Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Viet Nam News, July 17, 2005
by Clint Lambert

The Cuisine of Vietnam – Nourishing a Culture is not a cookbook, but more an exploration of the culture behind Vietnamese cooking. It is an anthology of different articles that have been selected from hundreds of food-centered pieces published in Vietnam Cultural Window. Mostly firsthand accounts written by Vietnamese, but interspersed with a Westerner’s take on the delicious, yet sometimes, complicated dishes that make up Vietnamese cuisine.

The authors do advise readers to seek out a cookbook if they want some practical guidance to cooking Vietnamese food or, better yet, they recommend traveling to the countryside, exploring the markets or eating on the streets of Viet Nam.

The book starts off exploring the staple dishes of pho (rice noodles) and rice in a bid to demystify them. The authors then go on to look at the specialty dishes of the South, and move up into the North, interspersed with chapters on fruit, tea, vegetarian food, and the traditional market.
Aimed more at the expat market, rather than the short-term traveler the anthology gives the reader a deeper insight into traditional dishes such as pho. A dish, which many Westerners find difficult to understand, because to the uninitiated, pho is just a bowl of noodles in broth, yet some Vietnamese can eat it everyday and still enjoy the dish.

To help the reader understand the Vietnamese populations involvement with pho the authors make the comparison between love and pho, by stating that "the energy poets and writers around the world have put into the nature of love; Vietnamese poets and writers have reserved the same amount of energy for the subject of pho".

Many of the firsthand stories actually made me quite hungry to read them, and the beauty of Vietnamese food is that most of the time it can just be grabbed quickly from a street-side stall, and with the glossary of food, fruits and vegetables at the back of the publication it was easier to order from the menu, and to understand exactly what was in the dish.

That is where the publication is onto a winning formula. In the past I have seen many people dithering at restaurant doors because they have no idea what food it is that the establishment is selling. The unknown difference between banh cuon and banh bao will send the timid traveler back to a restaurant with an English language menu. But will also mean that they may miss out on a regional delicacy that cannot be experienced anywhere else in the world. All due to their ignorance and fear of the unknown.

The authors even managed to make the smelly purply-pink mam tep (shrimp paste) sound quite inviting, and I am seriously considering overcoming my prejudice against something that smells like dirty socks and try it when next out to dinner – perhaps. I now understand that "All the herbs and spices are very important to enhance the hot and sweet flavor of mam tep: the sourness of the star fruit, the hotness of the chili, the acrid taste of the green banana, and the fat of the pork." Yet it is still difficult to get over the smell.

For a native English speaker, from countries that lack a history or mystique behind food, understanding Vietnamese culture is difficult. Roast beef is beef put in an oven for one hour and served with vegetables; there is no real passion to it, unlike French, Italian or Vietnamese cooking.

The lyrical statement "Em oi Doi khong co em nhu pho khong co nuoc leo" (Oh my beloved, life without you is like pho without its broth) does not really work when applied to leek and potato soup. This is where The Cuisine of Viet Nam can be of help and explain the passion behind a simple bowl of noodles.

Armed with this book, an expat can move with confidence through the market place and eating stalls of bustling Ha Noi and not be so ignorant or afraid of the traditions of the Vietnamese.

However, one notable exception to the book’s content was dog, which would have been an ideal dish to demystify. As many people do not understand when it is eaten or why. Maybe in the revised edition. — VNS