Root Vegetable

So, I know pasta and winter squash sounds like a strange combination, but I promise it’s really good. Not only that, but all the colors make this a beautiful dish as well. The easiest way to peel the squash is to cut it into quarters first, then scrape out the seeds and cut off the peel. Because they’re so hard, if I do it any other way I’m afraid my knife will slip and I’ll cut myself

Soup is great because you can make a lot when you have time and freeze it in smaller portions so that you always have a quick home-cooked meal on hand. You can even take the frozen soup with you if you have access to a microwave to reheat it. Plus, it is chock-full of vegetables and pretty low in calories.

I never realized that there were so many ways to make curry until a few of my friends got into a discussion of the virtues of the different types. There’s red, made with red chiles; green, made with green chiles; and yellow, made with turmeric. Countries all across Asia, from India to Malaysia to Thailand (and Mongolia!), have dishes called curries—all spicy. Then there’s the wet/dry divide, which has to do with how much sauce the dish has. In case you’re interested, this is a dry, yellow, Indian-style curry.

If you like curry and crispy fried foods, you’ll love these Indian-style turnovers. The filling can be prepared in advance and kept in the fridge until you’re ready to eat. We use wonton wrappers for the dough, so all you have to do is fill them and fry them when you’re ready.

This recipe was inspired by an amazing salad I had at an organic restaurant near my house. I love all of the fun stuff in it. The sweetness of the pineapple and the crunch of the chow mein noodles and almonds are a fabulous combination. And the dressing is light, so it doesn’t weigh down the salad. It’s a perfect hot weather dish. You can get dried pineapple in the bulk food section of a supermarket, or you can usually find them by the other dried fruits.

This stew is so popular that practically every Viet cook has his or her own version. I have read recipes that call for curry powder, annatto seeds, tomato paste, and beer. But this is how my mother learned to make bò kho decades ago. Although in Vietnam it is traditionally eaten for breakfast, here in the States it has become lunch or dinner fare in the Vietnamese American community. It may be served in shallow bowls with warm French bread for sopping up the flavorful sauce, or it may be spooned over rice or wide rice noodles (bánh pho). The addition of chopped Vietnamese coriander or Thai basil leaves is something that my parents picked up when we lived in Saigon. Also, despite the name, this is not a kho dish. Here, kho means “to simmer” or “to stew.” No caramel sauce is involved. Traditionalists like to use the boneless beef shank sold at Chinese and Viet markets for this dish, which they cook for hours to yield a chewy-tender result. Once in the States, my family switched to beef chuck, which is flavorful, suited to long cooking, and more readily available.

This is a fine example of a Vietnamese hybrid dish. In many Viet cookbooks, the prescribed method for cooking potatoes is the double-fry approach (a Belgian technique introduced by the French), which yields nongreasy potatoes that are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Atop the perfectly fried potatoes is a mound of stir-fried beef, the juices of which penetrate the potatoes to give them great savoriness. Enjoy this East-meets-West dish as is, with a boiled green vegetable or green salad to round out the meal. Or, treat it like a stir-fry and eat it with rice (as I like to) as part of a traditional Viet meal.

I often pan-sear steaks Vietnamese style, with lots of garlic, black pepper, and Maggi Seasoning sauce, a favorite condiment of the Vietnamese. Thinly slice the steaks so guests may help themselves with chopsticks, plus the juices released are delicious mixed into a bowl of rice. Or, make the steaks part of a Western knife-and-fork meal (bit-tet is the Viet transliteration of the French bifteck) and serve with crispy fried potatoes instead of rice (see Stir-Fried Beef with Crispy Fried Potatoes, page 140, for guidance on cooking the potatoes).

This steamed fish recipe, given to our family by our Chinese Vietnamese friend Uncle Su, is special. During cooking, the bold seasonings mix with the sweet fish juices to create a wonderful sauce for flavoring the flesh and a bowl of hot rice. Fresh salmon steaks or fillets are a fine substitute for the heads, which my parents prefer. You can also try the sauce atop other moderately flavored fish that have some richness to their flesh, such as sablefish. Avoid lean, dense fish, such as halibut or swordfish, which dry out and toughen when steamed.

Smooth, well-seasoned meat and seafood pastes have many uses in the Vietnamese kitchen. Here, a pinkish orange salmon paste is shaped into small cakes before undergoing a two-step cooking process: an initial steaming to cook the cakes, followed by broiling, grilling, or frying to crisp the outside. The cakes are sliced and served as an appetizer or dunked into Simple Dipping Sauce (page 309) and eaten with rice for dinner. If you have enjoyed Thai fried fish cakes (tod mun), these will remind you of them. When my mother came to the States, she substituted salmon for the rich-tasting tuna she had used in Vietnam. I have since prepared the cakes with the ahi tuna available here, but the results were too firm and dry. The fattier salmon is superior. If you can’t find skinless salmon fillet, buy 2 1/3 pounds of skin-on fillet and remove the skin before you cut the fish into chunks. The cakes can be frozen after they are steamed and then thawed and crisped for a good last-minute meal or snack. The recipe is also easily halved, but I advise you to make the whole batch and tuck away the extras for when you need a quick dish.

Cha gio, which originated in Saigon are among Vietnam’s national dishes. They are often misleadingly translated as spring rolls, because they seem like a riff on the Chinese spring roll, or as imperial rolls, a translation of pâté imperial, their French moniker. But these rolls are not reserved for royalty, nor are they exclusively eaten during the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). And their filling, wrapper, and accompaniments are uniquely Vietnamese. Out of culinary pride, I encourage people to call these rolls cha gio, their southern Viet name. The rolls are made in varying sizes. Cooks with great manual dexterity create thumb-sized rolls. Lacking such skill and patience, I make stubby cigar-sized ones and cut them up before serving. Larger ones also involve less labor when frying up enough for a special lunch or dinner. Some Vietnamese American cooks use Filipino lumpia or Chinese spring roll wrappers, which are made of wheat flour and fry up crisp, but an authentic flavor is lost. For the best results, use rice paper made of all rice flour or of rice and tapioca flours.

