advice?

Ohhhh yeah. On my first trip back in early 2003, I resisted eating raw lettuces and herbs because I feared getting sick. A doctor in my hometown planted the seed by telling me about his 6-month bout with dysentery after working in Mexico.  My parents kept asking if my husband and I didn't want to go elsewhere -- Europe, Mexico (!?) -- anywhere aside from Vietnam where we could fall ill and have to rely on the local medical system. When my dad realized that we were intent on going back to the Motherland, he handed me a care package that included Cipro, a kind of  antibiotic that will kill anything.

So when in Vietnam, we'd stare down at a gorgeous plate of herbs that'd just been picked from a large bowl of water and had to force ourselves to pass on them. We'd eat our banh khoai crunchy rice crepes in Hue without herbs. In Hanoi, the pho joints we patronized served no garnishes (a traditional northern Vietnamese approach) and we ate the classic noodle soup just as other locals did -- sans any additions and savored the heady broth, fresh noodles and savory beef. On a daily basis, we loaded up on stir-fried water spinach with garlic (rau muong xao toi) to get our load of veggies.  We felt like wimps and occasionally got into fights over whether or not we should risk our lives for raw vegetables.  The doctor and my parents' admonitions loomed over us at every meal.

When we got back to the U.S. we felt like we'd miss out on a certain something by not eating the accompaniments. We NEVER fell ill during the trip. I checked in with others who'd gone back and they sheepishly admitted not eating the raw stuff too.

I've traveled in China and other parts of Southeast Asia and basically ate mostly cooked foods.  That's okay in those countries because there's little raw vegetables and herbs in their cuisines. The only time I got sick was in Hong Kong when I stupidly ate a salad at a Pizza Hut. Vietnam, however, is different, and what distinguishes Vietnamese food is the abundance of raw vegetables. In fact, herbs are called fragrant vegetable -- rau thom. Not partaking in the raw vegetables and herbs is indeed missing a huge point in Vietnamese cuisine, just as Jason suggests.   

Before our last trip back in January 2007, we got thinking and  decided to eat it all. Here are our strategies for dealing with food safety in Vietnam:

1) Start and stay healthy. We made sure we were in shape to travel by keeping our immune system up. We got lots of rest before departing and tried not to get stressed out about packing, getting visas, etc. As with any flight, we took Airborne at take off. To get sleep in flight, we took a natural product called No Jet Lag and wore earplugs; we slept with those ugly blow-up neck pillows to ensure we don't wake up in pain.  (After reading a tip in GQ magazine, my husband even talked me into wearing a mask but it was too hard to sleep with that on!)

On a daily basis while in Vietnam, I took a few drops of grapefruit seed extract diluted in water. It's bitter but it works for boosting your immune system due to its  anti-practically-anything properties. What I use is called Citricidal and it has been and continues to be great stuff  for me. It's available at healthfood stores and natural pharmacies. (It's also good for hangovers.)

2) Locals worry about hygiene too. It's always been this way in Vietnam. The billboards, food labels and vendors all worry about keeping things clean and healthy. An ill customer -- not to mention a foreign visitor -- can ruin your business. Wherever we ate, we watched the locals eat. If they set their cilantro sprig of garnish aside and didn't touch the lettuce leaves, we did too. If they dove into everything, we went whole hog.

3) Eat freshly prepared food. Vietnamese food and cooking is about freshness, not just for culinary purposes but for hygiene reasons too. So we made sure to see our being made in front of us. When that wasn't possible, we checked out the staff and joint to make sure things had a good vibe. Whenever possible, we made eye contact and smiled so that people knew we cared.

4) Trust the cook. An honest cook is more likely to not hurt you with bad food. Look her/him in the eye (and or the service staff)  before you sit down.

5) Enjoy ice judiciously. Beer on ice is one of my favorite beverages in Vietnam but I ordered my beer with ice in places that look like they got ice from filtered water. That meant that if I were in a village or small town on the square in a little plastic chair, I drank my beer warm from the bottle.  My husband came up with a clever strategy of drinking fast. This didn't apply to beer, but other refreshing drinks like delicious fresh sugarcane juice, which had to have ice. We sucked ours up through straws relatively fast to avoid the potentially unfiltered water from the melted ice.

