Viet World Kitchen

Viet Scrambled Eggs with Fish Sauce Recipe

It was not so much nostalgia as a yearning for something deliciously Vietnamese that led me to whip up these scrambled eggs today. My mom taught me how to make scrambled eggs – after she let me prepare rice for the family. We’d have the eggs for lunch with bread. At the time, I didn’t realize how genius it was.

There were just a handful of ingredients involved: shallot or yellow onion, tomato, eggs, fish sauce, and black pepper. If things got fancy, green onion was added for color. Making the Viet scrambled eggs got me thinking about the brilliance of simple cooking.

Cooking and Life Lessons from Our Moms

Over the weekend our friends Diane and John invited us over for a Cinco de Mayo dinner. They have two little boys, ages 2 and 4, who are adorable, a little rascally but over all pretty well behaved. I don’t have children so I dig observing the parenting process.

A teacher by profession, Diane takes a kind-hearted educational approach to rearing her boys. While we were at their home, she got the older boy to fetch a step stool so he could stand at the kitchen sink to wash his dinner plate. We adults watched with amusement until we realized that there may be a knife in the sink. Diane let out a small cry, explaining to her son that sharp objects may be nearby, and ran over to check. No knife present. Disaster averted.

It’s hard to know what kind of impression that situation made on the four-year-old but parents do their best. Lord knows I’ve asked myself a zillion times whether or not I’d left a knife at the bottom of a sink full of dirty dishes. I don’t think I figured that one out from my mom but here are five cooking and life lessons that she did teach me. (By the way, the vintage photo at the top has Mom in center and on her left, 5 1/2-year-old me looking grumpy.)

Vietnamese Street Food Tips and Cookbook Giveaway

In 2010 when I was in Hanoi on a press trip, I met Tracey Lister, an Australian expat with active passion about Vietnamese food. She’d been living in Vietnam’s capitol for many years, exploring the food scene then writing about it as well as  running the Hanoi Cooking Centre, a terrific place to take classes. She has a quiet curiosity about food and is highly observant – traits that she poured into her latest book, Vietnamese Street Food.

She authored the charming book with her husband, Andreas Pohl. The location photography gives a true sense being in Vietnam. It’s a book that anyone who’s traveled to Vietnam should have, not just as a keepsake but to cook from. It’s also terrific for armchair travelers and cooks. Many people are interested in street food nowadays so I asked Tracey to share her thoughts and expert advice on what to eat in Hanoi.

Help with 3 Indonesian Hot Sauces

I’ve been on the hunt for Asian hot sauces this week for a BonAppetit.com assignment. There are tons to explore at Asian markets. The middle-of-the-night heartburn was worth it, I think...

During my search, I came across three unusual ones (above) at Lion Market in Saratoga (San Jose, CA). Lion doesn’t carry super offbeat ingredients but once in a while, I discover gems. We didn’t include the three in the Bon Appetit round up because they weren’t easily found in Manhattan and Indonesia was well represented in the piece.

That said, I save these three Indonesian “hotties” for VWK. I like them but don’t fully understand them. Maybe you can lend your insights? 

Sriracha Hot Sauce Week

Perhaps because we’re closing on winter’s end and longing to warm up in spring but it seems like everyone is talking about sriracha these days. I’ve written lots about it on VWK, with tastings of various kinds, a DIY sriracha recipe, as well as recipes using the Thai hot sauce. But it continues to gain momentum, particularly the Rooster brand made by Huy Fong in the United States. Dare I say it, yes I will, sriracha has gone mainstream.

BusinessWeek magazine ran a terrific in-depth article late last month on the remarkable success of the Rooster sriracha. The company uses no advertising, has no Twitter handle or Facebook page. The owner is Vietnamese-American David Tran. While I was happy to see an Asian-American food business article in a national publication, I noted that the sriracha was compared to other hot sauces, such as Tabasco and Cholula. Why wasn’t it compared to other kinds of Thai sriracha hot sauces? That would have been a more level playing field.