Whenever our family gets together for dinner at my parents’ house, this dish is usually on the menu. To make it, catfish fillets are cut into pieces and panfried to a golden crisp. When the fish is removed from the pan, the oil that remains is used to sauté onion and ginger into a heady mixture that is finished with fish sauce and water and then served like a relish. Most catfish sold today are farm-raised and thus lean, so don’t skimp on the oil. Also, the fish splatters during frying, so you might want to use a splatter guard and/or put newspaper on the floor around the stove to speed cleanup.

In this classic southern Vietnamese kho, catfish steaks are simmered for about an hour, which turns them a mahogany brown and gives them a deep savory flavor tinged with sweetness. You may enrich the dish with oil, though I prefer the old-world technique of my mom’s friend Mrs. Ly, who renders pork fat and simmers the cracklings with the fish. Buy a whole fresh catfish (about three pounds, gutted weight) at a Chinese, Southeast Asian, or Latin market and ask the fishmonger to cut it into one-inch-thick steaks. Use the center-cut steaks for this recipe and save the head, collar, and tail pieces to make Sour Fish Soup with Tamarind, Pineapple, and Okra (page 66), in place of the fillet. Serve the kho with the soup, a boiled green vegetable or Crunchy Pickled Bean Sprout Salad (page 193), and rice. For the best taste, combine a little piece of the fish, some rice, and a bit of sauce in each bite.

When definitive heat is what you want in a dish, fresh chiles are what you add. But when you want to inject subtle spiciness and preserve the delicate nuances of a dish, this aromatic mixture is the solution. I grew up with this condiment on the family dinner table, where it sat in a small jar alongside dispensers of fish sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper. Its flavors are gentler than commercially produced chile sauces, which often overpower dishes with their vinegary taste. Slowly frying the garlic and chile melds their individual flavors, so that when you add a bit of this mixture to food, it doesn’t assault your palate with its boldness. It is particularly good with stir-fry dishes and certain noodle soups. There are different kinds of chile heat, and through practice and experimentation you will learn when to use them.

This simple garnish is great way to finish dishes with a little richness and some bright green color. Small steamed rice pancakes (page 268), sticky rice with roast chicken (page 246), and trout hand rolls (page 110) are only a few of the dishes that benefit from scallion oil.

Long before I knew about Chinese American egg foo yong, I was dipping these tasty pancakes in fish sauce and soy sauce and enjoying them with hot rice. When my mother was short of time, she would prepare a couple of plates full of these yellow, pink, and green pancakes for dinner. They are incredibly easy to whip up and yet taste fancy. The edges get fluffy and crispy from frying in a liberal amount of oil, and each rich bite contains a bit of tasty shrimp. I don’t devein the shrimp for these pancakes because I have found that it leaves unattractive lumps. But if you prefer to devein them, do so.

Although they are nothing more than egg and the classic Vietnamese combination of pork, onion, and mushrooms, these omelets are rich, savory, chewy, and a bit crispy at the edge, and they taste remarkably good. Enjoy them hot from the pan, at room temperature, or even cold. The wedges are usually served with rice, though I have also stuffed them into baguette sandwiches (page 34).

Few dishes can be at the magnificence of a whole roast duck, a treat that most Vietnamese purchase at Chinese barbecue shops. For an easier at-home version that is just as rich and succulent, I use whole duck legs (thigh and drumstick). They are relatively inexpensive at Asian markets, and they freeze well, which means you can stock up for when you don’t have time to shop. The legs are steamed first, during which most of the fat melts away, and then they are roasted to crisp the skin. Finally, the honey glaze is applied, which puts a lacquer like finish on the skin while the meat stays moist. A simple hoisin dipping sauce adds a little extra sweetness to each bite. Present the duck with Everyday Daikon and Carrot Pickle (page 192) or Tangy Mixed Vegetable Pickle (pages 194) and accompany with a green vegetable stir-fried with just salt and a touch of sesame oil, a light soup such as Creamy Corn and Shiitake Mushroom Soup (page 74), and rice.

Golden orange and crispy, this Hanoi specialty blends the fragrance and crunch of sweet potatoes with the brininess of shrimp. The fritters, which look like roughly formed nests on which whole shrimp rest, are cut into bite-sized pieces and bundled in lettuce with fresh herbs and cucumber. My mother taught me to soak the potatoes with a bit of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), which Southeast Asian and Indian cooks use to crisp ingredients for frying and pickling. It is basically moistened food-grade slaked lime powder, the same compound used to treat corn for making Mexican masa. The Vietnamese call it voi and it is sold in small, round plastic containers in Chinese, Thai, and Viet markets, usually stocked in the flour aisle. Two varieties are available, red and white. I prefer the white one, though the red one, which has been colored by the heartwood of the cutch tree and is traditionally chewed with betel leaf, may also be used. A small container of slaked lime lasts for a long time because only a little is needed.

In this dish from my youth, the chicken is marinated and poached before it is battered and fried until crunchy. Poaching the chicken first enables you to deep-fry in less time, yields more tender meat, and mellows the pungency of the garlic. Small pieces of bone-in chicken are traditionally used, but I prefer to fry boneless, skinless thighs for convenience. Rolling the chicken in panko (Japanese bread crumbs) yields a crispy shell that keeps for hours.