6) Nature's protectors. All that lime, chile, vinegar, garlic, ginger, turmeric and galangal -- they're natural antiseptics. Know that all that comes together to kill potentially harmful bugs and bacteria. Along with the herbs, you've got a powerful phytochemical mix in your food.

7) Peel your own. Unless we were at the hotel's morning breakfast buffet spread where the fruit was already peeled, we peeled our own fruit. Vietnamese people, like many Asian people, peel their fruit. We eat lots of fruit so the nutrients lost in discarding the peel is negligible. My mother won't eat strawberries because it's fruit she can't peel!

8) Take it easy. You may get a little tummy thing that's a matter of your body adjusting. Keep hydrated with bottled water.

The cholera situation right now will make people in Vietnam extra alert so they'll be watching out for their health as well as yours.

Got any tips of your own? Let us know.

Before They Went Away

Even though I shop at a year-round farmers market, Thanksgiving marks a special time of the year. It's not only because I'm shopping for the turkey holiday feast or that autumn's cool weather bounty of cauliflower, carrots and broccoli have started arriving. It's more because I go into a wistful mode about certain vegetables.

After Thanksgiving, the weather turns, fewer customers come out, and the number of vendors each week declines by thirty to fifty percent. Who wants to brave the cold and rain to sell to a few diehard regulars? I certainly wouldn't if I were KT Farms, Hmong farmers who drive from Fresno, three hours away, to the coast. All summer and into the early fall, I prepare myself for the inevitable by patronize their stall for eggplant, okra, sinqua ridged squash every Saturday. But as Thanksgiving approaches, no matter how much of those hot-weather veggies I've eaten, I start thinking that I'll never see them again. Okay, so that's not realistic. It's more like I'll never see them again that super fresh - until KT Farms comes back in April or May.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I even start missing things that I hadn't paid attention to all season long. Vegetables that I'd glossed over as I sorted through the piles of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian and American eggplants suddenly hold huge appeal. This year, as with every year, I realize that I'd taken the peanuts and jicama for granted for months. (It's a vicious circle that I can't seem to annually escape from.)

I come home with a bag of peanuts and another of baby jicama. The peanuts are a bit damp, having been dug up just the day before. The jicama are fist-sized with thin, soft skin that can scraped off with a fingernail. Coincidentally, both peanut and jicama are legumes - members of the bean family, and native to the Americas. European traders brought them to Asia in the sixteenth century where they became extremely popular and eventually staple foods.

In my kitchen, I savor these precious treasures in common Vietnamese fashion. I boil the peanuts and snack on the buttery, nutty beans over the course of a week's time. The jicama get peeled and cut into small wedges and enjoyed with a dip in chile salt that enhances the tuberous root's natural sweetness. (This savory-sweet combination is found in many tropical cuisines like that of Mexico.)

These simple pleasures remind me not to neglect them next year. But I will. Maybe eating them right before they disappear makes me appreciate them even more? I'll never know because this is an annual ritual that I can't give up.

Boiled Fresh Peanuts

Put the peanuts in a pot with plenty of water. The peanuts will bob around so aim for about 5 inches of water. Add a generous amount of salt. I put a tablespoon in when boiling peanuts in 3 to 4 quarts of water. Bring to a boil and keep them going fast and furious for an hour. It takes a while because the water has to penetrate the shell so this isn't like cooking fresh shell beans.

Check on the water about 3 times during cooking to see if you need to add extra water. To check for doneness, eat one, but remember to rinse it in cold water to cool before you try. Drain and set aside to cool. Refrigerate, if you like, or start cracking the shells to get to the beans.

Jicama and Chile Salt

Peel the jicama and cut into wedges or sticks - whatever shape you like. In a mortar and pestle, pound together a chopped Thai chile, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and ¼ teaspoon sugar to create a slightly wet, pinkish-orange mixture. Use a spatula to scrape the chile salt out onto a small dish and serve with the jicama.

You can certainly use jicama from regular supermarkets for this snack. Or try a tart fruit like a green apple or green mango.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Vietnamese Food in the Time of Cholera

The recently release film version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book, Love in the Time of Cholera, has been described as cutesy but there's nothing cute about cholera. If you’re traveling in Vietnam these days, do take care. What began in late October as an epidemic of acute diarrhea in northern Vietnam is turning out to be cholera:

Intellasia News Report (11/16/07)

Reuters (11/10/07)

In a number of cases, what got people was shrimp paste/sauce. That's purply mam tom (mam ruoc), a pungent, briny condiment widely used in Vietnamese cooking. People are advised to cook food properly, wash their hands with soap thoroughly, and boil drinking water to prevent an outbreak of cholera.

