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.
Joel says
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
Ashley says
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! (
Simon says
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
Andrea Nguyen says
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 abo
Andrea Nguyen says
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 le
Andrea Nguyen says
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.cock
Joel says
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
Simon says
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
Binh says
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 says
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 cris
Andrea Nguyen says
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 says
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 no
Joel says
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
Andrea Nguyen says
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 says
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 says
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 says
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
Andrea Nguyen says
Simon, did you just pen that poem? It's fabulous. I'm deeply touched.
Simon says
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 li
Andrea Nguyen says
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 says
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,
David says
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 says
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 says
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 says
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...
Heather says
Andrea,
I'm really happy that Vietnamese food is becoming popular and on the rise. I have been to Vietnam and I loved the food. I would love to go to one of your cooking seminars if you are ever in New York!
About the Indochine selling point from Canton, I think that advertising specially a positive one about Vietnam is a good one. It obviously doesn't capture the essence and all that Vietnam is and was, but it still brings it to the map and other people might find it interesting and may want to
Andrea Nguyen says
Heather, Thanks for your comments. That's fabulous that you've been to VN. It's an amazing little country.
I'm going to be in NYC at the end of October to teach at Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) and to be on a panel at Asia Society. The class is unfortunately sold out, though you can be wait listed. Panel tickets are still available and it should be a good one, given the line up. More information on the panel is on this flyer:
http://vietworldkitchen.com/cookbook/events/Asia_society_10-29
Liz says
Domaine de Canton is not a fictional marketing scheme at all...it is a brand new ginger liqueur made with rare baby ginger. It is unbelievable. I have read about it in the New York Times, USA Today and Newsweek and bought a bottle myself! Visit http://www.domainedecanton.com for recipes!
Andrea Nguyen says
Thanks, Liz!
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marlon says
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.