Bass Leaves: What are they?

Lookit, Asian people eat all kinds of plants and animals for that matter. It's hard to keep up. A Hmong farmer a while back said to me that you can eat practically everything. "There's no harm in trying," he said. The Hmong are fearless survivalists. They are people who eat fresh Sichuan peppercorns that numb your mouth and leave a biting spicy bitter taste on the palate for about 30 minutes.

I thought of them because two people have recently asked about the same oddball vegetable lately. Elise in Massachusetts queried and then sen in the photo of what she recently bought at a Viet market in the town of Lowell. They were labeled "bass leaves."

In New York a few weeks ago, I saw packages of vines and leaves resembling Elise's bass leaves. They weren't labeled as bass leaves. My friend James Oseland, a fellow Southeast Asian food expert and editor in chief of Saveur magazine, was with me and said that they were morning glory leaves. We later got some takeout Thai food from a video store in Flushing and the leaves were in a stew/curry of sorts. I can't remember whether or not there were stems and tendrils. Overall, the vegetable didn't taste like much, nor did they impart interesting texture. On the other hand, the food was extremely spicy and could have easily overwhelmed any flavor the vegetable had.

A few days ago, Jaden of the Steamy Kitchen blog in Florida asked about an unfamiliar, kinky Asian vegetable.  She sent me one of her handsome photos of a seared scallop dish thay she prepared and set atop the vegetable in question. At first I thought the kinky veggie was curled up water spinach stems (rau muong) but she had some large, heart shaped leaves in the bowl.

So what do you folks on the East Coast have? I do think that it's morning glory vine and leaves, as James identified. Morning glory belongs to the huge Ipomoea family comprising of 500 different species. They grow very very quickly and have pretty trumpet-shaped flowers. Most gardeners think of them as weedy pests and like to grow them in containers to control the vines. But  Ipomoea  plants aren't ornamental. In fact, sweet potatoes are members of that genus.   

Guess who grows lots of sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) ? Southeast Asian  farmers.  Typically what we see at Asian markets as "yam leaf" are non-producing sweet potato vines (see photo below). They have delicate hear-shape leaves and you stir-fry just the leaves and discard the stems. They have an earthy flavor and are slightly slimy when cooked but not offending gross.

Those same farmers usually cultivate sweet potatoes too, and now is the season to harvest the potatoes for market. I suspect that they're bringing the vines too as a way to maximize their earnings.  I've not seen these leaves on the West Coast but will keep an eye out. Above is a photo of a type of sweet potato plant. Below that is a typical morning glory flower.

If I were to get a hold of some, I'd try stir-frying or blanching the leaves and stems separately and see if they're flavorful.

If you're familiar with this vegetable, do share your thoughts!

11/28/07 Update: Turns out I was wrong. "Bass leaves" aren't morning glory vines. Read the comment thread to find out what they really are!

Crispy Caramelized Shallots

This is a common garnish used in Vietnamese dishes. It's added right at the end to add a richness and sometimes slight crunch if the dish isn't liquidy or saucy. Many Viet people use it like bacon-bits and fry up dehydrated onion or pre-dried shallot. The best is made fresh.

Crispy Caramelized Shallot
Hành Phi

Makes about 1/3 cup

1/2 cup thinly sliced shallot (1 very large or 2-3 small shallots)
3 tablespoons neutral-flavored oil (canola, corn, or vegetable)

1. To help the shallot crisp up, first remove some excess moisture. Do your best to use your fingers to separate the slices into individual layers, depositing them on a paper towel. Gather up the paper towel and gently blot away the moisture. Set near the stove.

2. Heat the oil in a 10-inch skillet over medium-low heat. Add the shallot and gently fry, stirring occasionally to ensure even cooking. After 5 to 6 minutes, when the shallot is fragrant and turning light golden, watch the skillet carefully, moving it frequently by stirring or swirling the skillet. During frying, the shallot will soften into a mass and then stiffen as it caramelizes and crisps. When most of the shallot slices are rich golden brown, turn off the heat. (Total cooking time is about 10 minutes.) Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a paper towel-lined plate, leaving as much oil behind in the skillet as possible; discard or use the fragrant oil for other uses. Spread the shallot out in one layer. When they've cooled, crisped, and slightly darkened, transfer them to a small bowl or plate.

Kept uncovered at room temperature, the shallots retain their crispiness for a good 8 hours. Even if they no longer rustle when you shake them, they're still tasty.

Crispy Caramelized Shallot is from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors (Ten Speed Press, 2006)

Bobby Chinn - Hanoi-based chef, Asia Cafe show host

Bobby Chinn, a New Zealand born Chinese-Egyptian chef and restaurateur based in Hanoi has been stirring up trouble in Vietnam since 1994. Along with Frenchman Didier Corlou who was at the Metropole Hotel and now has his own restaurant Verticale, Bobby was one of the first foreign chefs to come to Vietnam.

He's opened and closed a number of restaurants in Vietnam; doing business as a foreigner has it's many ups and downs. His current eponymous eatery called Restaurant Bobby Chinn remains steadfast. It's located in the Hoan Kiem District and offers interesting takes on Vietnamese food. Like many chefs, Bobby's cooking reflects who he is, where he's been. He used to live in San Francisco so his interpretation is California-Vietnamese, which means there's a bit of the Pacific Rim, France, and the Mediterranean too, along with fresh, seasonal organic ingredients.

In late October at the Asia Society in New York, I met Bobby as we were both on a Vietnam food panel. With a background in finance and stand-up comedy, he's smart, funny and energetic -- a savvy entertainer. He's full of self-deprecation when he describes how he had to invent his own version of Vietnamese since it's a hard language to master. Listen to his Vietnamese on this YouTube trailer for a new television travel/food show, World Cafe Asia. He's got a bit of Anthony Bourdain's sincerity and brashness and sounds a bit gravely/serious like Anderson Cooper on CNN:

"Who is Bobby Chinn?" - World Asia Cafe trailer on YouTube

At the Asia Society event, Bobby prepared a take on a Vietnamese pho cuon -- hand-held rolls comprised of the pho beef and herb garnishes wrapped up in a fresh rice sheet. It's retro food that's come back in full force in Hanoi for the past couple of years. Bobby's version had duck gizzard confit and Japanese shiso, a stand-in for Vietnamese tia to, which is hard to get in New York these days. Freshly made Cantonese haw fun from Chinatown was the perfect, supple rice wrapper. 

Bobby is a very nice person who respect Vietnamese people and their cuisine. He also loves to joke around. "You know what my name means in Vietnamese?" he asked me. I was trying to botch "Bobby Chinn" in Vietnamese but didn't get the joke. "Bop chim, bop chim, " he barked. "That means strangle the bird. I do my best Foghorn Leghorn  whenever I hear that."  (Foghorn Leghorn is an American cartoon character based on a rooster.)

His show airs in Asia on Discovery's Travel and Living channel. If you watch it, post your thoughts!

Hu Tieu Nam Vang (Phnom Penh Noodle Soup)

This is a recipe that's been long over due. Ever since my book came out a year ago, I've been remiss that I couldn't fit in a recipe for the southern Vietnamese favorite, hu tieu Nam Vang noodle soup. It's a Cambodian-Chinese concoction that the Vietnamese 'borrowed' and then made their own. Nam Vang is the Viet word for Phnom Penh, and the southern part of Vietnam has deep Khmer roots. When you're in Saigon or elsewhere in the Mekong Delta region, there's bound to be hu tieu noodle soup.

Compared to pho from the North, or bun bo Hue from the central region, hu tieu can be downright confusing because there are many versions of it. At its core, hu tieu (pronounced "hoo tee-u") signals a Chinese-Southeast Asian style noodle soup made with a pork bone broth and no fish sauce. But that's where simplicity ends. The noodles in a bowl of hu tieu can be chewy clear tapioca noodles, opaque white rice noodles like you'd use for pho noodle soup, or thin Chinese egg noodles (mi). The toppings cover a wide territory, and may include boneless pork, pork ribs, pork offal, shrimp, squid, wonton dumplings, fried garlic, fried shallot, and/or scallion. As usual, you pick and choose whatever you want. Hu tieu is the extreme have-it-your-way Vietnamese food experience. I've seen a 'dry' version too but have never tried it.

Given all the variations, locking down a classic approach to hu tieu is difficult. There isn't one prevailing concept. Yep, Vietnamese cooking can be downright confusing. In fact, check this extensive Noodlepie blog posting on hu tieu noodle soup. If you read Vietnamese, peruse this hu tieu My Tho page on the Thanh Nien website. Note that they call out three versions of hu tieu -- hu tieu Nam Vang, hu tieu Tau (Chinese hu tieu) and hu tieu My Tho (from My Tho, the capital of Tien Giang province in the Mekong Delta that's famous for their rendition).

For me, the definitive bowl of hu tieu noodle soup is hu tieu Nam Vang. The Phnom Penh version that I was introduced to as a kid by our family friend Uncle Su, a wonderful Chinese-Vietnamese cook, has a deep, umami-filled broth made of pork bones, dried squid and dried shrimp. There's a touch of golden rock sugar to give it sweetness and to round out the flavors. The toppings are similarly a surf-and-turf combination of cooked pork, sliced pork liver, poached shrimp, sautéed ground pork, fried garlic and caramelized shallot. But wait, there's more! The essential garnishes are important here. Delectable hu tieu needs lots of pungent Chinese celery and Chinese chives (flat chives that have a slight garlicky bite); lettuce is also a common garnish but not my favorite for this noodle soup because there's enough to distract already and it doesn't add much.

However, I'm a freak for the Chinese celery (can Tau), which pops its intense raw flavor in the soup. (Chinese celery looks like gigantic Italian parsley but tastes like strong celery.) When it's not readily available or not looking good at the Asian market, I substitute leafy celery tops, which is much stronger tasting than the fat ribs below. Most grocery stores have already trimmed that 'unwanted' portion of the celery plant, so hunt down a nice deep green bunch of celery at the farmers' market. Celery tops can be tough so you may have to halve them lengthwise. In the bowl above, I used celery tops.

I also love using the chewy tapioca noodles for hu tieu. They're fat, chewy, and fun to slurp on. To find them, you'll have to head to a Vietnamese grocery store and look for packages of "Hu Tieu Dai" (chewy hu tieu noodles); despite what the label says, there's no rice in the noodles, but rather tapioca. These noodles are not commonly stocked at Chinese markets. On the other hand, a medium-width flat rice noodle that's like a fettucine or what you'd use for pad Thai works just fine.

There are many steps here so take your time and know that one batch feeds many people. If you're hoarding it all to yourself, you can dole the bowls out over the course of 4 or 5 days. Just refrigerate the broth and toppings. Of course, you may also freeze the broth and meat toppings too.

For the squid and shrimp, head to a Chinese or Vietnamese market and check the refrigerated section for the dried shrimp. Dried squid, sold whole in plastic packages, is often near the dried mushroom, snacks, or dried shrimp.

Hủ Tiếu Nam Vang
Phnom Penh Noodle Soup with Pork, Shrimp, Garlic and Shallot

Makes 8 bowls

Broth:
6 pounds pork bones (neck, spine, or leg), in 2-inch pieces
5 quarts water
3 medium dried squid (2 ounces total), quickly rinsed
1/3 cup dried shrimp
1 large yellow onion, peeled and quartered
1-inch chunk golden rock sugar (about 1 ounce)
2 tablespoons salt
1 1/4 pounds pork loin, skin-on leg, or boneless shoulder, 2 by 4-inch pieces

Bowls:
¾ to 1 pound pork liver
1/3 cup Crispy Caramelized Shallot (reserve the cooking oil for cooking the garlic)
Canola or other neutral oil
3 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
½ pound ground pork, roughly chopped to loosen
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper, plus extra for garnish
Cooked pork from the broth simmering
1 ½ to 2 pounds dried tapioca stick noodles or dried fettucine-size flat rice noodles (bánh pho), cooked in boiling water until al dente (5 to 7 minutes for the tapioca; 3 to 4 minutes for the rice noodles), drained, and flushed with cold water (keep tapioca stick noodles in a bowl of water to prevent sticking)
16 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined

Garnishes:
½ small bunch Chinese chives, cut into 1 ½-inch-long pieces (1 cup total)
1 small bunch Chinese celery, trimmed and cut into 1 ½-inch-long pieces (2 cups total)
2 cups bean sprouts (about 1/3 pound), picked over, washed, and drained well
2 or 3 hot Thai or serrano chiles, thinly sliced
2 or 3 limes, cut into wedges

Make the broth
1. In a stockpot (about 12-quart capacity) over high heat, bring the bones and water to a boil. Use a large spoon or ladle to skim any scum that rises to the top. Add the remaining ingredients. Once the broth returns to a boil, lower the heat to simmer for 1 hour.

At this point, the boneless pork meat should be slightly chewy but not tough. Press it and it should feel like the flesh at the base of your thumb. When it's cooked to your liking, use tongs to transfer it to a bowl of cold water. Let the meat soak for 10 minutes to prevent it from drying up and turning dark. Drain the meat and let it cool before refrigerating. Throughout this time, the broth should have continued to simmer. In total, the broth should simmer for 2 hours before it's done.

2. Strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer (or a coarse mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth) positioned over a large saucepan.

3. Use a ladle to skim as much fat from the top of the broth as you like. (Cool it and then refrigerate overnight to make this task easier; reheat before continuing.) Taste and adjust the flavor with additional salt and rock sugar. The broth should taste slightly too strong because the noodles and other ingredients are not salted. (Dilute with water if you've gone too far.) There should be about 4 quarts.

Prepare the toppings
4. While the broth simmers, poach the liver. Fill a saucepan halfway with water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Add the liver and lower the heat to gently simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the liver feels firm, like the flesh at the base of your thumb. Remove from the water and put in a bowl of water for 10 minutes to prevent it from drying up and turning dark. Drain the liver and store with the cooked beef.

5. Prepare the Crispy Caramelized Shallots if you haven't already, reserving the cooking oil in the skillet. Add extra oil so that there's about 3 tablespoons total. Heat over medium-low heat and add the garlic. Gently sauté, stirring frequently, until golden. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the garlic to a ramekin or small bowl. Set aside to cool.

6. There should be a good 2 tablespoons of oil in the skillet. If not, add a little extra. Heat over medium heat and add the pork, salt and pepper, stirring to break the pork up into small pieces. Cook, stirring, for about 3 minutes, or until the pork is cooked through. Transfer to a ramekin or small bowl. Set aside to cool. All of these toppings may be prepared in advance and refrigerated. Return to room temperature before assembling the bowls.

Assemble the bowls
7. Cut the pork and liver into thin slices, about 1/16 thick. For the best results, make sure they are cold. Have ready the shallot, garlic, ground pork, noodles, and shrimp for assembling the bowls. Arrange the garnishes on a plate or put them in small dishes and put on the table.

8. To ensure good timing, bring the broth to a simmer over medium heat while you are assembling the bowls. Add the shrimp and poach them for about 2 minutes, or until they have curled and turned orange. Remove from the broth and set aside.

9. At the same time, fill a large pot with water and bring to a rolling boil. For each bowl, place a portion of the noodles on a vertical-handle strainer (or mesh sieve) and dunk the noodles in the boiling water. As soon as they have collapsed and lost their stiffness (10 to 20 seconds), pull the strainer from the water, letting the water drain back into the pot. Empty the noodles into a bowl.

10. Top each bowl with sliced pork, liver and 2 shrimp. In the center add some cooked ground pork, fried garlic, and crispy caramelized shallot. Finish with a sprinkling of black pepper.

11. Raise the heat and bring the broth to a rolling boil. Do a final tasting and make any last-minute flavor adjustments. Ladle about 2 cups broth into each bowl, distributing the hot liquid evenly to warm all the ingredients. Serve immediately with the garnishes.

$2,000 Vietnamese American Burger

Build a Better Burger is an annual contest held at Sutter Home Winery in California's Napa Valley. Among the 2007 finalists for the alternative burger was one based on the beloved Vietnamese banh mi sandwich. The entry came from Brigitte Nguyen of Lexington, Kentucky. She grilled ground pork patties seasoned with some  usual Viet suspects -- fish sauce (nuoc mam), lots of garlic, Chinese-five spice and soy sauce -- and added ginger and minced jalapeno for extra heat.

The bun itself got a double dose of creaminess in the form of butter and mayonnaise. Usually, banh mi has just one of these, most often the mayo. For extra lusciousness, she spread a bit of pate in there too. Pickled daikon and carrot, jalapeno slices, cilantro and cucumber grounded the burger in the classic banh mi tradition. 

How's that for Vietnamese food going mainstream? As a runner up, Brigitte received $2,000. Here's her recipe at the Build a Better Burger site:

Vietnamese Five-spice Pork Burgers recipe

Btw, the winning alternative burger ($10,000 prize) was a "Little Italy Sausage Burger."

Peanuts: Home Toasted vs. Store Roasted

When my family first came to the United States, we did many things the old-fashioned way. Dried mung beans are one of the most-often used legumes in Vietnamese cooking so we bought unhulled mung beans (the green ones with the skin on), soaked them, boiled them, and then laboriously rubbed off the green skins. Green papaya salad was a family favorite and my mother once made my oldest sister hand cut enough papaya to feed thirty people. We roasted raw peanuts in a dry skillet for garnishing a multitude of Vietnamese foods. We thought that such labors were common in America. After noticing the tiny bay shrimp at a local grocery store, we pondered the repetitive work involved for those whose sole occupation was to remove the shells from those shrimp. "I pity the poor people who have to do that job," my mother said.

It wasn't long before we realized that America was much more developed than our little Vietnam. Yep, we figured out that there was some sort of mechanized process for shelling bay shrimp, just like we discovered the convenience of buying hulled split mung beans, using the food processor of a shredded for green papaya, and shopping at health food stores for roasted, unsalted peanuts.

While I'll never go back to rubbing skins off of teeny mung beans and have written off hand-cutting green papaya after trying it just once, I found myself this evening pan-roasting raw peanuts. Tomorrow night, I'm cooking dinner for my dear friend James Oseland, editor in chief of Saveur magazine and author of Cradle of Flavor (a fantastic work on Indonesian, Singaporean and Malaysian home cooking), and his mother. Our main course is a turmeric catfish with dill and scallion noodle dish from Hanoi. One of the essential garnishes is whole roasted peanut.

I'd bought a half pound of raw peanuts at the Chinese market for simmering with squash and coconut milk, and the bag sat on the counter near the stove. While prepping the ingredients, I remembered my mother's description of roasting peanuts in sand to evenly cook them and I wondered if they'd taste better in the catfish dish. Surely James would appreciate/understand the effort. What the hell, I threw the peanuts into a heavy-bottomed skillet, turn the gas to medium, and went about my cooking.

When roasting nuts you want to do it slowly to ensure that the entire nut is cooked through and none of it remains raw. I remember the times when we ended up with unevenly roasted peanuts that were partially burnt because someone wasn't watching the skillet or rushed things. Out of angst, I adjusted the heat periodically and shook the skillet frequently. I was on the phone with my girlfriend Maki who asked, "What's that you're doing? Spinning plates on a stick?"

"No, I'm pan-roasting peanuts," I responded and held up the skillet close to phone so she could get an extra earful.

The peanuts were large and seemed to take forever. I'm used to toasting sesame seeds, which take no time by comparison. I kept testing the peanuts for doneness by eating them. For the most part, they were unpleasantly raw tasting. Finally, after a good 50 minutes (Maki had hung up to make dinner for her family), I turned off the heat and let them continue cooking as they cooled. They started making little cracking noises and darkened just a tad.

Once completely cooled, I did a taste test between the home roasted peanuts and the Trader Joe's stash that I kept in the freezer. The pan-roasted ones were aromatic, peanutty, but slightly bitter whereas the purchased peanuts were rich and peanutty throughout, without the bitterness. The former was more complex but the latter more pleasant on the palate.

They were two different varieties of peanuts - Trader Joe's is smaller than the Chinese market's. Vietnamese cooks don't normally fry peanuts like the Chinese and other Southeast Asian cooks do. We basically dry-roast the peanuts and frankly, they're just not that great. If you roast peanuts at home and have some kind of trick, please share it!

My conclusion? I'm sticking with store-bought and put my Vietnamese cooking efforts elsewhere. Certain modern conveniences are wonderful time savers and tasty too.